Grief and loss never truly fade

Grief does not arrive all at once. It seeps in, settles, and, years later, can still knock the wind out of you without warning. It changes shape over time, but it never truly loosens its grip.

My brother Barry was three years younger than me. We were very different, yet inseparable in the way only siblings can be, without discussion or declaration. We built entire worlds together in the snow, climbed trees with scraped knuckles and quiet courage, and shared a way of communicating that required no explanation. Oh, could we laugh, comments only we understood. I loved him fiercely. Some bonds do not announce themselves; they simply exist, solid and unquestioned. Ours was one of those.

On an early June day in 1984, that world cracked. Barry slipped on wet grass and injured his leg. It seemed ordinary enough, an accident that would heal, a story that might later be retold with the signatures on a cast. Instead, it marked the beginning of something unspeakably cruel. In the days that followed, the diagnosis came: osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. A word none of us had reason to know, suddenly defining everything.

For my parents, the devastation was immediate and absolute. Their child had a disease they could neither negotiate with nor shield him from. There is a particular helplessness in watching your child suffer; it settles deep and does not leave. After agonizing decisions, Barry underwent major reconstructive surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Amputation was avoided, but what remained was a leg that was fragile, altered, and never quite his own again.

Hospitals became our second home. Long hallways, waiting rooms, the antiseptic smell that clung to clothes; these replaced ordinary routines. The rhythmic beep of IV machines and the squeak of carts rolling down the halls became familiar sounds. Nurses were no longer strangers, but constants, steady presences in a life that felt anything but steady. My parents lived in a state of permanent fear, bracing for news, managing fear, holding themselves together because there was no alternative. I tried to bring normalcy where I could, to keep conversations alive, to build bridges back to the life we remembered, to pretend, briefly, that we were not living in a world split cleanly into before and after. The shock was relentless.

Through it all, Barry was calm. Focused. Serious beyond his years, though not without flashes of irritation or boredom when the days stretched too long. He hated the waiting more than the procedures. While his friends drifted on with their lives: school dances, casual plans, futures assumed rather than questioned, Barry was quietly removed from his own. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Scans. Tests. Time measured not in seasons, but in results and recovery days.

An ominous routine took hold. My father went to sea for work, carrying his worry across the water. My mother became everything at once: caregiver, advocate, protector, anchor. Her world narrowed to medication schedules, appointments, and watching for signs no parent should ever have to look for. I was away at university, clinging to the outline of a normal life while knowing that nothing about our family was normal anymore. Trekking home every weekend to reconnect, to help where I could.

The cancer did not stay confined to his leg. Tumours appeared in his right lung, leading to major surgery and more chemotherapy. Then the left lung. Again surgery. Again treatment. Each time, we allowed ourselves to hope it was the last chapter. Each time, it was not. Hope became cautious, almost whispered, afraid to draw attention to itself.

In the end, the disease returned without mercy, multiple tumours in his lungs and along his back. Barry, once a solid two hundred pounds, grew frighteningly small, his body thinning while his resolve never did. He endured with a quiet strength that still humbles me. He did not rage against what was happening or ask why his life had been narrowed so unfairly. He met it with composure, with dignity, with a courage that asked nothing of anyone else. Now, decades later, when grief still arrives without warning, I understand this: I do not miss the boy he once was or the life he might have had—I miss my brother. I miss him dearly.