siblings slipping away….
My blog today is about family, especially my brother, who’s one year younger than me. I found out yesterday that his battle with stomach cancer was about to come to an abrupt end. This caught me completely off guard. I was under the impression that he was getting the usual follow-up treatments after cancer surgery, which most people go through, and it was going okay.
I’m totally devastated, even though we hardly see or talk to each other. He lives on the coast, and I live on the prairies. We’re separated by distance for sure, but even though we’re not close, we have a bond; he is my brother. How to explain our relationship is really hard for me.
He will live on forever in my heart, covered in layers of not only our shared short childhood adventures together, but also those years living apart, in different relatives’ homes. It was a unique situation; our mom left our dad when we were only 11 and 12 years old. We also had four younger siblings, the youngest still in diapers.
Because we’re only one year apart, we have the shared experiences of our chaotic childhood. Battling parents, a father who drank and gambled away his paychecks. A mom being pregnant most of that time and not really into cooking or keeping house. They also fought a lot, and it never failed to scare us as we hid in a bedroom, huddled together, waiting for them to quit yelling at each other.
We were never abused, and I know we were loved, but we were just so many of us. Always broke, we moved around a lot. We changed schools so many times, it was hard to make friends or get a sense of belonging anywhere. We even changed provinces in the middle of school years, with me failing in one year, only to be recommended in another because of the differing school curricula.
It was a crazy, mixed-up childhood, but we were in it together, and we survived pretty much intact. We, being the oldest, have all these memories of not only the hardships, but the good times that we created for ourselves. Oh Lord, that we turned out alright could be because of all those different schools and hand-me-down clothes and… and… oh shit!
We do what we have to do, and we managed. We each coped in our own ways, but we were in this together, he and I. We turned out pretty good and, dare I say, successful to boot? We are the two oldest. We were eventually joined by another sibling when my mom remarried (rounding us out to seven kids).
Most of us were individually farmed out at one point or another to different relatives at various stages in our lives. We come from large catholic families, and we were 25 first cousins on mom’s side alone. We grew up being close to these same cousins, and my mom’s two sisters and brother were like parents to us as well.
We all even lived in Nana and grampas (my mom’s dad and mom) big house together, at one time or another. Along with my great-nana, who had her own little suite in the upstairs corner. That’s just how it was back then.
I don’t know why I’m explaining all this, but I feel a need to. This news of my brother dying has hit me so hard, I don’t know what to say or do or feel … well, I feel, omg I feel such pain for him, his family, and maybe for myself as well. When he got the diagnosis and then had the surgery, I wanted to visit him.
He didn’t want to see anyone, and I respected that. BUT, I wish now that I had ignored that and gone anyway. Too late. I did get to speak to him and expressed how much I loved him and a couple of other things I wanted to share as well, when they put the phone up to his ear while I talked. He seemed to hear what I was saying, and I also understood when he said he loved me too… that was his gift to me, and I am grateful.
He passed away this morning while I was writing this, and I feel him with me. He will be joining my Uncle Gary, whom I still miss so much, and I asked him to please say hi to him on the other side. He’ll be joining a younger brother who left us at 26 years old, and two of our younger sisters who have also gone before their time.
We are not guaranteed our time here, and this is a reminder of how precious it is. We take so much for granted, and that’s okay, I guess, but we need to tell our loved ones how much we love them more often, and let’s make a vow to do that today, okay?
I love my family so much, and I’m grateful to be able to write about my feelings; it helps. Thank you to those of you who like reading my blogs. I appreciate all of you.
Copyright
Jan. 9th 2026
Picture: That’s me in the left-hand corner and my brother on top. A younger brother and sister in this picture, also gone.