Dwindling

My younger brother passed away on January 11th.  Succumbing to terminal lung cancer after 18 months of stubborn fighting. He lasted longer than most diagnosed with stage 4 - but it was a numbers stacked against him journey. For a person who had lived his adult life chain smoking, the closest he came to looking after himself properly was during those last months. It was always going to be too little, too late.  Statistically, highly improbable that the decades of poor practices could ever unwind in a body ravaged by those excesses. Never say never. Until never no more.

The choices we make. The consequences that follow. The first photo below was taken in 1985, just before those choices took the turn that led him to his last breath.  The second photo, taken in November 2021, was just before Paul headed into palliative care, with my older brother Jules sharing a smile.

Our connection from the diagnosis to his parting was affected (like many others in similar situations in Australia) by restrictions imposed during the pandemic. For much of the time, I had to rely on video calls given state boundaries and border closures and all of the many of requirements that made the 1000km physical distance between us too large a gap to bridge. One mercy dash in between these many impediments, when a small window opened just long enough to enable a drive over that distance, a handful of days we had together in person could not be extended as he headed into an isolation hospital ward with pneumonia acquired post-chemo. 

He spent all but a few days after then in a palliative care facility located in a place designed to be peaceful, surrounded by rolling hills of grazing pastures. Magpies warbling in the surrounding trees. My older brother did the heavy lifting - making sure he was not alone in those last few weeks.

The day he passed away came on the day after my waking dream that night before, which was of a large dark shadow wandering through my room. As if there to tell me the time had come. I had woken up that morning believing my younger brother had gone (peacefully) in his sleep. And so it was on that day the news came - albeit drug-induced unconsciousness before his heart stopped beating. My mind had prepared me for what was to come.

I do not want to linger more on what happened too much. I had more time to mentally prepare (unlike the passing of my mother - see Reflections on Grief: Transition Girl: April 2015 (no1foofan.blogspot.com)). My older brother and I are now doing the thing that has been a lifelong source of anxiety relief for both of us - getting things in order. 

Interspersed with our conversations to sort things out, the phrase that hit me on the day my younger brother died, and has continued to swirl in my mind, is "dwindling". We were always a small family, separated by continents from the extended family in Europe. With my younger brother gone, and both parents, only my older brother and I remain. My niece and nephew of our blood as well, but it still feels like this is how moments disappear from history. Our blood is dwindling. Those left to practice our parents' native tongues. So few left to tell and pass on the family's stories dwindling with time. 

Stardust in a summer breeze. 

Fading into a vast black empty void.