My brother Mark died at age 39, one month shy of his 40th birthday. Now, a little over four years later, I still feel the silent ache of loss. I wonder if Mark had lived how different my life might be today. Worse I feel guilty because I want Mark back for my own selfish reasons. As a brother he was the most accepting person I've ever known. Uncompromisingly he was ready to help me whenever, wherever, however—whether that was to pick me up at the airport at 2 in the morning, or move my oversized yellow couch up the back stairs of my apartment in Haddon Heights, or ferry me back to my parents when my colitis symptoms left me skinny and weak.
Over the years, I feel I never repaid that debt. I never let him know what he meant to me. I never let him know that I loved him as a brother, but more importantly as a friend. And I think that silent ache I feel is in part because I never let him know that he enriched my life and helped me see a little more clearly what it means to be truly alive.
When Mark got sick, I saw the true measure of his courage. Even as the cancer progressed from his colon, to his liver, and finally to his brain, he never gave up. He never succumbed to his illness, never said that his life was over. Even after undergoing surgery and chemotherapy and radiation to the point where he stayed most of the day asleep on the couch, he still had plans and dreams that he wanted to fulfill.
Even when the prognosis for his illness left no hope for recovery—or even remission—he forged on. He planned little minivacations. He drove himself to New Hampshire to see his friend Pam, and to see, I think, if they could be more than friends. I'm sorry now that I never really asked him what he wanted his life to be and what Pam meant to him.
I know from his example, though, what it means to live life fully. It means to be willing to keep going even when the odds are against you, to take risks, and to find something that you can devote yourself to. For Mark, after some stormy years of drinking and using drugs, he finally found solace in his weaving and his gardening, and the thought that he could bring beauty to a world that too often had gone gray.
He showed me that life is what you make of it. That you can't let the world’s bleakness bring you down. Instead you have to find the beauty, to find a way to be comfortable with who you are and who you want to be. And when the obstacles of life seem somehow insurmountable, you need to hold fast to your dreams and stare Death in the face and say, "Not now, not now, not now."
