A message to my dying brother

I wrote this essay on the plane, on July 20, 2012 on the way to Los Angeles to see my brother Pancho and his wife Karen. Karen had told us that we had to get there soon, as Pancho was fading fast from his violent cancer which had spread wildly and for which there was no treatment. I have never had to speak to a person in this state; what could I say, that would be acceptable, and not maudlin, and encouraging, but acknowledging the reality of the situation? These were my thoughts on that day, before I arrived.

I am on my way to Los Angeles to see my brother Richard, Pancho to his four siblings, summoned urgently by his wife Karen to see him as he lies in the hospital being consumed by a virulent systemic cancer. He has not been in this state for long, for better or worse, but things have declined rapidly and it is likely that he will not be with us for much longer.  

Pancho has never had an easy time of it, in my perception. He was the youngest of our five brothers and sisters, and when our parents divorced he was still young enough to be folded into my mother’s new relationship with Clark, where they formed a family unit (truth be told, to the envy of the rest of us who were sentenced to either live with my father and his second wife Blanca or else as I was, cast into the universe to try to find my own way. The only good thing that came out of that situation was our brother Neil, whom our father adopted, and we have too, as our sixth sibling and we love him dearly.)

Being in the “new” family must have been to some extent disorienting, after emerging from the painful household of our parents. I know Clark loved Pancho and considers him his son in a very special way. They were really a family, if separate from the rest of us.

Pancho went to college, and got a degree and certification to be an accountant. He married Karen, his college sweetheart (who, ironically, he would never have met had our parents not divorced) and I was privileged to read 1st Corinthians 13 at their wedding – nervous and not my best performance, but so pleased to be asked to play a role for them. They just celebrated their 25th anniversary a few days ago with a renewal of vows in Pancho’s hospital room. Theirs is the longest relationship of all of us siblings. I wish I had been there for that. 

He was never happy, it seemed, working in corporate life. At one point he thought what he really wanted to do was to be a policeman, a job for which he was over-qualified. Pancho has a keen sense of what is right and he’s not afraid to say it, for which he has suffered from time to time. He’s also not keen on dishonesty, which probably cost him that career change; he passed all the written tests with flying colors but didn’t lie about past (and minor) adolescent use of marijuana . . . so he was rejected.

Life moved on, and he found he had a growing interest in the culinary arts. Our mother did too, and she helped him to take time off in his 40s to go back to school for a degree in this field, which incidentally I think she enjoyed enormously and helped to build bonds between them. He enjoyed this mightily and seemed really to find his true calling. Pancho loved cooking, and he was a good cook. But after he got his degree, he found working in restaurant kitchens incompatible with his view of life – so he did catering jobs which he found fulfilling and at which he excelled. And he went back into finance as his day job.

In the last few years somehow he got hooked up with a company that imported exotic fish for eating – Lee Fish. They hired him to be their controller, and he loved working there, loved their fishes, cooked and ate them, and extolled their fishes to all of us. I regret that he was not able to arrange my special shipment of fishes in the last few months, for we were not in our home to receive and cook them. Though I did keep one of the photos he sent me of an exotic and amazing fish on my desktop for many months, as it was so beautiful and strange.

In his adversity now it seems that Lee Fish is taking the high road for him and keeping him on payroll even though he is so ill. I am awed with respect; they are a relatively small company and this commitment is noteworthy and noble.

In recent times, I have seen my brother emerge from decades of various sorts of dissatisfaction with his life to a place where he seems to me to be satisfied, happy, reconciled, and has found ways to delight himself, Karen, and his family and friends with his cooking knowledge and skills. I have often called him when I was making something to get pointers – most recently with caramel which we both botched as well as made successfully! We both loved Barbara Kafka’s Roasting cookbook and would discuss results of various recipes we had tried. Pancho loved to cook.

So – back to the matter at hand. Here’s what I hope to be able to tell him:

I’m proud of you my Brother, for finding a way through everything to be happy and to enjoy your life, and to bring joy to others.

I love you, and I will miss you terribly

 

Richard died on August 10th, 2012, at home in his house with his wife Karen by his side, and with his cats and his dart trophies, and his cooking things around him. We spent days at the hospital in July with him, overnight as we thought he would die at any moment, but he continued to live on. Having prepared my message, I found a moment, and I told him, that I was proud of him. His eyes filled with tears, and so did mine. We didn't speak of the facts before us, but I am so glad I told him. From the Memory Book we prepared for him I came to learn that he had a deep and wide life of love, charity, fellowship and contribution. I wish I had known more before he was taken away from us. 

 

Richard Monroe Lawrence

December 12, 1960 - August 10, 2012