Five Months Ago

Five months ago my baby brother, ‘J’, was taken from us. He was 19 years old. When he was 17 and at the start of his HSC year he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). At the end of a harrowing nine months of aggressive chemotherapy he was in remission. White haired, puffy and looking like a ghost, he made it to my other baby brother, ‘D’ ’s, wedding to stand up the front with him, two beautiful men in suits, and watch ‘D’ ’s beautiful bride, ‘F’, walk down the aisle. I've never cried seeing a groomsman walk down the aisle, but I'm sure I was not alone in crying that day and praying that we would all get to go to ‘J’ ’s wedding one day soon too. It was not to be.

‘J’ relapsed just before Christmas 2008. My brother ‘D’ took a video file of ‘J’ on that Christmas day. (We’re glad he did as there aren’t many video files of ‘J’.) ‘D’ has managed to capture a quiet and sweet and profoundly sad moment. In the background you can hear a clarinet being played by a young cousin. My then 1 ½ year old daughter, ‘L’ is walking the way only toddlers who’ve just found their legs do, precariously, and from side to side. Fat and happy and dribbly, she’s busy pulling round baubles off the Christmas tree to give to her uncle ‘J’ who smiles at her with big wide-eyes when she places the treasure in his hands. Then she swivels round and goes back for more. It’s sweet to watch and makes your heart ache. As the little girl walks back to the tree, the camera stays on ‘J’ ’s face. (I wonder if he knew the camera was on him in that moment?) Then his face falls, you notice the dark circles under his eyes. As my Dad put it when we sat in ‘J’ ’s bedroom watching the video on his laptop, crying: “He looks like he’s in the spotlight of a night-shooter.” How terrifying it must have been to have already tasted the awful battle that was ahead of him. He looks about as far as you can get from a carefree Christmas day. But when his niece returns with another bauble, he smiles again at her and accepts her gift.

It is a very difficult video to watch. He looks so very sad. And he tried so very hard, but he did not win this time. After a bone marrow transplant in May 2009 with a Matched Unrelated Donor (MUD) he suffered terribly with Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). After going on a trial to try and cure the GVHD later that year, ‘J’ ’s graft from the bone marrow transplant was grown over, lost, and the cancer resurged with a vengeance. On the 30th November 2009 he died. But he died in Christ and he has not been abandoned to the grave. (1 Thess 4:13-18, Psalm 16) Though we miss him horribly now, we will see him again. And thinking of him reminds me to do everything I can to not miss out on that heavenly inheritance. I want to see my brother again!

It has taken me a long time to know what to do with the stories and thoughts and feelings I have had in the time since I lost my darling brother. For the moment, I have decided to write some of them down and to share them with other people. This blog will not only be about ‘J’ though. I couldn’t help but include the silly and the trivial too: playing as they do, a rather starring role in my full-time-mum life*. I promise every post won't be harrowing. But I wanted a place where I could write about ‘J’ too and remember him.

*I once read the term ‘work-at-home-mum’ in an article in Sunday Life, and though I don’t feel brave enough to use it, it has stuck with me. It seems far more accurate than describing oneself as a 'full-time-mum' or worse, ‘stay-at-home-mum’– the latter phrase in particular conjuring up images of sitting on the couch all day watching Oprah and eating Tim Tams. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! It just sadly doesn’t reflect my life.)

If our family is well I am not a stay-at-home-mum. I take my daughter, ‘L’ out every day. We go to the park, the shops, to bible study, to playgroup. We swim at the beach, we visit Grandparents and friends. When we are at home we vacuum, hang out laundry and occasionally wash the windows! (Much to the annoyance of ‘L’. But being 36 weeks pregnant a clean house is the luxury I crave right now. Not Oprah or Tim Tams. It’s a personal choice.) We also read stories, have chats, and cuddles, and pray together. We play playdough, duplo, dollies, doctors and patients. Draw with crayons, paint (only sometimes, it’s very messy!) make scones, and pack everything away again at the end of the day. So you see I really am a ‘work-at-home-mum’! It is great work, and a great privilege to have this time with my small but incredibly noisy daughter, and on the good and even the bad days I wouldn’t swap it for anything else!