January 18, 2025

The Firebird’s muscular V8 growled louder as Sean pressed the accelerator pedal. The metallic bronze body and maroon trim of the 1976 Firebird made the gold avian namesake painted on the curved hood look like a bird of prey frozen in flight, wicked talons and beak glinting in the sunlight.

My brother, Sean, hurt his wrist in a neighborhood soccer game when he was 13. He was the kind of player that got chosen first and always tried to make the best peace. The pain did not go away, and then the tests started. Some weeks later, he was diagnosed with leukemia. At age 13.

I realized the smile spreading across my brother Sean’s freckled face caused me to realize this simple ride to school was about to become a journey through a hellscape of terror. His soft, baby-fine red hair floated around his head like a flickering crown of fire. Gritting my teeth and not meeting Sean’s gaze, I gave a weak nod, sinking lower into the leather bucket seat.

A disease I would come to find out was the leading cause of death in children 0-14. More vocabulary: age 0 is neonatal death within 28 days of first life after birth. A wrist injury had somehow become a death sentence. I was 10. Nintendo would be on the scene in two years and, according to the doctors with the metallic clipboards that shone like razors, Sean would most likely be dead.

I brought my copy of Lord of the Rings closer to my hazel eyes, careful not to bend the binding. I adjusted my glasses, whose lenses, the ophthalmologist had promised, were made out of a space plastic used on the Shuttle to reduce their thickness—the lenses could still fry ants.

Trips to “The Clinic” became everyday outings. Inside the treatment wing, ten children reclining back in caramel faux leather recliners too big for their bodies, tubes spiraling to end in IVs attached to various pouches of treatment. Chemotherapy, targeted therapy, biological therapy, and radiation therapy ensued, accented with the weekly spinal tap that made the children, Sean included, scream and wail like banshees at a wake. Those who heard screwed their tear-filled eyes shut and prayed for the cacophony to end.

The stereo blared suddenly, "You're off to Never-Never Land!"

Raging electric guitar riffs and drumbeats blasted from the Firebird’s six JBL speakers, making the windows tremble and my ears feel as if they were being pounded by a trip hammer.

I started attending group therapy sessions for grief. I ate tasteless lemon cookies and drank watery lemonade. I passed the talking stick, again and again. I made a gray, felt-sewn plushie Spider-man for Sean. I colored. I cut. I pasted. I sculpted clay and fingerpainted. I made glittery greeting cards, get-well cards, and cards for every holiday the doctors said might be Sean’s last.

Sean slammed the ‘bird into drive and the car pounced forward, screaming rear tires pouring smoke. Gravity shoved me back and down as I closed my eyes like I was aboard a rollercoaster about to plunge.

Vomiting became as natural as breathing during treatment. The green, plastic bowl shaped like a kidney became Sean’s constant companion. He retched it full over and over. At home, the sounds of his regurgitation were the stuff of nightmares. The sight and smell froze my nerve. I couldn’t bring myself to go into Sean’s bedroom while he was in the throes of sickness. I didn’t know it then, but the shame I felt in those moments would agonize me all of my days.

The heavy metal music blasted on, the twisted, shrieking electric guitar orchestrating the chaos of 45 degree turns, fishtails, swerves, and bone-jarring stops. Iron Maiden. Ozzy Osbourne. Motley Crue. And, of course, more Metallica.

All I could do was hunch my yellow spine and peek through the cracked door. I watched his heaving, bony form throw up into that bin, thin arms quaking as he held himself on the bed. My mom, with brown hair drained of hue, eyes swollen and sick, skin like white butter, and two colorless ruts worn down her cheeks where her tears flowed endlessly, held the bin with one hand. The other caressed Sean’s balding head, wisps of his red hair that remained clouded around his ears.

I opened and closed my mouth like I was on a 747 at 30,000 feet to get the blood rushing in my ears to help block out James Hetfield and his metal marauders. Like the holes through the yarn of my Nana’s Afghan I would be watching The Exorcist through in five years; I risked glances through the shaking fingers of my hands over my face. Sean’s smile took on an unbeatably triumphant cast of widely spread lips and barred teeth.

In 1982, Leroy Selman, Ricky Bell, the NFL’s number one draft pick in ’77, and the curvy, succubus-like Tampa Bay Cheerleaders came by the house to celebrate Sean’s thirteenth birthday. The team gave him a telescope—a real Smithsonian article, not a toy. They took him to a home game, and he came back with signed calendars, hats, and shirts for the whole family. We became home team Bucs fans—even though the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would not win a Superbowl for more than 20 years. And Bell would die at age 29, from dermatomyositis, two years later in 1984.

The ‘bird took the speedbump of the senior parking lot’s entrance at fifty mph. The impact bounced me up as the automatic locking retractors of the seatbelt strapped me back down. Sean’s laugh was a full-throated jester’s chortle.

During the onset of the various treatments, one of the significant side effects is the weakened immune system of the patient, making it necessary to avoid crowds, the outdoors—life. Sean was homeschooled for one year, then the breath of hope exhaled on my family: Sean’s cancer went into remission for the first time.

“Hang on!” he yelled, braking, swerving, tires chewing asphalt as the car slid around a parking lane, rocked back to javelin-straight, then raced for a space on the corner. Another slide forward, a deftly maneuvered steering wheel, and the sudden stop and chirp of the braking tires told me we had arrived alive. The buildings of Brandon High School sat still outside the window. A massive, granite eagle in the front yard held a bright crimson banner spread between its stony wings, declaring: “ BHS Streak LIVES! 156 and counting!” in bold, white, block letters.

I graduated BHS 646 out of 745 in 1988, and Sean’s cancer would relapse in 1984. He would receive the Firebird as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s third year candidates selected for ‘wish-fulfillment”. His cancer would never reenter a remissive state again. BHS’s wrestling victory record—nicknamed The Streak—would continue unbroken until 2008. That’s 24 years Sean lived for reasons unknown to explicable science. The doctors had no meaningful explanations. God had taken a back seat years ago, in terms of miracle-working, but had assumed a front-row throne of blame and unfairness.

I sat up, trying to slow my breathing. Sean laughed, hands sliding around his leather-wrapped steering wheel. There was a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years, before the “news”, like the look he got when he used to strike goals solidly into the net past dumbfounded defenders. The laugh lasted a long time, longer than I heard in the brutal era of almost-cures and near-miss medicines. The clinic was in his rearview mirror. Whatever life Sean had left was his prize for enduring inhumane suffering, both at the hands of chemo and the wrenching awareness that most of the friends he made in the treatment room all of a sudden wouldn’t be there anymore. You can’t have a cancer with a then-70% mortality rate without casualties. I placed a hand on his shoulder, and his brown eyes, liquid and quivering, met my own.

“I guess I’ll have to get used to reading while getting my ears blown out,” I said, my voice choking at the last.

“You read too much, anyway,” Sean said with a gremlin smile. “Life is too short.”

On January 18, 2025, I attended Sean’s 57th birthday. As children, we were twins, he red-headed and freckled, me blond and pale, both lanky, all hands, feet, and legs. I ended up at 6 foot 7, while Sean didn’t break 5 foot 8—thanks radiation therapy. He greeted me with his wife, his adopted children, and his adopted grandchildren. He could never have biological children but, like all else, Sean took the challenge in stride and beat it.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Better late than never,” he said. His gremlin smile hadn’t aged a day.

We both knew what he meant.