“Call your brother. Cancerous polyp on his liver.” This text message from my sister was startling, and I acted on it immediately: I called my brother.
My sister is the center of the universe that represents her living siblings. She once lamented, after the death of the second of her four brothers, “I’m running light on brothers.” But she still has big brother and baby brother and we both still adore her. And baby brother Clifford probably knew that big sister Jaci would contact big brother Joni (me) and help would be on the way.
Clifford’s recent colonoscopy had revealed a “cancerous lesion in his colon.” He spent five days in the hospital undergoing various procedures for the doctors to determine how to proceed with surgery; there was a complicating factor: a blood clot on his lung. My second bride offered to drive me to my brother’s apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a five-hour, 27-minute journey according to the mapping app on my phone. This generous offer was a relief; I could get to Cliff’s apartment soon after his discharge from the hospital and help him to prepare for his surgery. And though our “five-hour tour” took more hours than that, Teresa and I eased through the time of tense travel with “Twenty Questions” and reminiscences about our former marriage.
Teresa dropped me off at my brother’s and visited with him then set off back home again, to Indiana. Clifford told me that his sister-in-law — now a registered nurse — had “given him hope” when she examined his swollen and painful foot and described her own intestinal surgeries. “She showed me her scars,” Cliff said, “and that made me feel better” about his own upcoming “wet work.” I settled into a routine with him, accompanying him to his surgical consult, taking copious notes and creating a calendar of appointments for him, while updating our sister in Maryland. One day, shortly after I arrived, I got a message from a social media site; a friend told me that another friend of ours had died. This news set loose a landslide of contacts, including from my two good friends, Keith and Linda Cope. Keith knew the man who’d died, but when I told him that I was in Pittsburgh with my brother, he recalled when my mother came to St. Louis to nurse me after my stomach exploded and her talking about “her Joni” when he took her shopping. Into this rocky field of dread and misery there dropped a flower: My nephew called me.
Curtis is the son of the youngest of my two long-dead brothers. They do not live close to me, but I’ve tried to maintain a relationship with my nieces and nephew. Curtis has married, and because I love reading and encouraging young readers, I’ve been sending books for his two young boys. He called to tell me that he and his wife and two boys were going to Indianapolis. He knew that I lived in Indy and thought that we might meet. We laughed at the irony: I had come from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh to stay with his uncle and he was heading to Indianapolis. We talked and shared some memories, and he learned that he and his sister — both artists — attended the same art school I had. Then Curtis set abloom a flower in my field of cancer and worry: “We appreciate the books you’ve been sending us,” he said. Please, Baby Please, by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee was the boys’ favorite.
His “thank you” was a beautiful coda to my play of good and bad.
cjon3acd@att.net