Late November 2001.
It was a day like any other. I woke up late, a little hungover, grateful I had the swing shift. I didn’t want to deal with people, but I put myself together anyway. I was working at the local Bed Bath & Beyond.
As I was getting ready to head out the door, my dad caught me and said my brother was having really bad stomach pain earlier in the day. Mom had taken him to the ER to get checked out.
My dad seemed unbothered, and I was too out of it to think otherwise. So I nodded. Told him okay, I’d see him later.
It didn’t seem that serious.
I was well into my shift. The rhythm of the afternoon. Helping customers figure out their sheet counts, looking up out-of-stock items. Then a page over the intercom. I had a phone call.
I walked to the linen station and picked up. It was my dad. His voice was panicked. Cracking.
“Dan, it’s worse than we thought. We don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
I felt the floor bottom out from underneath me.
It felt like an eternity wrapped into a second.
“Wait, what? Dad, what are you say— what’s happening?” My voice got louder as the panic crept in.
“Dan, I don’t know. He’s going into surgery. You better come quick.”
“Okay, Dad. I’m coming now.”
I hung up.
This was never an option. He struggled. He always struggled. But not make it?
I was shaking. I couldn’t think.
Breathe.
Tell my boss. Let them know I’m leaving.
I ran to the checkout where my manager was helping a customer and told him I had to go. The panic must have been all over my face. He didn’t question it. A nod. Go.
I ran up the stairs to my locker, still shaking, trying to think through what I even needed. A coworker saw me. Asked what was wrong. I barely got it out. She said she was driving me. I was in no position to argue.
I don’t even remember her name now.
I don’t remember walking into the hospital. I don’t remember meeting my parents. I somehow remember I was there in his room.
It was worse than I thought. I cried out when I saw him. The breathing machine. All the tubes. The beeps. Like something on TV, except it was him.
This can’t be happening.
I went to his bedside. I called out to him, asked if he could hear me.
To my surprise, before I could even register it, he was already patting my arm. Letting me know he was okay.
He was calming me down. Of all things.
I found out it was a misdiagnosis. They neglected to do the CT scan that would have caught it. A teenage boy in level 10 pain, and no one took him seriously.
How can professionals let this happen?
They thought it was his appendix. They kept him overnight for observation. By morning he was going into shock.
He asked my mom if he was going to die. He knew, but no one listened.
It was his small intestine. It had twisted. All night, the organ wasn’t getting blood. By the time anyone understood, they couldn’t save it.
And here’s the thing. We finally had the answer the doctors could never find.
I have early memories of him in hospitals. The fits where he couldn’t keep anything down. The IVs. My mom fighting for answers she never got. When he got older there was a medication that seemed to fix it, and we thought we were in the clear.
It had been twisting his whole life. No one diagnosed it until it was too late.
My mom, a nurse, started researching. She found that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was doing cutting-edge small intestine transplants. They were on the next flight out. They set up in residential housing the medical center provided and got on the transplant list.
He was AB negative. The rarest blood type.
I prayed to something, hoping my prayer would be heard.
We waited.
February 2002.
He got the call after a few months. We couldn’t believe it. With the rarest blood type. It was too good to be true.
The transplant surgery was successful. Our prayers had been answered. A few more months of recovery, and it was going to be okay now.
It was going to be okay, right?
No. The answer came quicker than we thought. It wasn’t okay. It rejected. They had to remove it.
Back on the list he went.
What are the odds of getting another one that quickly, with that blood type?
As the days turned into years, our faith and hope grew weary. My dad and I took turns flying out to see him and Mom.
My trips became something else too. Attempts to clean up, to separate myself from the using. No one knew how bad it was getting.
The shame was setting in. The trips away were welcomed. A fresh start to try and do better. To be better.
My brother’s body was starting to look like Frankenstein. Feeding tubes. PICC lines. Probes. Cuts. Overdoses on medication. Sepsis. Kidney failure. Everything that could go wrong, did.
I had no idea a body could endure so much. And a spirit that didn’t break.
Yet.
My brother was growing tired. He just wanted to come home. So he did.
We got him set up at UCLA.
It was good to know he was home. But I was in full-blown addiction now, and there were days I was just gone.
He was finally home, and I wasn’t there for it.
A brother fighting for his life. And a sister who didn’t care if she lost hers.
While I was off and running, my brother and my dad got confirmed at a local Catholic church.
I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t know what it meant.
In June 2003, I got clean.
My brother was there to see it. We spent time together.
I never picked up drugs or alcohol again. Even in the darkest hours after he passed, I stayed clean for him.
As the gap grew since his first transplant, our hope was fading. It was becoming clear his other organs were affected now. He was jaundiced. He was weak. He was tired.
The first days of February 2005, he went in for a routine visit at UCLA and never came out.
His liver was failing. He needed a whole new digestive system now. He was slipping away.
But his heart was strong. He was on life support.
We had to make a decision. The hardest one we ever made.
When it was my turn to say goodbye, we were alone.
I told him he wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. I hugged him and I wept.
I didn’t want to say goodbye. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I told him I knew he’d be my guardian angel.
And then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
A single tear streaming down his right cheek. The side I was standing on.
He heard me…
He knew, and I knew.
As much as I didn’t want it to happen, it was time. He had suffered enough.
That was it.
My unlikely friend was at the hospital with me. My rock. I sobbed as we walked down the longest hallway. He was right beside me. He took me to a late-night meeting.
I was safe.
The next morning I woke up and got hit with it. My eyes burst open to reality. My stomach dropped as I replayed the last three years.
It was over.
Now what?
I hoped it was a nightmare. That it wasn’t real. I wanted to go back to sleep, pull the covers over my head.
I didn’t want to face it…
Three years of acute stress. So many almosts. But he’d made it out every time.
I went into shock. The denial set in. I was protecting myself from something too brutal for my body to feel. I hadn’t cried since my goodbye.
He wasn’t dead. He was still in Pittsburgh. He was coming home...
The days and months that followed became everyone asking how my parents were doing. Most didn’t realize that bypassed the fact that I’d lost my brother.
My best friend.
Am I an only child now?
What do I say if people ask whether I have siblings?
When we go out to eat, we’re a party of three now.
What about the birthday cards to Mom and Dad that say “from us”?
How do you navigate a world that no longer includes your brother? I didn’t understand it. I was angry at God. There were almost no resources on sibling grief.
But I pushed through. Somehow I made it through a string of days.
I stayed clean for my brother. I kept staying clean, like I promised him.
I never knew depression like I did when he died.
Around a year after his passing, I made a decision. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I started stuffing my feelings. And my face.
That’s when the panic set in.
Slowly, I began to live life again. I honored his memory. I kept him close. And I learned to live without him.
One day I no longer felt guilty to smile. To laugh. I was finding acceptance in a death that wasn’t fair.
Holidays and birthdays are never the same. But I learned to make new memories, always with a nod to the one who wasn’t there.
My son only knows pictures of an uncle he’ll never meet in this life.
Life was good. But all these years later, the one question I could never come to terms with was still there.
Why?
And even though I knew I’d never get an answer, I finally surrendered it. I was okay to not know anymore.
Some things are just meant for God.
December 2025.
I’m near the end of a Bible study on the book of Isaiah, written by Melissa Spoelstra. I’d never read Isaiah before. It was rich with God’s character. His prophecy. Trusting His timing in all things.
The study runs five days a week, seven weeks in all. I’d fallen behind, a few days of homework left undone. So the night before the final week, I sat down to catch up on what I’d missed.
Session six. Day four.
The prompt points me to Isaiah 57:1-2.
Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die.
I blink.
Did I just read what I thought I did?
I read it again to be sure.
Before I even realize it, I’m on the floor. Weeping.
Thank you. Thank you, Lord.
I never knew it was there…
He waited twenty years to show it to me. The last week of the study. On the homework I almost let slide. He saved it for last.
The question I’d finally surrendered. The moment I let it go, He gave me the answer.
I praised and wept and my body shook.
I couldn’t believe it. All roads pointing back to Scripture, even here. Even now.
A blessing He gave me after I finally let go.
A piece of my heart died with my brother. But out of all of it, I saw God’s goodness. The God I had cursed was finally telling me the truth. It was mercy. It was never punishment.
And as I wept, I saw him. The brother who quietly got confirmed on his way out. The one who found Jesus long before I did.
He isn’t suffering anymore. A body that rejected him from birth, sick from the start, whole now.
I know where he is. And I know someday I’ll be there too.
His name was Joe.
Joe was born June 27, 1984. I’m publishing this on his birthday.
- No one is too lost to be saved.
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Heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing, for being vulnerable. I'm heading to Isaiah 57 right now. The last line of your post gives me hope for my 2 prodigals.
Love you and miss you Joe 🙏❤️