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The day after the tsunami hit Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, I was with my brother, Damon, when he was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia.
After 14 hours of shifting uncomfortably on the laminate chairs in the ER and a teary exchange with an oncologist, we were shown to a private room.
"Wow, look at the view, Yas!" my brother said, gazing out at the grey edifices of downtown Montreal from the seventh floor. Feverish, jaundiced, his hair dishevelled from being in bed for two days, he pressed a patch of gauze against his blood-encrusted nose. His voice was hoarse. The doctors had found an abscess in his throat during our long night in the ER.
I took a walk and found the oncology ward's common area. I didn't know it yet, but I would spend months in that room, reading the donated books, heating up leftovers in the antique microwave, watching the news on a tiny TV, playing Scrabble. I sat down close to the TV so people walking in wouldn't see the terror on my face and ask questions. I watched news images of the tsunami – people running and screaming, waves devouring houses and tossing cars and trucks. My heart crushed, my brain on fire, I truly felt like the world was ending. My brother was 24 and my best friend. How could this be happening?
I needed to call my parents. I had to tell them their firstborn, their only son, had cancer.
I made some quick calculations: Mom lives in Toronto. She can drive to Montreal in five hours. Dad lives in Northern Alberta. It'll take him at least nine hours to drive to Edmonton, four hours to fly to Montreal and 20 minutes in a cab from the airport. I needed someone fast. I couldn't do this alone for much longer.
I called Mom first. I tried to rehearse what I'd say. "Mom, Damon has been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. He would have died if we hadn't brought him to the hospital …"
No.
She would have questions, I realized. What does that mean? I had no idea. What is the survival rate? They won’t tell us. Is he going to die? Nobody can answer that. What’s the treatment? We hadn’t even got there yet. What can we do? Static.
A phone booth in the hallway was an enclave of sorts, with a chair and a little privacy. I called Mom collect. “Mom, Damon has cancer.”
Earlier, she had asked us to be sure to keep receipts if the doctors prescribed something for his sore throat and fever. Instead, I delivered the heartbreaking diagnosis. “I’m coming,” she said.
I called my dad: no answer.
Damon lay, long and skinny, on the bed in his wrinkled street clothes, looking out at the overcast winter sky. The initial shock of the diagnosis – we had both giggled uncontrollably – gave way to profound emptiness and sadness. I had to leave to fetch clothes from his apartment, call my dad again and gather my thoughts before Mom arrived. I hugged and kissed him: “I’ll be right back.”
Walking away from the hospital, I feared that leaving him alone would give the cancer cells room to grow and take him away from me.
My roommates, who had been waiting for us since we left for the hospital the night before, met me at the door. Before they could speak, I sank to the floor, weeping. They helped me to bed and lay with me while I called my dad. They made tea, sweetened with heaping gobs of honey.
Back at the hospital, I climbed into bed beside my brother and squeezed him close. “Mom and Dad are coming,” I said, craving my mom’s optimism and my dad’s sense of humour.
When Mom finally burst into the room, she was a wreck. The three of us lay in bed embracing.
Damon and I had spent most of our lives dealing with parents who lived in different provinces, managing the psychological and financial toll of divorce. We had struck out on our own, working café jobs to pay for our university studies. We had begun to drift away from our parents. It would be the awful necessity of caring for my brother, and the desperate fight against his cancer, that would force us together again.
Now, I remember this time of year as the beginning of my life as a caregiver and the Long Goodbye to my brother. The 2 1/2 years after his diagnosis were the best and worst of my life. As a family, we spent endless amounts of time laughing over board and card games, crying over our defeats and celebrating improvements in Damon’s condition.
When I grieve for my brother now, it’s not his last, laborious breaths taken on a beautiful summer’s day that I think of, it’s the day of the diagnosis, when I knew our lives were taking an unimagined direction. All my thoughts and plans were overturned, scattered and then became focused on one thing: trying to beat Damon’s cancer.
Last Christmas, as I hugged my mom and thanked her for everything she does for me, my husband and daughter, her voice broke as she whispered in my ear: “It’s been 10 years.”
She didn’t need to tell me. Every year I remember the day of the tsunami, when it felt like my world was ending.
Yasmin Halfnight lives in Toronto.