Cancer is a Bully

My brother was dying.
He was dying and had come to make his peace with me. But I didn't know that yet.

When he called me up at work one morning, after a prolonged dearth of any communication, asking to meet me for lunch, I assumed he would again be fishing for money to tide him over. Since reaching adulthood, the rare request for money had been the only reason he ever made contact with me.

Even though I am closer in age to him than any of our six siblings, my older brother Steve and I have never been close. I was a small and scrawny kid, easily intimidated and fearful of confrontation. Nearly two years older than me, Steve was brash and adventurous, questioning everything, challenging assumptions, debating every point. To me, he was just one more thing among many to be afraid of and thus avoided whenever possible. By the time I had outgrown my fears, however, Steve had already committed to the path of rebellion, experimenting with mind-altering drugs, reading Carlos Castenadas in search of mystical truth, beginning his withdrawal from the family in favor of a separate, hermitic existence dominated by addictions. His was the direct opposite of my commitment to the path of least resistance: stay in school, go to church, don’t make waves, get a job, prepare for a mission, seek family support and guidance. Wisdom had nothing to do with my choices; they just seemed safer than Steve’s self-destructive and contrarian ways.

We had not spoken of anything other than cash in decades. In fact, the last real conversation we had attempted prior to this lunch was years earlier as I was packing my bags to enter the mission field in South Korea. Looking back on that conversation, I’m pretty sure Steve was trying his best to make a connection before I left for two years, but it ended awkwardly when he attempted to give me spiritual counsel: “If I could leave you with any advice, it would be that when you teach the Koreans, just teach them good Christian principles, not Mormonism.” Not wanting to start an argument (I still avoided confrontation even then), I just nodded silently and kept packing until he left. If he had made that same suggestion two years later, I would have jumped all over it and asked why I should settle for teaching only “good” Christian principles when I could be teaching the “finest and best” Christian principles encompassed in LDS doctrine. But I was still weak, so I missed the chance to engage Steve on his terms, in his venue of choice – a debate. If it wasn’t for the drugs, Steve could have made a great lawyer.

There was a local sandwich shop called “The Pub” within walking distance from my office, so when Steve arrived, he suggested we eat there. I would have picked “Wendy’s” or some other cheap fast food joint, since I figured I was going to be paying for this outing, but Steve seemed to be following some pre-determined plan and so took charge. It felt a little like an ambush. I became wary. I had already determined that I would not be giving him more money. I didn’t really have extra to spare, for one thing. And Bubba (our dad) had counseled me not to enable his addictions with cash, but to simply refer him to his parents, who would be happy to help him with groceries, rent, or whatever else he needed to survive.

We attempted small talk on the way to The Pub, but having so little in common, the conversation seemed forced and shallow. It inevitably turned to a discussion about my kids, since that is the easiest thing for any parent to talk about. Steve tried to compliment the beauty of my daughters, but never having mastered the social graces, his comment about them both being “real lookers” came off as a little creepy. I let it pass, but silently vowed that there would never be any sleepovers at Uncle Steve’s. His biggest gaffe, however, came when we turned the discussion to my son, Michael.

“He can be a mean little bastard, can’t he?” said Steve. I was totally shocked and outraged by this allegation. I could not let this one pass.

“What are you talking about? Michael is one of the kindest souls on the planet.”

“Maybe when you are around. But I’ve seen him picking on the little guys at the family parties and he’s a mean little bugger.” As far as I could recall, Steve had been to a total of about three family gatherings in the past 20 years, so I doubted the validity of his knowledge base. I wondered aloud if he wasn’t mistaking Michael for Scotty, our brother Paul’s 2nd oldest boy, who at that time, would occasionally torment his younger brother Tommy to tears. Or perhaps he meant our sister Kate’s 2nd oldest son Steven, who would routinely attempt to bully his surprisingly resilient younger sibling Hunter.

But Steve was insistent that Michael was the bully, teasing both Tommy and Pete (our sister Amy’s son) unmercifully and regularly. For the slightest moment I considered the possibility that my own perception of Michael was clouded by parental affection. After all, Steve was a neutral third party observer, who was familiar with the ways of the bully, having trod that path himself as the oldest of eight. But, no. I was certain I was not so blind. Steve was the bleary-eyed alcoholic who saw what he expected to see. Michael is a big kid, largest of all the local cousins who regularly meet at family parties. Steve had always been the biggest when he was younger, too. I suppose he may have been seeing himself reflected in Michael, mistaking innocent play for teasing and bullying.

Regardless of the psychology, I was having none of it. I assured Steve that Michael was not mean or bullying by nature and if it appeared so to him, it was a rare anomaly and not representative of Michael’s normal behavior. This time Steve let the potential conflict drop, but a barely perceptible smirk seemed to reveal his position that I was being naïve. I was no longer just wary. I was ticked. How dare he judge my family? I would buy him lunch, but otherwise, the bastard would not be getting a dime from me.

We arrived at The Pub and Steve asked specifically for a booth rather than a table. I would later realize that this was probably the real reason he wanted to go to this restaurant. The booths were high-backed and private, thus hiding from the world what he may have expected to be a difficult discussion. At the moment, however, I assumed less charitable motivations, because the first thing he asked after we were seated was if I would mind if he ordered a beer. The Pub, as its name implies, serves more than just sandwiches. In fact, they have their own microbrewery, concocting such local favorites as the sarcastically named “Latter Day Stout” and “Happy Valley Hefeweisen.”

“I’m not comfortable buying alcohol for you Steve,” I said firmly. Other than Nyquil, I had never purchased alcohol for myself or anyone else my whole life. I was not about to start by further enabling his addiction to the stuff. “That’s OK,” he said with a chuckle, “I’ll just pay for the booze separately.” Just as I had figured; I was buying lunch.

Steve ordered some pasta dish and a Heineken. I ordered a wonderful green salad that featured flakes and chunks of salmon in a raspberry vinaigrette. The restaurant wasn’t busy and the food came fast, sparing us both the strain of more small talk. After a couple bites of pasta and a few pulls on the Heineken, Steve turned to me and got suddenly serious and began speaking quietly. He began by asking me if I’d be willing to do some small tasks for him should something happen to him. At first it sounded to me like he was trying to put his affairs in order in preparation for a suicide. Having been trained as a Bishop to confront such suspicions directly, I asked him if he was thinking about killing himself.

“No, no,” he replied with wide and suddenly moist eyes. “It’s just that I haven’t been feeling very well for a long time and I’ve gone to see the doctor and they ran some tests and now they want to run more tests and in my gut I think it may be serious. I think I may be dying.” He was clearly scared and the tears welled further, giving him a sudden case of the sniffles.

I didn’t have a clue how to respond to this news, but before I could even summon up some sympathy, Steve plunged into the real purpose for our little meeting. “I need to ask you something. Are you OK? Have I totally screwed up your life?” he asked with a heartwrenching sob.

I’m not sure what well of guilt the question had bubbled up from, but it was apparently deep and closely guarded. Perhaps I should have been offended that he thought my life was screwed up at all, but he had just told me he was dying, so I wasn’t going there. Instead, I had one of those moments where you instantly review the past looking for some clue to the meaning of your present situation. Had Steve done anything that really affected who I was now? He had mostly been absent for my entire adult life so I figured he must have been referring to something from childhood.

As a kid, I had been one of many victims of his occasional bullying, his favorite method being what he called the Chinese Water Torture, where he would straddle your chest, pinning your arms under his legs. Then raising the knuckle of his middle finger from a closed fist, he would rhythmically bludgeon your sternum in the same spot over and over again until you were crying or someone had run to tell Mom.

It may have been a bit painful and humiliating at the time, but it certainly was not permanently damaging. That’s just what big brothers did, asserting their dominance and thus teaching their younger brothers how to similarly torment those even smaller than themselves. I'm sure my knuckle was raised more than once over the chest of either Mike or Paul at some point. In fact, I remember making Paul so angry with my teasing that he once hurled a dandilion digger at my chest in retaliation. Luckily, it hit me broadside, not pointy-side.

But that’s not screwing up a life; it’s just teaching the law of the jungle.

I remembered that Steve had also shown me the first truly pornographic picture I ever saw. He was showing it off to one of his buddies when I came into our shared room and asked him what they were looking at, for they were doing so with such obvious interest and glee that I was instantly curious. He tried to dissuade me, saying I was too young to see such things. This, of course, was exactly the wrong thing to say if he really wanted to discourage me. I insisted that I was old enough, even though I had no idea what I was talking about. In a magnanimous gesture of brotherly kindness, he relented to my pestering and showed me the picture of a buxom blond woman on a bed, on her back, leaving nothing to the imagination.

I was indeed too young to be aroused by any such picture, as puberty had not yet reared its horny head in my direction. I was, nevertheless, strangely fascinated by the photo for what it revealed about the differences in equipment between boys and girls, which I had previously only guessed at from snatches of playground conversation and the occasional dirty joke that I laughed at but didn’t really understand.

Was this possibly what Steve was talking about when he asked if he had screwed up my life? Other than the Chinese Water Torture and the porn, I really could think of nothing else that he might be referring to.

“No, Steve. You have not screwed up my life. I have never needed any help in that department and have managed well enough on my own,” I replied.

And that seemed to be all he needed to hear. “Good, that’s good,” he said. He wiped his eyes and went back to his pasta. Something had broken. Some wall had been breached. Some burden had been carried off in that moment. I still have no idea if I was even close to guessing what he had been worried about, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to know that I was OK. Up until that moment, I assumed he didn’t care much about me one way or another. But now he was dying, and wanted more than anything else to make sure his little brother was OK.

The small talk resumed, but was somehow easier now. He didn’t ask for any money. And without any regret, I bought his beer.


Postscript: We’re still not close, but we are not so distant as before. Steve has battled colon cancer for over three years now and currently seems to be at a stalemate in what has been the kind of recurring war you would not wish on your worst enemy. We pray for a lengthy remission, but we all know remission does not often equal cure. I’m OK. But I wish he were too.