He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re allowed. On White Castle night, at the end of the meal he handed me the tray of cold fries I’d eschewed as a fat girl should. He requested these Eat, Drink, and Be Merry feasts, meals in which he ate sparingly, a series of last suppers. I ate meals at the soup kitchen and was obviously successful in my scrounging, for I was terribly fat - and despised myself.īut with red-rimmed eyes, we were forcefully chipper around Nick. I finished my first year in university on self-prescribed bedrest, and was barely eking out an existence at 19, working odd jobs, cleaning houses for food. My roommate’s sleeping with the boy I loved hadn’t helped. I was depressed and existing in a blur from taking the large doses of drugs prescribed by the school’s quack psychiatrist (later the target of several lawsuits for over-medicating students). My depression had arrived after tendonitis disabled my left arm and ended any hope of a career as a professional violinist. I was already at rock bottom, had dropped out of music school and was living in a flophouse we called the House of Pain in my college town. By late July, however, it was clear there was no real treatment. ![]() He was treated for a month at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C. Army Intelligence and stationed in Korea, had been diagnosed in June with Stage IV melanoma. Sushi, obviously, but also White Castle sliders with a classic side of greasy french fries. (It turned out that he’d been caught sneaking out of school to visit one of the surrounding fast food joints.)Īs he was dying, at home, in my room, he decided to have a string of last meals. ![]() Nick, who drove me to school that year in his sporty grey Plymouth Duster, dodged parental wrath by claiming that I had also made him late (true), which is why he was also at Saturday school (false). For me, it was for pressing my luck with a teacher with similar tardiness tendencies and being late to first period one too many times - after she arrived. Once we were both sentenced to spend the same Saturday in detention. Nick decided we should “study” for the upcoming mid-term together, i.e., watch “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and listen to me read my notes during the commercials. He knew how to work a situation to his advantage. The Best Things in My Life Came From My Brother’s Death ![]() His Sister Was Dying as We Were Falling in Love Although he was a senior and two years ahead of me, we ended up having a year of elective history classes together - Asian Studies and Russian History with an entertaining nearly retired Greek-American teacher. School, on the other hand, was less of a priority. Not bookish like the rest of us, he made his way early into business - first as a paperboy, later as an 18-year-old three-store manager for Blockbuster video. Growing up, Nick was often the odd man out. And, as I’m approaching 40 in October, I’ve already lived half my life without him. I’ve made that life in a far-off land he never saw, married a man he never met, and had six children, most of whom vaguely know about Uncle Nick.īut, horribly, in many ways it was his dying that brought me back to life. It is now two decades after my older brother Nick’s death at 22 from melanoma. ![]() The subtle change of verb tense usually goes unnoticed, anyway. “I grew up with three brothers,” I now answer, skipping through the minefield. My heart would once beat wildly at the off-hand query, which inevitably led to too much information and awkward silences. Really, it’s just one in a list of inconsequential getting-to-know-you questions: “How many siblings do you have?”
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