I keep looking at this picture of my little brother looking at me with such peace and love in his eyes. No one has this picture of him, except for me, because we were alone in New Mexico when I took this picture. I still have his jacket in a box because I could not bear to let it go. It was stiff and hard with age when he was wearing it. He wore it for years.
This is just before the cancer diagnosis, and at the end of a six month visit with him. It seems for a few months, my brother and I were touched by grace, as I’d finally landed a job close enough to spend every weekend with him.
My brother and I had not lived in the same state for decades, and phone calls used to cost money in those days so they were few and far between.
It was the first time in decades that I was able to live close enough to Johnny to be able to be there for him. You can see what a good effect it had on him.
I didn’t know, at that time that I took this picture, that he had only a short time left on this earth. I consider it a blessing we were able to spend these precious few months together, after so many years of separation.
Johnny had been living in a halfway house in Santa Fe for over a decade, when I was finally blessed with the chance to have a job near him. For the past two decades we’d been living several hundred miles apart. I had been swept up in a life of single parenting with no time or money to be able to help him.
We shared a room together in our childhood with our sister, Marilyn. Johnny and I were three years apart. Marilyn was four years younger than Johnny. Johnny and I spent a lot of time playing together outdoors. We both liked to jump off the garage roof, proud that we always landed on our feet. We climbed trees and dressed up like Tarzan and Jane in our earliest years and threw rocks at the neighbor kids when they messed with us.
My new career and new job in New Mexico was a hard earned blessing for my brother and I.
The first time I went to Johnny’s home it was evening and my son and I tapped on his window. He was burning up with fever and we discovered that he had pneumonia, which had gone unnoticed by the keepers of the halfway house. I spent as much time with him as I could after that.
My job was 20 minutes north of Santa Fe, so we were able to take Johnny out every weekend. He’d been living an isolated existence with no one to talk to … he was unshaven, unkempt, his jacket stiff with filth, his skin looked weathered .. he walked around town talking to himself having nothing better do.
I took Johnny to the laundromat with me every weekend and to different ethnic restaurants. I will never forget the look on his face when he took his first bite of a Vietnamese dipping sauce. His eyes exploded with excitement. He had the same reaction with his first bite of mango and I made sure he had them every day when I could be around.
Johnny loved the drive from Santa Fe to the Nambe reservation where we lived. He was convinced that there was gold up in the mountains and said that one day we’d go up there and find it. Our old adobe was right in the middle of a sheep farm. There were two large apple trees in the yard and one of them towered high above the roof of the adobe. Its branches were heavy with green apples, ugly green apples, delicious green apples.
The sheep dogs liked to visit us, to the displeasure of the sheepdog owners. The dogs were work dogs and not accustomed to being treated as pets, but came to visit every day. They would stand at the door and stare until I let them into the house where they would continue to stand and observe. They weren’t comfortable with being petted, but they liked our quiet company.
The landowners had a beautiful glass greenhouse at the base of the hill and the old adobe that we rented was at the top of that hill, overlooking the sheep pasture, the greenhouse and the big house. Between my adobe and the greenhouse was a crystal clear bubbling creek that overflowed with melting snows in the spring. It was music straight from heaven to hear the rushing waters passing right outside my windows. The window sills and walls were 18 inches thick, an provided that cool, calm insulated feeling that one gets when visiting a cave. The adobe provided such good insulation that very little heat was needed in the winter and the air remained cool throughout the summer without any need for mechanical assistance. Newer adobes are not so well made.
It was a healing time for me, my son and my brother, but only for a very short time.
The family running the halfway house lived in a separate wing of the house and we never saw or heard from them. They were heavy smokers and the smoke permeated the entire dwelling.
Johnny’s room was more like a long narrow closet, about 6X15 ft, with just enough room for a cot and a small table. He had no support groups, no jobs. The only job he had ever held was a volunteer job at Goodwill, but he was let go because some customers were afraid of him. Johnny never hurt a fly in all his adult life.
The attention that he was suddenly receiving from my presence in his life actually shows on his face in this picture. I’d never noticed that before….. because the cancer came to take him and my life was wiped out once again.
Thank God my son had moved away by the time we got the diagnosis because, night after night, I stood in the middle of my adobe, at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and howled like an animal, knowing I was losing my little brother forever, knowing he was never going to have that life he wanted so desperately.
There would not be justice in my brother’s life. He would never know the joy of a full life, with a meaningful job, a romantic relationship, a trustworthy friendship. He had never had any of that. And now it was confirmed there never would be. Never justice for him, just as there never was for Marilyn.
This was the condition that Johnny was in when I got to Santa Fe. He had lost over a hundred pounds of his usual weight and had pneumonia that was left undiscovered and untreated until my son and I arrived in Santa Fe.
The next picture is Johnny, after the diagnosis and a year of chemo. His physical health has returned but you can see the anguish in his eyes. Living with Mom and Ray, while dealing with terminal cancer, was a nightmare for him.
Below is a facebook post about Johnny and his life.
This is my last picture with my brother, Johnny, who left this earth on St. Patrick’s Day, 2007. I knew at the time it would be the last time I’d see him. He faced his terminal diagnosis with an unwavering courage……………….. The last thing he said to me, when we knew we were saying our final goodbye, was to wear my red sweater when I came to heaven. I haven’t worn the sweater since, but it hangs in the closet waiting for that day. …………………….. Johnny left behind a lifetime of suffering. Brain damaged at age 2 when Dad shook him violently and threw him against the wall. ……………… Being in special ed, he was teased mercilessly by the regular school kids as they ran from him in droves whenever he walked down the halls, calling him “monkey man” and “retard.” He came home from school every day, fell on the bed and collapsed into tears from the pain. My efforts to console did little…………………………………………… Despite his life of pain, Johnny never held a grudge. When strangers got over the initial fear of his somewhat intimidating presence, they quickly realized that he was a big charming teddy bear full of insights and clever witticisms. Johnny fell in love a few times, but never had a girlfriend. ……… He never held a job and was fired from his volunteer job at Goodwill. He swept the floors for them until some customers complained that they were afraid of him, although Johnny never hurt a fly in all of his life … ……….. I could not protect Johnny from the cruelties of this world…………….. I had 2 other siblings who suffered similar abuse from our twisted parents. I could not protect them either ……………………………… It was my lifelong intention to make damned sure that they would end up living the healthy lives that they deserved. But that day never happened and they are all gone now…………………….. Perhaps that’s why the Bernie family is my family now … we are the family that fights for the underdogs and recognizes that every human life is valuable and worthy of love and protection……………… except for the assholes that just like to hurt people…………………………………….. RIP sweet baby brother, my sweet monkey man.
Oikos 