Not Your Typical Prom Night

It's supposedly the happiest night of a girl's life (aside from her sixteenth birthday, that is). The night when every girl in the free world does her hair for far too long, spends much more time on her face than she ever will the rest of her life, and waits for Mr. Right to whisk her away to a night filled with excitement, music, friends and fun. Ah, prom night.

Strange how things always lood good in the theory stage,but never in the execution. When I look back on my prom night, I see those wonderful things that other girls saw-the pretty dress, the date, the car. However, that night I also saw something that a teenage girl should never have to see-a brother slowly dying of cancer.

This isn't as morbid as it sounds. My brother was never the morbid type. Everything was always "fine," even though as prom night approached, he couldn't see more than five inches in front of his face, and had limited use of his arms and legs because the cancer pressed on nearly every nerve in his body. It caused him excrutiating pain with every touch-every hug.

This is how I found him the night of my prom. As I entered the room, my father was already there, being a dad and sitting there with my brother, watching whatever sports event was on television.My brother made a feeble attempt to watch; he could even try to convince himself that he could see what was going on. Looking back on it, he had us all (except for my mother who spent twenty-four hours a day with him) convinced that he would get better. That night I fully believed he saw me walk in the room.

"Hi, my Dacy," he said, in the ever-so-cute baby talk tone he always used with me. I greeted him with a smile, which to this very day I am not sure he saw. I wanted to give him a hug, but the pain for him would have been too great. So instead I leaned over and gave him a slight kiss on the cheek. He heard my dress rustling as I did this, and I could see him strain to see it. He always tried to hide this act from us, but you couldn't help but notice it. He had this funny way of tilting his head downward, because to quote him: "It's like the bottom part of my eye in cut off and I can only see what is above this line." And he would hold his large had up and divide his eye in half horizontally, to try to demonstrate.

As he tilted his head, desperately trying to see me in all my prom-night splendor, I couldn't help but sob quietly. A tear hit my red satin gown and I tried to brush it away, absurdly believing that he could see me.

"This sucks, Mom," he said, frustrated. "I can't even see my own sister's prom dress." I took his hand and let him feel the satin of my dress. Being the protective sibling that he was, he felt around the neckline, and noticing there wasn't a neckline, began to chastise me.

"I don't know about this Dacy," he said protectively. He then tried to look around, and proceeded to call my date over and lecture him on what a gentleman he was going to be that night. I stood back and watched him, this bigger-than-average boy, who couldn't see or even walk on his own at this point, telling my date EXACTLY how he was going to treat his sister. I began to cry. I cried not only for his feeble attempt at protection (actually, as I found out from my date much later, my brother was still able to strike some fear into his heart), but at the fact that God, fate or whatever was doing this to a boy who all his life just wanted to be normal-who just wanted to live.

I knew at this moment, as I watched him talking, that he would be gone from me soon. Maybe I didn't admit it to myself right then, but I knew-somehow I knew, and I cried even harder. My brother heard me from across the room, and called me over.