My brother, Vladimir

OK, I have started this post and abandoned it many times. I am going to try to finish and post it today finally.

January 5, 2009 marked two years anniversary of my younger brother Vladimir's death. We celebrated his memory with a dinner at my mother's apartment. This post is very hard for me as I never really was able to grieve fully or express my thoughts about my brother.

My brother had a terminal disease from birth. It occurred because of a gene mutation in utero. If non of the parents are carriers (and mine are not), there is about 1 in 36,000 chance that a child will be born with that disease. The disease ended up causing cancer and taking my brother's life at 24 years of age. Unfortunately, up until a few years ago I was not aware of his disease, and when I was little I did not understand and was very jealous of the preferential treatment that I felt he was getting from my parents and grandparents. I am slowly trying to forgive myself for teasing and picking at him when we were little. I just did not understand! I do not know if it would have been any different if my parents would have explained his condition to me. In Russia, up until this day, the doctors do not speak to patients directly, they speak to the closest relatives first, and the relatives decide how much to tell or not to tell the patients and other people. In fact, my brother himself did not know about his disease or the cancer as it started and progressed.

When Stephen proposed to me in January 2006, I knew that my brother was getting sicker so I pushed to have the wedding as soon as possible so that he would be able to be there. He was sick at the time of the wedding, but he was there and him and his wife were a part of our wedding party. He passed away about 7 months after the wedding. It was very special to me to have him around and help us celebrate my wedding.

Unfortunately, since I left home in 1995 (I was 15 at the time, my brother was 13), we did not keep in close contact with Vladimir. We saw each other and hung out some when I came home for vacations, spoke on the phone once a month or so, but we did not communicate often. The though of that makes me very sad. I lost so many years with my brother, and I cannot change that. I am trying to forgive myself for this too.

Vladimir was a very kind soul, I do not think that he ever harmed anybody or caused any pain. He was lucky enough to meet a girl that he fell in love with and marry her. They had 2.5 happy years together. I went to their wedding and he was on top of the world.

I just reread the above and it all feels so dry and unemotional, I feel like I did not express even tenth of my feelings in what I wrote. I am just not good with describing what I feel I guess. I might have to write another post about this, or maybe at least attempt it. I will leave you with this picture, taken at my wedding. I think it depicts how we felt towards each other. This is one of my most precious memories...