My Brother's Way

Ira Berkow

Prediction 1

Judging from the title, what is this article supposed to be written about? Pay attention to the way the author begins his story.

One evening the phone rang while I was visiting my parents. It was my younger brother, Steve. "Just a minute," said after an uncomfortable pause. "I'll get Ma or Dad."

"Okay," he replied.

That was our entire conversation. We had hardly said much more than that to each other for the past few years. He had stopped speaking to me and never told me why. I had tried reaching out to him a few times but had always felt rebuffed.

Over the years Steve and I had a fluctuating relationship. A separation of five years in age makes a big difference when you're young. In my late 20s I had moved to New York to become a sportswriter, while Steve had become a teacher in a Chicago grade school.

My parents regularly urged us to reconcile. You only have one brother, they told each of us. You should be friends.

A few weeks later I was speaking to my parents on the phone and heard trouble in my mother's voice. Steve, she told me, was to begin chemotherapy. "Chemotherapy?" I said, taken aback. "Why?"

Three years earlier Steve had been told that he had leukemia, but the disease was non-aggressive; he would most likely live to 70. Somewhere along the line, however, his situation changed dramatically.

Prediction 2

The two brothers were not on good terms and their parents often urged them to improve their relationship. Now that the author learned that his brother's case of illness was obviously getting worse, did he call his brother right away?

After hanging up, I sat by the telephone. Should I call Steve? The attachment to my brother, no matter how distant, was still there, still real. I felt it in my bones.

I was still stalling when my brother beat me to it. "I want to talk to you," he said after I answered the phone. "Don't you think it's about time we stopped this nonsense?"

Then he told me that at an event two years earlier, I had neglected to introduce him to former White Sox pitcher Saul Rogovin, though I had introduced our father to Rogovin. I didn't temember the incident, and now I apologized.

The ice broken, we talked about day-to-day concerns. I asked how he was feeling, and he said the chemo was rough, "but if it's going to do good, then good."

"If ther's ever anything—" I began.

"I know," he said, "I know that."

Prediction 3

So it was the younger brother who made the first move and the misunderstanding between them was instantly removed. Then, how could the author feel so sure that "the attachment" to his brother "was still there, still real"? Is he going on to tell us something about his brother's peculiar way of dealing with life?

We talked about work. Steve taught eighth grade at an elementary school in a kind of no man's land between black gangs to the west and Latino gangs to the east. Steve had drifted into teaching. For the first several years after college he had looked around for other things to do, but nothing else either satisfied him or worked out. And then slowly, he grew more committed to his work with kids, until it took hold of his mind and heart.

He really cared about his students. He visited their homes, talked with their parents, made sure they had something to eat before school began, took them to places he loved that they otherwise might never visit, like the Chicago Botanic Garden.

I was proud of my brother. And I had told him so, although sometimes I'm not sure that I convinced him. I assumed that for Steve there were difficulties in being the less visible brother.

But even while growing up, Steve had to live in my narrow shadow, the way younger brothers often must. Not only was he younger; he was also short and very shy. I was less reserved, and I was also athletic. But a childhood case of measles had left Steve nearly blind in one eye, which made playing sports hard.

Once, he confided in me that he had considered going out for the high school baseball team. "But I wanted to live with the idea that I could've made the team," he said. "Maybe it was a way to save face if I hadn't made it."

One of his heroes was Paavo Nurmi, a Finnish track star of the 1920s. On the wall above his bed, Steve had taped Nurmi's photograph. He admired him, he once told me, because "He tried real hard. He was 75 or 80 years old, and he was still running. Still trying. Still determined."

About seven years later, when Steve was a freshman at Southern Illinois University, he called our parents to tell them he was homesick and wanted to leave. They asked me to call him. I talked for quite a while; thought it was best for him to stay in school and told him why. I followed up with a letter.

A few days later I received a reply. "Dear Ira," he wrote. "Thank you for writing me. I really appreciate your advice because I realize quitting school could have started a chain of quitting. It's the most wonderful feeling when you have someone to turn to when you need help. Love, Steve."

And now talking to Steve on that February night, I realized that there was in his voice a determination to patch things up between us again.

Prediction 4

With the breach healed, the bond of affection between the two brothers was, of course, further strengthened. How does the author make it known to us—with some general remarks or with a detailed description of some particular moment?

Steve was in and out of the hospital getting chemo over the next few months. I shuttled between New York and Chicago, and at the end of April I spent several days with him.

The afternoon after I arrived we talked about mortality. "I feel I've been blessed," Steve said. "But Ira, I don't want to go now. Judy and me—we have places we want to go and see. And I want to see my daughter graduate from high school. I—" He turned toward the window.

"I know," I said. "I know."

When it was time for me to leave for the airport, I walked over to my brother and put my hand on his shoulder. "I love you, Steve," I said.

"I live you, Ira. C'mere." He grabbed my jacket, pulled me to him and kissed me on the cheek. I turned to my family, waved good-bye and walked out. If I had tried to speak, I would have cried.

I just said it, I thought on the way to the airport. I said, "I love you." I had never told my brother that before. He had never told me, either. How strange. Why was it so hard?

I felt a sense of fulfillment, of deep satisfaction, in having finally expressed my feelings to my brother. Of course, I had Steve to thank for making the first move. In the end the younger brother had taken the role of the older brother.

Prediction 5

Leukemia is a vicious illness of blood, we all know, but did chemotherapy provide Steve with a chance of recovering from it? Could a medical miracle happen with him?

I spoke with him by telephone a short while later. "The hospital rabbi came to see me," he said. "We spoke for about an hour, and I got a little emotional—I cried twice."

"You did?" I asked. "When?"

"Well, once when the rabbi held my hand."

"And the other time?"

"The other time was when I told the rabbi about you."

At Steve's funeral the chapel was standing room only. Old and young, men and women, blacks and whites. It was wonderful. Steve's entire eighth-grade class had come. "More of the kids wanted to be here," a student told me, "but the principal said they couldn't have the whole school empty."

After the service Judy showed me letters from students, telling her how Steve had urged them to go on with their education and advised them on how to deal with problems in the streets and with their families. Wrote one student: "He wasn't just a teacher—he was my best friend. Every time I needed help, he would never let me down."

None of us in the family had had any idea how my brother had so profoundly affected his students' lives. I'm not sure even he realized it.

I considered what makes a person important. There are the people in the spotlight whom we honor but who often go about their lives in selfish pursuits. Then there are the people like Steve, who make a hands-on difference but for whom no monuments are built, no streets named, no parades thrown.

Prediction 6

The story might as well have ended here, for what is supposed to be said seems to have aiready been said. The author, however, would not wind up his story this way. What would he add to it by way of "the epilogue"?

I visited my brother's grave site a month after he was buried. It was still so unbelievable I began to choke up. 60 A pot of flowers lay beside the grave, placed there by Judy and their daughter a day earlier. I had brought my own tribute to Steve—this good and blessed and brave man. From my pocket I took a photograph from a sports magazine and placed it on his grave. It was a picture of Paavo Nurmi, running like hell.