My brother-in-law died of cancer this past August. His personality always rubbed me the wrong way (I know, nice opener, right?). I tried to be open-minded but his manner was very aggressive and I always felt like he thought he had all the answers and if I (or anyone) disagreed with him then we were written off as “an idiot”.

In his last year, while undergoing cancer treatments and then, when he was no longer being treated because there was no hope of recovery, he was very sharp, impatient and downright nasty at times. For me it was a constant struggle between trying to have compassion for him and not wanting to let him get away with treating people like crap. I felt like someone needed to stand up to him and say “this is not ok”. Maybe it wasn’t the right approach but that was my response.

G was 25 when he died. He was born the same year as me. It is impossible for me to imagine the difficult road he had to walk. I certainly wouldn’t want to trade places with him. Cancer is a terrible way to die. In a lot of ways I feel like thinking about him will always evoke a sense of frustration, sadness and pity because so much of my interaction with him involved those emotions. It seemed like his maturation was stunted around age 14 because although he wanted to do things on his own and not need anyone for anything, whenever things were going poorly he played the victim, suffering injustice at the hands of others. He had such fiery anger and bitterness towards his mother which seemed to me to be misplaced. We have all been disappointed in some way, by how our parents raised us, but they do their best and sometimes they just don’t know the right way to demonstrate their love for us.

So G’s reactions to many people and situations frustrated me in a huge way. I don’t know all the reasons for his feelings and obviously there are going to be major gaps in what I can understand about a person that I only knew for 6 years, but these were my observations: G seemed to feel that he had not had a noteworthy life, that there were no stories about him worth telling or memories worth passing on. This attitude made me pity him more than anything. What a sad way to look back on his life, brief as it was. This also saddened my husband because much knowledge, information and history died with him.

I do not share this to leave a negative legacy about G, but simply to be honest about my feelings about him. I felt, particularly in this last year, that he resented my presence and had no respect for my opinions. Likely, this was largely my fault because I often reacted in the wrong way to his behaviour and words. I responded childishly to childish behaviour. I met his stubbornness with my own strong will. I pray that I can be forgiven me for my judgmentalism and harsh words. I choose not to live in regret, and I know G would agree with me on that point. There is no value in regretting the past. We can only resolve to make better choices in the future.

When he died there was a sense of relief, both that G’s suffering was over, and that the family was released from a sentence of service. Not that they would have had it any other way, but the burden of caring for someone who is dying is an extremely heavy one. I recall thinking that it was unfortunate that G’s final opinion of me was likely not a favorable one but I didn’t see many things that I could have done differently where he was concerned.

Recently I read the script of a video that G made for our daughter. It was just him on camera sharing some thoughts and ideas about the world for her to see when she is old enough to understand what happened to him. He made the recording after months of arguing with us about how he had nothing to say and how much he hated being on camera. We let the issue go and assumed that he wasn’t going to do it. We were visiting the family less than a month before G died and he told us that he was going to do it. We received a copy of the script via email after his funeral and I finally got a chance to sit down and read it.

I was totally shocked by what he had to say about me. His words to my daughter about me were these: “…learn from your mother. She has this strength about her that I hope you take after, a certain confidence and poise that is admirable.” Wow. While I didn’t expect him to say offensive things about me, I wouldn’t have been surprised to not be mentioned at all. It simply floored me. I was honored to be represented in that way and I was so glad that he did appreciate me in some way. I guess it just set my mind at ease a little bit. I’m not superstitious or obsessed with living in the past. I would like to believe that G now has a more complete understanding of his life and the way his actions affected other people. Surely a much more thorough understanding than I have. But it is good to know that his last thoughts of me weren’t all bad.

So my final goodbye to you, G, is this: You have taught me many things about myself. Perhaps the bad that I so easily perceived in you is what I most hated in myself. I will honor your memory and teach my daughter that her big bear of an uncle was one with a great capacity to learn and love, despite his shortcomings. She will know how you faced your final days with courage, despite the pain you experienced, both physically and emotionally. She will know that you were fierce in your opinions but even more so in your passion. I pray she inherits at least some of that ferocity. She will need it to face all that this world will bombard her with.

Rest in peace, my brother.