Felicia Mitchell is a survivor of stage 2b HER2-positive breast most cancers identified in 2010. Atone for all of Felicia’s blogs right here!
A picture that involves thoughts after I consider my brother, John Henry, in his final days with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is of him in his baseball cap; his hair was principally gone, and his face and lips have been swollen. There is no such thing as a {photograph}, however the thoughts data what it data. This picture has competed with childhood reminiscences and pictures taken earlier than most cancers ravaged his physique. Now, since seeing a Polaroid taken not fairly 5 months earlier than he handed away, I’ve a brand new picture residing in my head.
I want I may say that it is a picture of him celebrating his final Christmas with us on a day that was probably the greatest holidays my dad and mom orchestrated for his or her 4 kids. I want it have been {a photograph} of him with classmates when he went tenting on the South Carolina coast for the primary and final time, loving his subject journey with a biology class whereas recognizing he was not on this earth for lengthy. I want I may say it was taken by a buddy one night time when he went out to the films for the final time. However there are not any pictures of those events.
John Henry lived a very long time in the past, earlier than cell telephones may simply doc each transfer for a photograph app or Fb. Whereas I documented my most cancers journey with images pre- and post-mastectomy, images of hair misplaced and hair discovered, and even images of pink socks on ft peeking out of a heat blanket given to me within the chemo infusion chair, John Henry didn’t doc his journey, although we had cameras in the home. (We had tape recorders! Why did I not sit down and report him talking a few of his old-soul knowledge?)
Even when his face was swollen virtually previous recognition, John Henry went to class on the College of South Carolina. That biology class was his one final thread attaching him to the normalcy he sought when he was given a terminal prognosis at 19 years outdated whereas serving within the Navy. I perceive his lack of self-importance, his zest for all times. I nonetheless marvel about who was in that class and what classes all of them discovered about resilience and hope from my brother. Did at the very least one of many college students go on to medical faculty and research learn how to deal with (or treatment) most cancers?
However earlier than John Henry misplaced his hair, earlier than his illness virtually fully ravaged his physique, he was what we might acknowledge as a good-looking younger man. His hair was jet black, like our father’s earlier than he was bald. He had bushy eyebrows — a household function. He got here into his prime as a younger grownup within the Nineteen Seventies, rising his hair out earlier than it fell out as a result of he had all the time needed to. It by no means received an opportunity to get lengthy, however it received shaggy. And he wore a mustache and beard.
The Polaroid one other brother lately shared with me is a candid shot of John Henry with the atmosphere of a portray by Lucien Freud. He’s reclining towards our yellow hand-me-down sofa, a crimson throw of patchwork plaids behind his again the place he spent a lot time, resting there. The curtains are drawn on the image window, the surface world obscured. Carrying a blue checked flannel shirt and denims, garments which are by now slightly unfastened on him, John Henry sits, sun shades on his lap as if he simply got here in from exterior.
And his arms. You possibly can see each arms nicely, together with the proper hand that fed me my bottle years earlier than, held instruments for tinkering on his automotive, and later held our mom’s hand as he died. Strapped to his left wrist is a watch he purchased when he joined the Navy, a diver’s watch my son refurbished and wears on particular events. You possibly can see his neck, which is slightly swollen. You see his pallor. Most of all, although, you see these hazel eyes staring out at you above a patrician nostril, simply you throughout the many years from a deep mortal area.
John Henry just isn’t smiling, however he isn’t frowning, and these hazel eyes do the whole lot as an instance the notion that eyes are the window to the soul. I do know I can see proper into John Henry’s soul with this Polaroid, the whole lot I by no means discovered about what most cancers meant to him revealed on this second in time on a Polaroid on which our father wrote on the again, “John H., Dec. 11, 1975.”
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