In Memory of James Patrick Gunner: My Little Brother
I still cannot believe my little brother died.
It’s winter time.
My brother died last year on December 15, 2021, the same day my youngest son, Aidan, turned 21. The alignment of Jimmy’s death and my son’s birthday seemed to have cosmic significance at the time as Aidan came into his life in the same home that my brother left his, twenty-one years and an hour separating these events. I say cosmic because twenty-one is my favorite number and moments like have the ability to penetrate our busy lives and minds.
Jimmy’s life ended fifty-five years and two weeks and a day after it began. He had a full life although far from complete. He wanted to see his girls grow into women and get married and begin families of their own. He loved being a dad and an uncle and would for sure have loved being a grandfather. That was not in the cards in his life as James Patrick Gunner. We would all have to settle for what he had, accomplished and what we had with in our relationship with him.
I kept a journal during the year of his becoming ill, then actively dying. I am grateful that I did. What I witnessed perhaps can be shared to offer comfort and reassurance to his daughters, Emma and Mary, and to the rest of his family and his wide circle of friends. Note for his Funeral - The words and stories and insights cannot make up for Jimmy’s absence. They can though document a life valiantly lived, even when he knew he was not going to survive this illness.
This is a story about dying and living! It does not ignore the fear that Jimmy experienced, or we who were so close and near to him during his last year of life felt. This story finds a new way to be afraid in the face of dying and death of a loved one, it offers a more courageous way to be afraid.
If it breaks your heart, it is not your ego!
Wake up from the dream of ego and see all suffering is created in the mind!
My red journal given to Jimmy as a gift for having cancer from Roswell captures the brilliance of a human being’s pure heart as well as his suffering. Written on the pages are ordinary things like grocery lists, daily food intake of Jimmy, medical questions and medication schedules, frustrations, and poignant insights that popped into my mind during his last week at home while in the care of his daughters, family, and hospice.
For you who knew Jimmy well, he had a lifelong eating disorder born of a childhood wound. His diet was limited to a few regular items. Opening my pleather bright red bound journal, is written in Emma’s hand, “June 25th. Small bowl of Captain Crunch with milk. Pancake House – blueberry pancakes, white toast + bacon” That sums up one of Jimmy’s favorite meals or maybe all of them I realized that I would need to write a story about Jimmy and all of this, even the most mundane details of his year and life because this is the life, we all live – ordinary details of life are sacred and they comprise most all the living. The day-to-day is all we had last year with Jimmy. His life was full of doctor’s visits, repeated trips to the emergency room, long stays hospital, surgeries, procedures, and pain. Lots and lots of pain. There was something more though. Love. Heart wrenching, ordinary beautiful love. I watched the energetic exchange between him and his daughters, month in and month out as Jimmy went through nine months from diagnosis to death.
I promised myself that I would stay as open and receptive as possible through this process and not shy away or dismiss anything. He needed me to be there for him and he needed me to be there for his daughters. He knew he would be leaving them sooner that he would have ever let himself imagine. I needed to reach within my mind and my physical reserves and find the energy and agency to be his extension of his being for them. I also knew I would have to lean on my husband, sons, and best friend for this to happen. We are all one big energy mandala. A mandala is the principle of seeing and perceiving the relationship of things to each other as well as the nature of things as they really are. Mandala means society, group, and association. Everything is centered around something. For in the case of 2021 and my brother, we were centered around Jimmy. Not his illness, or his cancer, or his life coming to fruition. No, we were centered around him, and the energy was love.
The Last Week
On Saturday, the 4th of December, my brother’s fifty-fifth birthday was celebrated with his favorite cake in the hospital and his daughter’s present. The pandemic of Covid impacted the number of visitors permitted in the hospital. The rules kept changing all year and a limit was again placed on how many visitors allowed in a patient’s room. I ordered a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting from Eileen’s Bakery in West Seneca. If you know that bakery, you know how moist and delicious the cakes are. The girls brought him his cake and we did a quick FaceTime call to sing the Happy Birthday song. We made it a point to not miss any milestones that year.
Two days later I received a call from a palliative care doctor at Mercy Hospital of South Buffalo, Dr. He spoke directly to me with 100 percent precision that Monday evening. He said, “As you know there is fluid building up around your brother’s heart from the cancer and there is a very short window if you want to get him home before he passes.” I appreciated his directness and started crying. I thanked him and wished him a blessed holiday. I felt completely open and awake to every conversation and situation that was occurring. This doctor got the ball rolling immediately with Hospice of Buffalo and would complete the discharge the next day so Jimmy could be transported home on Wednesday.
The part that would be the hardest was telling Jimmy the plan. Since I was sick with some virus, I could not go up to the hospital and possibly expose him or anyone else, his eldest daughter, Emma, would have to deliver the news to her dad. A plan had been set in motion with the good doctor’s help. Emma would bring me on FaceTime, and she would tell her dad that the cancer had spread and that we wanted to bring him home and have Hospice to help us keep him comfortable and surrounded by his family during this time. The hardest part was asking his daughter to do this alone and telling him that there would be no further treatment when he was not ready to give up. This was an impossible thing to ask of is 19-year-old child. He was not ready to die nor was he in his right mind because of the pain, the cancer, and that spread of progression of the disease. So many empty promises were made by the oncologist and doctors. We had not really felt the support of Roswell not had we received anyone ready to tell Jimmy the truth of the situation. It was on his family to deliver this heartbreaking terrible news. You are going to die, and it is going to be soon. Even now as I write these words, I wonder, as I did a year ago, why the oncologists and doctors had not been straight with him. A few of the nurses were, as were the hospital chaplains.
Procedure after procedure to unblock his pancreatic and liver ducts were not going to save him. Why did we let him be put through all of this just to arrive at the same outcome? We really could have used more honesty and clarity from the doctors and also a social worker being present for a frank conversation would have been helpful to his family as this news was being delivered.
The healthcare system in some ways failed us in their support and in other ways really helped. Emma told her dad through tears that we love him very much and that it has come to the place that the medical system has helped as much as it can and there is nothing else that can be done other than to keep in comfortable. He would be going home. I am not sure Jimmy really understood but he seemed okay with the plan to transferhim home in a couple of days.
We are thankful for the people that did help, like the nurses and the palliative doctor.
“The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” Vincent van Gogh
“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Rumi
Jimmy arrived home on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, by ambulance to his home, which so happens to be our childhood home in Lackawanna, New York. It has been in our family since it was built in 1965, the year I was born, and my family has resided in it ever since. I have never been able to prove this,but I have a feeling it is built above a crystal-clear stream of flowing water that is sacred and has the capacity to purify the thoughts and actions of the beings that live and visit there.
When I arrived with my husband, Jimmy was sitting in his transport chair in doorway of my dad’s apartment. Joey, my older brother, was there along with two female EMTs and my dad. Jimmy was upset with me and turned to me to say, “Jeannie, you disappointed me. You weren’t there at the hospital. That’s what we had planned.” He kept shaking his head slowly from side to side and looking me straight in the eyes. I felt sorry that he was shaken by that misstep of mine, or even if it was not an actual plan, it was in his head. My brother was so close to the end of his life, and it would not make sense to argue with him. I accepted blame and apologized, “I am sorry Jim, you are right. I did not follow the plan.” My eyes welled up with tears seeing my brother’s fragility and knowing that he had come home for one reason, to die with his family nearby.
Jimmy’s apartment is on the second floor so getting him up those stairs in his physical and mental state was going to be a challenge. My brother had lost over half of his body weight that year. He was starting to fill up with fluids due to his cancer which was shutting down his kidneys and liver and surrounding his heart. Two female EMTs and my older brother, a retired firefighter, struggled to move Jimmy and his transport chair up a winding staircase to his place.
Lack of Agency
Jim was a large man, both in his body, mannerisms, and speech. He was like a full horn section of the orchestra. You knew when Jimmy was in the house! Over the months this diminished as the illness raged. His heart though grew in size. His love shone out to the world. One night he called me in the middle of the night to tell me that “this blond nurse is treating me horrible. She is so mean.” I could feel his pain and hurt feelings. It was like a small boy was telling me he was being bullied on the playground. I wanted to reach out and hug in through the phone and go a shield him from this bad behavior. “How could a nurse treat a dying man, my kid brother, this way?!”
The next day when I got to him with my husband Joe by my side, he said very matter-of-factly that, “Oh, she was just being mean on accident.” He went on to say that she was having problems at home and that she was worried, and it came out in her treatment of him. He excused and forgave her. I was confused by the passion of hurt I heard in the phone call and the acceptance I heard before me. It was like he integrated the whole thing through the night, and he was forgiving all harm that had been done to him, all hurt he had experienced. I knew I would file that wisdom teaching away for future guidance. He then asked Joe and I to take a walk with him on the floor. We helped him up and with his staff in hand, he merrily swerved from side to side down Buffalo General’s hallway a waiting area with a view of the Lake Erie and the streets below.
I could see he still had a joyful energy in his movements and steps, and he appreciated what life he still had in him. It was October and he had found out he had a second cancer, pancreatic, in addition to colon. He knew he was dying, but he also knew he was still alive and so why not dance down the hospital corridor!!
Jimmy’s mind was still strong through this whole year, except at the very end, the last week. My brother was a man on the go; ask anyone who knew him. He was always moving, doing, getting something accomplished. He owned his own pool installation and concrete contracting company, J Gun Enterprise. He planned to be a millionaire and take care of everyone he loved. He succeeded at the second but didn’t become rich with money. He was full of love and passion and kindness. If you were down and out, needing a job or some extra cash, he was there to help, if he had it. If he didn’t, he would find a way to access resources, maybe in ways I would rather not know about. I know he liked to bet on sports, play cards, drink. Years back he shared with me that he had an addiction to drugs. He reached out for my help and support. I tried to help him, but he retracted his confession and carried on with his life.
It was painful to watch Jimmy’s body wither and his muscles waste away. This man of action had to depend on his daughters and family to help with basic needs, like washing and shopping. He could not oversee his concrete or pool projects, depending on others to do so and being taken advantage of by some of his employees. Watching this all felt like a tidal wave of sadness. How could someone abuse the kindness of my brother in this way? Jim fretted constantly about the impact on customers from poor communication or poor workmanship.
The first visit to Mercy Hospital’s emergency department was on March 13th . I drove him in and sat all day with him as he fought through the intensity of the pain in his gut. He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that he knew this was cancer and that it was going to kill him. I listened with compassion. I then said to him that it would be best to see what the doctors had to say and what the tests revealed that this rectal bleeding and pain could be diverticulitis which runs in our family. He smiled his inimitable half smile full of sadness and knowing. He made me promise that afternoon in the ER that I would look after his daughters when he was gone.
Quisp t-shirt and cereal arrived the day Jimmy died, thank you Steve P. Thanks to a long-time out of town friend, Steve, who sent Jimmy his favorite childhood cereal. Quisp is a little alien being for those of you who are not familiar, and a crunchy corn cereal loaded with sweetness and sugar, just the way my brother liked his cereal.
Gathering together to talk about our grief is a ritual and we made sure to engage in that. At Tony’s house with long time childhood friends form Lackawanna.
I noticed:
Counting his cash
Measuring his legs
Cutting the tape measure
Self-grooming
The double back
The Rainbow Wisdom Colors
Tibetan Book of the Dead
Ordering from Odyssey
“The only way on earth to multiply happiness, is to divide it.” Paul Scherrer
Generosity
Up until the very end, my brother was generous. His first day back home, which would be his last full Wednesday alive was December 8th. The EMTs and my brother, Joey, situated Jimmy on the new sectional couch that was purchased from the generous donations of so many of his friends from a GoFundMe page set up for his first surgery in May. Jimmy wanted to go over his snow plowing contracts and his cash on hand in the house. I gathered the contracts and Mary, and Emma got the cash that was hidden throughout the house for him. Jimmy wanted to hold the cash and count it. He began to count and fall asleep with the bills falling around his body fanning him. I sat nearby and silently cried. I kept looking out through a blurry pool of water in my eyes with the Christmas lights alternating blinking red and green, “Merry Christmas,” an old light Joey had installed in the living room. Action, heart, action, heart. My study of an ancient Buddhist wisdom infiltrating my mind and perspective which I had been studying all year long alongside of Jimmy’s illness.
I was trying to help Jimmy sort out the money and plowing contracts, thinking that just getting it done was the help he needed. Jimmy looked at me and said very directly, “OK, shh. I do the talking.” Obviously, Jim did not need to be fixing, organizing, or figuring it all out. He needed to feel he was contributing, and we were listening. He needed to connect in a meaningful way. Even if he only had a little life left, it mattered.
He asked me to write the following and I complied:
Emma
Safe cash
$495 check – snowplowing
$400 to Emma
$400 to Mary
$527
$900
I didn’t need to understand this, and it didn’t need to make sense. I needed to listen, and Jim needed to speak. That’s all. The universe of everyday happenings, the karma of cause and effect if you will, spoke also to me and I got confirmation of needing to listen. I was in such a hurry, razor edge of panic, and rushed into his bathroom to throw some dirty laundry down the shoot and got up quickly cutting behind my ear, that hollow area, with the pointed rusty edge of the metal door.
It is like he’s always waiting for everyone to be nice. And, he’s not surprised about it because he believes everyone is nice, even if they don’t show it. It is like basic goodness or buddha nature in the Buddhist tradition, or compassion in the Christian tradition. My brother trusted in the basic human goodness and kindness of all human beings.
The first night Jimmy was home, he was up all night. All those nights and months spent in the hospital it was difficult to get a true good night’s rest. The bells and monitors and lights and poking and prodding are disturbing. And hospital beds and pillow are not comfortable and being away from family and home is trying. He asked for is electric razor and a metal cookie sheet from the kitchen. His daughters complied and helped him as he shaved his head and his face, so much hair that had grown long and snarly fell to the sheet. He also trimmed his fingernails and brushed his teeth which were rotting in his mouth. Just writing this memory jolts me back to that night and watching from the doorway of the little hall near my bedroom where I had moved into, Jimmy’s former room with the Pink Floyd posters above my body. Emma and Mary were so patient with their dad. Their love for their dad is a lesson, too. We can be patient and kind even when awakened in the middle of the night. This will not last forever and before we know it, our loved one will be gone.
The next couple of days were filled with Christmas spirit. Skip, our neighbor came to visit, and Kate and Aunt Joanne, along with my youngest son, Aidan. We all sat on the sectional together and talked a little and Jimmy engaged, too. He moved between optimism of beating the illness, facing his impending death with some sense of humor, and genuine sadness. He talked about his family and his daughters, the holidays. Kate brought a small Christmas tree, and the girls decorated it with their dad’s instructions. It was a festive moment.
Jimmy was hell bent on getting back to his work in the spring and taking care of his body so he could rebuild his strength and muscle. Since he could no longer walk, he needed us to bring him everything. He got a hold of a plastic measure and a scissors and he began taking measurements of his ankles and calves. He was aware of the swelling and wanted to track it. He began to cut the tape measure in small pieces and asked Emma to write down the numbers he calculated. This kept him occupied and engaged in his life as it was at that time.
The Lesson: Let the person dying engage with their life in any way they feel or need.
I was the one doing the hospice calling and interfacing and reporting. I tried to help make sure that his medications, especially pain, as well as the meds that help with hallucinations and anxiety were given regularly. I felt that this was of critical importance. The transition from treating the disease to make a recovery and palliative care was not clear to me and I became confused and even militant about making sure we followed a regimen. I did not want him to become anxious or have his pain get out of control. After a few days of becoming frustrated with Jimmy and the situation, hospice finally clarified which meds were actually important.
The Lesson: Refusal or acceptance of meds or food or anything at this point is entirely up to the dying person. They have no control over anything else and this is their life and death.
Days after Jimmy’s death, I found pills hidden in the side of his seat where he sat and in the drawer of his side table next to him. Little blue and pink pills that he pretended he was taking just to shut me up. I felt sorry about my insistence after finding them. If my story can save someone that frustration and pain, then I know this experience has value. Jimmy had endured so much in his life. Separation from his mom and his family as a two-year-old. Struggles with his relationship with food that resulted from this childhood trauma. A lifelong anxiety around food and embarrassment. Obesity, addictions to sugar, alcohol, and drugs. Gambling. Heartache in love and divorce. I don’t really know all he went through. I do know that he loved his daughters more than anything in the world. Loved his family. Made amends with the mother of his children the last hours of his life. Loved his many friends from all walks of life. He never excluded anyone from his life even if they had made a mess of their life. He loved people without discriminating and sometimes that meant he was taken advantage of and played.
He told me about our Great Gramma sitting in her rocking chair in the corner of the room I was sleeping in, his old room, her old room form fifty years or more ago.. She would appear to him in his last years on earth.
Scribbled notes for reminders and to do’s:
*call vet
*change my schedule to ½ day on Fridays
*coming Thursday, Dave Bukaty- need #
Humor is part of the path of dying, too. I remember actually laughing a lot through the year. Crying and laughing, sometimes in the same minute. I remember my body sweating a lot, my cheeks hot and wet from tears and the sweat under our surgical masks required to be in the hospital or around Jimmy. It was and still is Covid world, isn’t it? That meant limiting the amount of visitors to his room, even when he was about to go in for one of his three major surgeries which all took place at Mercy Hospital of South Buffalo. His girls and I fenagled a way to always see Jimmy before and after the operations. The front desk and security guards and the concierge parking folks all recognized us after a few months. We were the usual faces they would see. Heck, Jimmy spent months in Mercy and then weeks in Buffalo General during the nursing strike at Mercy in October. Before every surgery, Emma, Mary, and I would get up there and say prayers. There were always rosaries around Jimmy’s nightstand and the Chaplains and Priests made themselves available to pray. I came to see how devout of a Catholic Jimmy was. My mom certainly did rub off on him. He was also extremely spiritual being. I also came to know how important the stars, night sky, constellations, and the universe were to Jimmy. He was captivated by the celestial world that surrounds all of us.
The Lesson: Don’t think just because you grew up with someone in the same house under the same roof with the same parents that you actually know someone!
There is always something more to learn about someone and we all grow and change. The truth of impermanence. We all change! Another truth of impermanence is that impermanence is not biased. Our least favorite situations will end and so will our most favorite situations, and that goes for people. My baby brother, who had been my best friend in childhood was leaving me.
The Nursing Strike at Mercy.
“All you need is love; love is all you need.” John Lennon
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone.”
Right after Jimmy died, there was a wailing sound. Three female cries mixing and dancing into one expression of grief expressed. Jimmy died a noble death. He was seated with a strong back and a grounded lower body. His legs and feet touching the earth below him. He wore his sweatpants and wool socks and a t-shirt. He was aware to the end. He did not want a catheter and told us that just a few hours before his last outbreath.
The Lesson: The dying and very near to death people are able to communicate.
It is simply a matter of paying close attention and temporarily suspending one’s own ego and need for comfort and watching for signs. Jimmy communicated by gently shaking his head, no and waving his hand as if to push us away. He was going through his own sacred dying process. This needs to be watched closely and spaciously without becoming a nuisance. The people that he could let close in were his daughters, particularly his youngest, Mary, who had become a permanent fixture next to her dad. I can say I saw two souls that were mated as father and daughter in their relationship. She could intuit his needs and was absent of ego throughout the situation. One would say she took on the role of awakened heart and kept herself nearby to attend to his psychophysical cues. It was an honor to witness this. Joe and I commented that Mary became so present that she took on the outward perception of a feral cat, long wild knots of hair, same outer clothes for days, and hardly attending to her own bodily grooming. She knew that he was nearing his end in this body, and she knew their relationship would be forever changed once he was gone from his vessel. Something was really bothering Mary, and she was able to articulate it so clearly, “I want dad to know the truth she he’s not upset. I do not want him surprised.” Mary wanted us to be straight with her dad and let him know he was dying, and his death was near.
Integration needs to take place. Integrating with this new situation.
On December 12th, 2021, it was Emma’s 20th birthday. The girls had a year that was grueling and experienced the poignant precious presence of their dad and them. Still, they were exhausted and young. They asked if they could go out to dinner and have an afternoon away. Joe and I stayed with Jimmy, and we watched the Buffalo Bills take on the Tampa Buccaneers. Jimmy still had hunger at least in his mind and requested puffy Cheetos and salted roasted already shelled pistachios. You know one of my greatest regrets is not going out and finding the right kind of pistachios. All Joe could find was unsalted and we all know those just suck! He valiantly put up with the wrong food. He was very particular with his food and lesson here is it is okay to have preferences!!! Dying people’s culinary preferences matter even if there are only days or hours to live. I regret not finding him the kind of pistachios we loved. And how do I forgive myself and find self-compassion, I do it by savoring every time I eat the kind of pistachios he loved, for myself and for jimmy!
The Lesson: Savor the flavor of life in real time!
On Tuesday, December 14th, 2021, Aunt Joanne, and Carol Ann visited for the last time with Jimmy. My childhood best friend, Alley, was also with us. Jimmy was sitting in his spot on the sectional with the leg recliner. His legs were swollen with fluids, and he was mostly sleeping. Alley and I were discussing his status and just sitting quietly together over a cup of tea. Alley is always present for the times that matter most. She is an angel of a friend and like a sister to Jimmy. Jim was aware of our aunt’s and cousin’s presence when they arrived. They sat down next to him, and he asked in a weak voice for his uncle’s mass program that was hanging on his refrigerator along with pictures of his daughters and some of their school papers. He took the program that had a photo of Uncle Bud and held to his lips to kiss it. He said how much he loved his uncle and that he was like a father to him he was just a little boy after our mom was taken to the hospital and where she remained after she lost her last baby. Jimmy said he would be seeing his uncle soon and quietly wept. We all sat quietly and held the compassionate space that an actively dying person needs.
The Lesson: Quiet our speech and open our hearts so the person who is preparing to die can say what still needs expressing before they leave this earth.
Some details remain:
Post Jimmy’s Death Notes and To Do’s
The Shop at Blasdell Nursery
Dave Bukaty
Church - ?
Return few checks
Flowers – Maureen’s
Sunday – final count
Call Karen J’s White Elephant
