Big B
I nicknamed him Big B; he was my older brother. We were total opposites
and often drove each other crazy, but we also shared much that helped to
creat an unbreakable bond between us. Everyone who knew Big B adored
him. He had a huge heart and always believed in everyone else’s goodness -
except his own.
Big B tutored hundreds of kids who had been labeled by society as stupid,
lazy, undisciplined or mentally challenged. My brother saw within these
children an ability to make a difference to the bad criticisms towards them.
He himself had a learning disability; it was his secret. Together he and his
students knew what it felt like to be treated as different ones in a world that
had yet to understand or to sympathize.
In the last year of Big B’s life he had another challenge to face, his absolute
refusal to believe he was worthy of love. Big B was a beacon of light to all
he touched and everybody knew it - everybody but him.
I was determined to prove to him that he was worthy of love. As cancer
ravaged his body for the sixth and last time, he finally allowed me to enter
his world of pain and confusion. During the last weeks of his life, only 80
pounds remained of his once 190- pound frame. His eye-lids would not
close, he was too weak to blink and his voice was at this moment a whisper.
All I could do at this time was hold him in my arms and gave him my love.
All he could do was accept all of it.
Day after day, Big B was pampered around the clock and he came to love
that. When he was too weak to talk, he would tap his fingers to motion me to
hold his hand. My brother finally knew how to ask for and receive love!
Decades of fights, misunderstandings intermingling with the helplessness of
each feeling the other was unreachable had vanished. In the end, he totally
surrendered to the wisdom of a higher power to help him understand the
strange concept of self-love.
