An Unusual Homecoming

A Guest Post by Rev. Martha Doran, PhD - Coming home for a final goodbye to the place her brother never left

Jul 14, 2023

Maybe there’s a difference between a space and a place. My family moved to Tucson in 1958 and my brother Gil loved it there so much that he never really left, except for a short stint in the Army and later to Louisiana. Tucson was his place, yet he struggled to find a space there to call home. He was often on our mom’s doorstep until she died in 1992. He mourned both her passing and the sale of our home, which he called Camp Fordham. Gil kept Tucson as his place, even though he never found a space to call home – no other Camp Fordham.

our childhood home, “Camp Fordham” (all photos by Martha Doran)

I left Tucson when I went away to college in 1969 and would only be a visitor going forward. Mom had been my link to coming home, and without her there, it was no longer home. I blamed Gil’s alcoholism for why she left the planet early. Regardless, he was my baby brother and we kept in touch with each other, especially the last few years after our middle brother died, and we were the remaining two of our family on this side of the veil. Even so, I avoided going back, going home, even without consciously knowing why. This conflict lived within me - a sense of low-level dread mixed with a great love of the place where I had grown up.

On the day when the hospital called and told me Gil’s diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer, I talked with his doctor and a couple nurses. No one held any hope for his recovery, and the doctor said he wasn’t a candidate for treatment because Gil was not fully aware of what was going on. I asked how he knew this, and he said because when he spoke to him about the diagnosis all he wanted was a cigarette. I said I thought it sounded like my brother was fully aware and needed a cigarette. I was floored by how little the doctor saw of who my brother really was - not just a set of actions or reactions but a human being full of complexities. I think my indignation at this doctor’s shallow view of my brother was because I too had done the same thing to him, and soon came face-to-face in realizing my lack of not seeing him fully.

What we are told is important actually blocks us from seeing and being with what is really important…each other, right where we are at that moment.

The first time I talked to Gil after he had been given the diagnosis he was shaken, scared, and in pain. I sang to him over the phone, and I told him I would come be with him when he got out. The next day he even said he was going to beat the cancer and was planning what he’d eat when he got out…a 22 oz steak, a baked potato with all the trimmings, a baked sweet potato and banana cream pie. He sang me a phrase from a Stones song that kept going through his head. I remember thinking I would try to rent a place nearby if he went into hospice, so I could stay with him in Tucson. Those first two weeks were a blur of phone calls from doctors and nurses and agencies, none of which seemed equipped with the time or right space to help my brother. During that time, he grew uncooperative and angry. I waited to know what I could do when he got out of the hospital, being advised I could not be with him nor help him where he currently was. Not being able to physically help him, or often even to find him, was a recurring theme for me with my baby brother. During his life and now during his dying.

Many years before, during one of the times I had lost contact and didn’t know how to find him, I was washing dishes perched on our old porcelain tub during a kitchen remodel. Feeling miserable and sorry for myself, I was trying to be grateful for hot running water, for water being contained in a tub, piped to me there in the house, etc. etc. etc., and yet, also chewing on tears of worry about what to do to help Gil. And then I heard almost as if a voice saying to me…”I’ve got him. He’s mine.” My shoulders relaxed a bit, my breathing deepened, and I stopped crying. I leaned into that message, knowing that my “answer” was to let Gil live his own life, to love him but not judge him or try to fit him into what I thought was best. And to trust that God had this. It was a lesson I had to keep re-visiting time and again.

This much I know: I am not the same person who flew to Tucson that day in March.

In the last week of Gil’s life, he was discharged from the hospital on a Monday only to be re-admitted a few days later to the Emergency Room. I was unable to find him until Thursday. When a nurse from the ER called to let me know he was back in the hospital, I knew I needed to go to him even though the hospitals were under COVID protocols, which meant not allowing visitors. It no longer mattered what anyone there said. I hastily made a plane reservation that turned out to be at the wrong airport. Yet the airline people that morning were so kind and patient and helped me get a flight at the right airport, so I still made my connecting flight to Tucson. There was also a problem with my rental car – at least until the person in front of me said she wanted the car I was given and I could have hers. The ways and means continued to open for me to get to my brother. I joined Gil on Saturday and then stayed with him until he left the planet two days later. When I first got to the hospital, he was in the psychiatric ward and in the process of being moved upstairs for more round-the-clock care over the weekend. The upstairs room became our home, our space together for the next three days.

Being with someone who is dying, going as far as we can alongside their walk through the Valley of the Shadow is beyond my words. This much I know: I am not the same person who flew to Tucson that day in March. As I look back on those days, I am in awe of how much the chaos, the uncertainty, the fear, was at the same time and in the same space, held by an Order, a Grand Plan, a sense of trusting and knowing. So many times, I found a way through the mess, and a knowing what to do, despite not seeming to know the moment before. Through it all, I had a continual sense of love holding me, of love being all around me. I saw love evidenced in small details – the cook in the hospital cafeteria calling me mi hija and how the gentle loving kindness of that phrase…my daughter…held me, strengthened me, as I headed back to what was to be our final goodbye.

Even though Gil he had not seemed to respond during the time I was with him, I still felt he was understanding what I said and that we were in touch in a place beyond words. I told him he could “check out” earlier if that was his choice. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to not be in the room when he made his exit. Yet he waited for me. I’m sure of it. There was no death rattle, no loud gasping, no struggle. Instead, I held his hand and sang a song we both knew from childhood…we just called it by its first words…O Gentle Presence. I sang him on his way Home. He softly and gently stopped breathing as we held hands.

I stayed with him for a while in the room. I told him how grateful I was to have been with him and for all we shared. During those last days together, I wiped tears from his cheeks, gave him a manicure, put cold compresses on his brow, made him a bandana, held him when he cried out, put gloss on his lips, asked his forgiveness for missing the mark at times and celebrated how much we loved each other – still love each other.

About a month after Gil passed on, I found his HS graduation photo. I had gotten married before he finished high school and now realized I didn’t even remember his graduation. Gil lived with my husband and me for a short time after his first semester at college didn’t pan out, while he was trying to figure out what to do next. Yet it wasn’t until I saw his photo 45 years later, after he had passed, that I actually saw him fully for the first time, at that age - so full of mischief, of life, of possibilities. What washed over me was my reaction a few years earlier to a scene from the play Our Town. In it, the character Emily has died and comes back for her 12^th birthday to see her family. She is dismayed and saddened to witness how no one really sees each other, how the busy-ness of life, of getting things done and checked off our lists…all the stuff we think is life is not what matters most. What we are told is important actually blocks us from seeing and being with what is really important…each other, right where we are at that moment. Finding and dwelling in that place, that space where we truly see each other…that’s home. Gil showed me that space of awareness in our sanctuary time, and it allowed me to fully see and appreciate him in his photo.

We found our home again together those last few days. This hospital room became his sanctuary for making his transition from the earth - a liminal space that was safe, looking out to the mountains and filled with loving care. In that room, he helped bring me back to Tucson – gave me back my town. Later that day I drove around the city, not knowing where I was headed and ended up on roads we used to call the Roller Coaster roads, - where Mom would drive us in the old station wagon with no seat belts. I felt my brother with me there. In honor of Gil, I went to his favorite eatery for dinner - Lucky Wishbone - and then stopped by CVS to get some Lindor Chocolates, his favorite treats.

Those days in his hospital room gave me, gave us, the sense of true homecoming…a full harvest of love for each other beyond words or actions. We found our way back to each other and to our homecoming.

Finding Home

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