A Lost Brother

My brother is dying.
There, I've said it. He's dying.
He has had two heart attacks in 6 months, has emphysema, a shadow in his left lung and isn't staging the fight for his life. My brother is dying.
I want to call down the Banshee, raise the lightning and dare the Gods to come and do their worst, I want to shriek my defiance of death so loud the entire planet will sit up and take notice...and my brother doesn't.
When I was faced with the very real prospect of dying from Salmonella in the May of 2012 I saw it as an opportunity to recreate my life. I threw myself into getting well. I saw the new rules in terms of what I could and could not eat as an opportunity to improve on what I had been. I emerged from the depths of Salmonella a new person. I drove my healing to the limit. Six months after Salmonella I was on The Great South West Walk carrying a 30 kg pack. I wanted my health back and little or nothing was going to stop me.
My diet became "lean, clean and green". Unwilling and unable to eat junkfood courtesy of a Salmonella derived allergy to artificial MSG, I embraced farmers markets like they were the long lost billionaire uncle we all dream about.
Likewise with exercise.
My brother had his first heart attack in March 2014 and has done not one jot more than he has been compelled to by his doctors. I screamed at him then for an entirely self inflicted and preventable heart attack. It has been death by lifestyle and a willing disregard of the advice given to him by myself and health professionals. A pack a day smoker, an eater of the worst diet I have ever seen....no fibre, no leafy green vegetables or fruit, at least 2 litres of Coca-Cola a day and his protein entirely derived from red meat.
Now he does what he is told to. Not daring to cross me he eats oats and dates. He still eats a lot of red meat. He does the exercises his doctors advise....and not a step more.
My brother has sat. The lightning bolt of owning his healing simply hasn't struck him. There has been no blinding ecstacy of needing to furiously kick his Bucket List. He has issued no dare to his mortality, no ululating war cry has rushed from his lips as he has ripped up the limits given to him by himself and others. He has not for a moment expressed the rage of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The fire of need hasn't consumed him. He has no need to prove people wrong, to prove that he isn't the family joke, that he is worthy of respect, that the long missing and only rumoured spine does exist and is in place. He has looked Death in the face and done nothing. It is said that nothing focuses the mind like death, this is no doubt true of everyone but my brother. He has looked his Last Chance to fix everything in the face and then decided he had something better to do with his remaining days. There has been no overwhelming and undeniable desire to die on his feet.
I simply cannot understand this.
He has panicked, he has self harmed after a second heart attack in late September. The last thing he has done is something constructive. Why won't he DO something? Why won't he scream FUCK IT!!! and then rewrite what everyone expects him to be and to do.
My family, the Bowaters of Mackay and Beaudesert, are, in my experience a menagerie of failed, self interested, self obsessed shit eating, cock sucking nobodies who never for a moment deserve the right to have their opinions validated. Yet this is precisely what my brother does. He sits and prooves them right.
I struggle with this. I never liked my family enough to accept their judgements.
I will die with a life bloated with achievement. When I know my days are numbered, I will scream, shout, throw tantrums and exit in a shower of glory.
For my brother...I think I said it best over 20 years ago:
A lost brother(early 1992)
I look at you,
Timeless in the photograph.
So at peace,
So guileless.
Can this be the man I call brother?
I remember you so different,
So young,
It must be another!
So much you have lost.
There is so much that you might have been.
A world awaited you.
On the edge of unlimited possibilities you stood.
What was it that intrigued you so much as to lead you away,
From what might have been?
Weakness,
Humility,
A broken heart?
Could it simply be that you never cared for greatness?
The questions are endless,
For I cannot conceive,
That the last person in which you’d choose to believe ,
Would be yourself.
No absolute certainty entered your night,
Nothing encouraged you to challenge the gods,
And all their apparent might.
Some of us can never leave well enough alone,
Striving to make everything known.
Yet you stumbled almost accidentally,
Into a far greater unknown,
One I’d never call home.
For what did you search?
Fulfilment,
Acceptance,
An easy way in a world that only knows hardship.
If I could, gladly I would give you the strength,
To challenge the gods,
And all their apparent might.
To cry out loud and really make a fight.
To shame them, to call their bluff.
To show at last that you have the right stuff.
You know I would Mark.
If only I could….
If only I could….