Yesterday, JD died. He was 26, and the fact that he survived this long is a testament to how much of a fighter he was. I don't know the details of his long battle, only that it involved a brain tumor, surgery, coma and survival. I was young when it started--and I can't remember how I processed the return of the tumor, or the surgery. I know that I visited him in his rehabilitation home (ironically, not far from where S and I are living now), and that I was scared. Scared for him, and yes, for me. Mortality was new to me, and knowing that JD could die was the first experience of that emotion I'd ever had.
Through the years, I was aware that he was not living the same life I was. I was starting middle school, and then high school. I went to concerts and stayed out late at night. I went to prom and I graduated. I started college and I went to Rome. JD was fighting for his life, in and out of a coma that should have, by all accounts, been the long, slow, slip into death. News of him passed through the grapevine; he was out of the coma, or he was at home again; that sort of thing. By and far, I was continually reminded, at these times, that his life no longer mirrored my own, as it had for much of my childhood. He fought hard for every bit of life that passed into his lungs; I have had the good fortune to breathe as if I didn't know I was doing it.
The last time I saw JD was at my cousin J's wedding. He sat, inscrutably, on the edges of the dance floor as we girls danced in and out, around him, drinking so much, laughing so much. I cannot imagine how our vitality looked to him; did he revel in it? Or was it an insult to him, how we could be so alive and so indifferent to his compromised state? I can't know the answer to that, and I choose to think that the kindness of his brothers, of his old friends, and of his beloved friend, my cousin J, were enough, at that point, to sustain him.
He wasn't in good shape at the end, you know, but I had begun, at some point, to take his living for granted. Because I thought, for a long time, that his would be the first wake and funeral that I would attend. And he hung on, and he hung on, and my grandfather died, disabusing me, not very gently, of that notion. Perhaps my adulthood began then; perhaps JD's funeral and wake would be the first of my adult life. But S's grandfather died recently, and those sad events became a milestone. I guess I had forgot, recently, that JD could die. That someday, I would hear through the grapevine that he had died. I knew, but I didn't know. And now, now I know.
I won't remember JD as he was at the wedding, or in the rehabilitation center. Instead, I'll remember him as he was on some summer day, before the tumor came back, before he had to start fighting. One summer day, JD pinched my ass. We couldn't have been more than 8 or 9, but even then, I understood that it was NOT OKAY for a boy to pinch my ass, and I was verrrrry angry. He earned my wrath; I was so angry that I still remember the incident, even though other boys have pinched my ass, even though other boys took up my time. I can't help but remember that first time.
Forever, I will remember JD as the first boy who pinched my ass; I would rather remember him as that alive, interesting boy than the man he was forced to become.
A your post touched me. I also choose to remember the pre-operation JD who was full of energy; a holy terror. If there is an after life I hope he finally gets some of the good fortune that we so easily take for granted.
Posted by: Dad | September 27, 2005 at 09:22 AM