Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I don’t think I’ll plant seeds this year. For the first year in almost two decades, I don’t have it in me to seek out the magic, the pride, the miracle of putting a dirt-colored dot (or slip, or similar shape) into the earth and wait for it to rise in beauty and color and scent.

No, not this year.

My brother has stage IV pancreatic cancer. He is 47 years old and I adore him more than I can say. His talents and gifts are more prolific than I can list, so I will leave you to imagine, and I would ask that you take your time because the list is long and rich and varied. I can tell you that his children would be at the very top of this list. His wisdom and strength would be absolutely at their heels. My brother has walked through fire, survived burdens beyond my understanding, and he has always, always made it to the other side–bowed, tired, maybe, but even that, only briefly. He emerges upright. Goddamned upright.
But not this year.

This year he will most likely leave us. Over 94% in the first year and that’s on luck's whimsy. I’ve written before that I understand how he would so hate to wither under this cancer, and that I can only ask God give him a gentle road Home. I cannot ask my burly bear of a brother to fall frail and brittle with this treatment or that, just to put off my own feeble grief. God, how I hate this. Truthfully, I am completely, really completely weak and watery and pathetic and scared. There is no noble about it. No Greater Good, no wisdom, no courage anywhere in me. Please absolutely know that. Rather, it’s all I have in the linty corners of my soul, it is all I can ask. It is the scraps and shreds of whatever hope I may have ever had for him on this cancer firewalk.

My prayers are base and dark now. I pray not to be this weak and watery mess when I must be more–for him, for his family, for my sons. I pray not to fuck it up, and I think God knows me well enough to know that the F-word thing is just preciselywhat I might do, so He lets the bad word slide. (Granted, my theology is a bit um…broad, but that’s another day’s prayer.)

How can I let him go? This Most Magic Uncle to my sons…my oasis of sane in a vast lot of crazy-sand. How is it that such a ragged hole should be torn in the very thin (think cheesecloth) fabric of that which gives me hope?

Ahhhh…God never tells me anyway.

So as bound as I am to the seasons, the weather, the earth, I can’t find a reason to do the beginning thing of Spring that tugs at me just as firmly as the pull of my sons’ small hands

No, not this year.

This year, Oh God, this year I will most likely see my brother be given to God’s earth instead. I will write for him, about him, to him. I will try very, very hard to not fuck this up and not fall entirely and irreparably apart. In that order.

So you see, this year is different. I won’t bother scanning rows and rows of seed packs–Zucchini or yellow squash? Cactus or Mop-top Zinnia? Mounding or climbing nasturtium? It’s embarrassing to admit how much free time this omission will leave me, by the way. But then, there’s none to waste. This season is one in which I must consider other things. Flowers, vegetables, herbs take energy and hope, and I just don’t have it to spare.

Not this year.