A personal poem

This one's a very personal poem, about the illness and death of my middle brother Graeme in 1991. I wrote it a few months after his death, and it was first published in Cencrastus in 1993, and collected in Seven Senses (2000). Graeme had been admitted to hospital on a New Year's Eve, with severe pain, which his GP thought might be renal colic. It turned out to be testicular cancer. I will never forget that New Year, and it's one of the reasons I don't celebrate Hogmanay. Initially the doctors didn't hold out much hope, but he pulled through the first treatments. Secondaries - metastases - popped up in various tissues, and mostly responded to treatment, but an inoperable tumour in the pancreas was the one which finally killed him. 

My parents had gone to visit my other brother in New York, but when I saw how bad Graeme was I called them, and they flew home. I met them at the airport and drove them through to Edinburgh. My mother stayed with Graeme, but my father wanted to get home to Comrie, to pick up his car so he could do any necessary driving for the family. So he and I left Edinburgh. When we got to Comrie his neighbour came out to tell us Graeme had died while we were on the road. That was undoubtedly one of the saddest days of my life.

Then, over the weeks that followed, I started to reflect on it, and I wrote the poem. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should publish it, because it is so personal, but I decided to send it to Cencrastus, and it was accepted immediately. So it's a memento, a memorial, a catharsis, a cry of pain, a reflection on mortality - all of these things.

On saying goodbye to a brother

Seven years ago I first thought

to say goodbye.

Your first illness,

your crippling pain,

frightened me.

I wanted it to end,

as they said it would,

in a few short weeks.

Seeing your pain

I imagined my own.

The treatments were terrible;

days dripping precious metals

and plant juices

into your cells;

always putting stuff into you

and taking pieces out.

I learned all the names -

Vinblastin, Cisplatin, Methotrexate -

and what they did.

(They turned down your flame.)

We were close in age

and yet apart in spirit.

You accepted much in silence

while I rebelled, nervously.

You let life lead you

and I tried to cut new paths.

We had moved away without farewells.

I was impatient with your

fecklessness, and other failings,

my own of course not so self-evident.

Before that New Year,

you'd hidden discomfort

but it wouldn't go away.

Later you couldn't,

and we all saw

the hollow fear behind the face.

Time elapsed,

as it does if unconsidered,

and treatment sessions

seemed to postpone concern.

Two years on I cried

when they said you were clear.

But little clumps of madness

lurked in your body's byways

and had to have their say.

You nearly died so many times

that when you did

I almost didn't know

how much I'd miss you.

Copyright © Colin Will, 1993, 2000