Life-our constant battle to add up to something more than a hill of beans.

Death is again grinding away at Gaza today. There is so much grief and sadness in the present tense, existence has a waking nightmare quality to it. But if you can indulge me because in the Before Times, fourteen years ago today, my brother Peter died. He was my older brother, my friend and sometimes even my rival. As deaths go, Peter had a shit and early ending to his life at the age of fifty.

Peter went into hospital for a lung biopsy in August 2009 after he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. Following the operation, Peter encountered a series of mishaps in the hospital, which was exacerbated by his mental illness, which made it difficult for him to deal with life-threatening health issues. Within a few weeks of his medical procedure, Peter was placed in an induced coma to determine if his lungs could heal sufficiently from the trauma of the lung biopsy, as the pulmonary fibrosis had calcified them, making it impossible for him to breathe.

However, after several attempts failed to wean him off his ventilator, Pete through sign language, as he had lost his ability to speak, told his wife he wanted to die.

On Pete’s last day of life, I asked him if his mind was made up to die? I said if it wasn't, I’d advocate for this change of mind with the doctors.

“You always had my back.”

Pete indicated by nodding his head he wanted me to fight for him.

I returned to our family members waiting in the ICU’s lounge. I told them Peter wanted to live, but outside of you, Dad, everyone was resolved it was his time. I felt like Henry Fonda in the movie 12 Angry Men, except I capitulated too easily. I only debated the merits of Pete living for less than five minutes. When it was decided his ventilator would be turned off, I asked how it would end for him. “Easily,” said the doctor, “some families play music, others pray, and some do nothing at all.”

You looked older than your eighty-six years and utterly alone in that room.

I didn’t know what to do for you, or what to say to you. I didn’t think your heart would take the death of a son so late in your life.

Peter’s wife abruptly got up and cried, “I can’t stay for this.” She disappeared out of the room in a torrent of tears and undecipherable words.

You were turning over, in your hands, a cigarette lighter with impatience and fury. From the second, that it was confirmed Peter would not survive the day.

Excerpt from Standing with Harry-Letters to the World’s Oldest Rebel

It was a bad finish for someone who drew many short straws from life. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his twenties.

In between stays in psychiatric hospitals and multiple periods of intense psychosis, my brother found moments of wonder, joy, laughter, and love.

Peter, unlike many of us, was able to define the experiences that shaped his life because he was a visual artist. In that way, he was lucky because, to the great majority, life is a linear progression where we acquire not wisdom but material comforts and joys that we display to others as if they were our core, our essence and our souls.

But mental illness did exact not only a heavy toll on him but on all those who loved him. Were it not for schizophrenia, Peter would have had a more conventional life, rather than the one he had living, for over a decade in exile from normal existence at our parents’ house.

Being Peter’s caregiver took an enormous toll on my parents because they were already in their 60s when he became severely ill. They were not from the entitled class and spent much of their retirement savings to keep Peter safe.

Caregiving shortened my mother's life because she was battling her own ailments like rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease and PTSD whilst tending to Peter during his many psychotic episodes, which made him speak in tongues, self harm and fight off the voices in his head that demanded he kill himself.

Eventually Mum died from undiagnosed ovarian cancer on July 2nd, 1999. Peter was given ten more years of life following our mother's death. He was afforded a more independent existence which including moving out of our parent’s home. Those years were his most productive artistically and personally. He married, and his artwork was shown in galleries around Canada. He also became an outspoken advocate for those with mental illness. He was on the cusp of artistic recognition in 2008. But life always has other plans for us because just as my brother was finally being allowed to live on his terms, Peter began to die from pulmonary fibrosis.

In an email to a colleague shortly before his death, Peter wrote:

"What are our stories? I am neither pessimistic nor positive. I do think things will be lost, and things will be found. We will change, and our nature will change us. We wake at times to our oneness, along with the feeling that we are also part of something infinitely larger than ourselves. I would have to say the time I had with its good and its bad was a fucking blast."

On this day, 14 years ago, when Peter died, my dad was 86 and furious that death had come for one of his boys rather than him. I was 46 then and knew for as long as my dad was alive, it was my responsibility to ensure that the remainder of his life had the same care, love, and compassion as he had given to Peter and my mother as their caregivers.

From 2009 until 2018, I took care of my father the best way I knew and made him the World’s Oldest Rebel. Simply put to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca- our lives should add up to more than a hill of beans in this crazy world.

It's a big ask, I know, but I need your help. I got sick with a mild infection last month. Even being slightly ill put me financially behind. I know how bad it was recovering from cancer during covid but then I had some savings. If I get another major illness, I will sink like a stone.

So, if you can subscribe to a paid membership, thank you. I appreciate the loyalty of each subscriber. You have allowed me to build a community.

Next month, my early pension begins. It is not much,. I couldn't live off it but it adds to the base that keeps me housed.

Right now, at around 1100 subscribers, with 10% as paid, I need to increase my subscription base to 3k or double my paid subscriber base for an income of $14k (Canadian).

So, if you can please subscribe. It is appreciated by me and it ensures the work of Harry's Last Stand has a working beachhead.