Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother. NY, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. Print.


 Precis: 
On my last visit seeing my brother he was in good health but at last he was in the hospital again, his inevitable death being stretched over a long time making him slowly looking more and more disfigured. When my brother finally died I was not surprised, I honestly did not feel anything. With my mother at the morgue see my brother I felt alone and dark, things no longer seemed pleasant. My mix of emotions turned on my brother, the pain he caused, the trouble he put me through, his death was unavoidable, if he only had died earlier things would have been easier. I remembered to the time of him being very ill showing me his penis, horribly disfigured from his AIDS and saying "Jamaica, look at this just look at this.", and I stood their motionless and disoriented at everything that surrounded the motion he used and reason for him showing me this.


Gems: 
"When I saw him for the last time still alive though he looked like someone who had been dead for a long time and whose body had been neglected, left to rot" (106). This is a good insight to the visual you see as someone is slipping into death, they never look like the person you knew for so long. They are stricken with their illness and you never imagine a loved one to be sick so when seeing them in this state it is hard to connect the same way you did so time ago.


"When he was still alive I used to try to imagine what it would be like when he was no longer alive, what the world would seem like the moment I knew he was no longer alive, I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what to feel." (87). This I think is the common reaction when someone close to you dies, when it happens suddenly it is so unimaginable and when it happens you are bewildered with emotion.


"Oh, I thought , oh it's Devon who died, not one of his relatives, not someone of his, this is not someone he has to grieve for. I was so glad about that" (99). Jamaica's reaction to another death and the relief of not having to go through what she had to with her brother.

Thoughts:
In the middle third of the book her brother finally dies. I think now is when I've really started to appreciate Jamaica's unique writing style. She jumps in and out of when her brother was alive, which isn't common but it isn't baffling. In fact it fits quite well, and I think it is one way Jamaica's unique writing style illustrates accurately and portrays what she is going through.