My brother Marty said that friends and family changed the way they talked to him when they heard he was seriously ill with cancer. Their tone was different; their concern and sorrow showed, and he longed for everyone to talk to him like they did before, to shoot the breeze, talk about their days, their dreams, their lives as they did before they knew he was dying- to tease him, to treat him like the Marty they knew and not the Marty he had become. He said, "Corey, it makes me feel defeated to hear that tone of sorrow and to see that look in their eyes. I don't like who they think I have become. Everyone cares and is sad, but I want to be treated as I was."
That was not easy to do. But I tried when I called him to be as natural as possible to be "normal" and to listen to what he was sharing without reacting with sadness to be with Marty, the courageous and not the Marty who suffered like hell. My brother would lead the way after sharing how he felt and what procedures he faced. He would ask ever so graciously and full of curiosity, "Tell me about Gabriel?" and I would, and we would laugh. My brother loved children. He had a nickname for most of his nieces and nephews; Sacha was Curly.
In recent years my brother Marty took up bicycling riding with my brother Mathew. He got into fixing up vintage bikes and riding in tours around Chico. He enjoyed it. He sent me a few photos along the way. After a few months of taking Chemo, his doctors were surprised that his muscles hadn't completely atrophy as they expected they would. My brother said he couldn't run and had trouble with his hands but he still could ride a bike, "My goal is to ride twenty miles the other day was my best day so I might reach it." However, weeks later, it wasn't. He said that he had been riding and stopped at a bridge that he liked and was snacking on some raisins, "I was sweaty and exhausted when a man drove by, then stopped, he got out of his car and asked, "Is that a vintage bike? I have a few myself." While their conversation weaved around bike riding, Marty thought, "Wow, this is great! This guy doesn't know me, doesn't know my story, and we are having a normal, easy-going conversation about riding old bikes. We connected." Marty went on, "I was happy; I felt in the brief moment far from cancer, far from who I had become and what was happening. However, at the end of our conversation, the stranger asked me, "So, how far did you ride today?"
My brother had the best dry humor; he was a master storyteller, though I often missed his punchlines because they were subtle. "When that guy asked me, "How far did I ride today?" I wanted to take back everything I said about wanting to be treated normally and not branded. I wanted to say to him, "HEY, I have terminal cancer. It is f-cking amazing that I am even riding this bike with cancer. I, let alone standing here eating raisins on a bridge."
Instead, I said, "Five miles."
The guy looked at me differently, like I was a joke of a bike rider, like I was a wannabe. He smiled that smile that says, "Oh, I see," waved his hand, and got back in his car.
Cancer sucks.
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