When my mom was dealing with her cancer treatments over the years, she would always tell me that my brother and I should be closer and keep in better touch. “You’ll only have each other when I’m gone,” she’d say, and I assured her I knew and that we do keep in touch (though it was primarily via text and scattershot). If only she knew that two years after her death, my brother would receive his own cancer diagnosis—the kind of cancer diagnosis that is worst case scenario, nightmare diagnosis. He went in to the hospital thinking it was this treatable issue and then was delivered the worst case scenario news.

I’m thinking about this this morning because my brother started his new chemo treatment yesterday. I worry about him living alone while going through a new treatment. His neighbor is a friend (who has also had cancer) and she is there for him, as is his best friend who lives a few hours away. But I just worry about not doing enough, not being there when I should be. But also I don’t want to loom over him like a needy caretaker, asking him every hour how he feels. We’ve been very fortunate that he has handled treatment as well as can be expected—he’s otherwise healthy and when he’s not on treatment, he feels like himself. It also bothers me that he’s living in the hellfire of Arizona in the summer, so there’s not a lot to do to get him out of his apartment because it’s three digit temperatures all the time.

I’ll be joining him in the hellfire of Arizona later this month. It’s July 1. 51 years ago this day, mom was 30 days away from giving birth to my brother. He was her first child and I remember she said she was so afraid of going to the hospital too early or with false contractions that she waited so long, he basically popped out the moment she got to the hospital. (She was always afraid of making a scene or causing any a ruckus.) I’ll be there for his 51st birthday to celebrate with him and get a sense of how he is doing. When I video chatted with him a few weeks ago, he looked great. I was so scared I was going to see signs of liver issues. That’s the issue now—his other chemo stopped working and during that time it stopped, a second lesion has grown on his liver. When he got his bloodwork done for his chemo, his liver enzymes were off, which is not surprising because of what’s happening to it. My deepest hope is that the treatment, which is supposed to target BRCA gene-specific causes of cancer, has an immediate effect on the liver lesions.

Frankly, I’m scared. I’m scared of how this is going to progress. I’m scared because I have been through this process two other times with my mom and dad, so while I’m hopeful and optimistic, it’s tempered with fear. I think a lot about fairness and unfair it is that my brother is dealing with this, but that’s always rebutted by Christopher Hitchens: ”To the dumb question, why me? The cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: ‘Why not.‘” It can feel unfair—perhaps it is unfair—but there isn’t any sort of larger game at hand. We are animals; we have bodies that will eventually fail us all in myriad ways. This is the way of living. I also take comfort in the words of the Dalai Lama XIV: “There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow. Today is the right day to Love, Believe, Do and mostly Live.”

So, we text, I hope that he handles the treatment well, I know I’ll be there at the end of the month. I know I can be there sooner as needed. I know that he can come stay with me whenever he wishes. We live.

(Side note: I had to step away to cry as I was writing this post. While I was standing in the kitchen and holding a tissue to my face, I heard a WhatsApp alert. I walked to my laptop and saw that the woman I’m tutoring in English had just sent me a TikTok video of scenes of beautiful flowers with animated butterflies flittering about and polka type music in the background. She has never sent me a TikTok before and this particular one brought a smile to my face. And I needed it. The universe knows.)