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My brother, Stan and I are as different as peas and kumquats and have been since the day we were born. He is reserved; I am loud. He became an academic scientist, the kind who forgets to change his clothes while contentedly watching cells divide in a Petri dish for days and days; I loved the designer clothes that became a must-have for my career in broadcast news.  He lives on the east coast; I live on the west coast, 2857 miles away from him. 

When we were growing up, I thought my mom loved Stan more than me. She worked as a biochemist at Los Angeles’ Children’s Hospital and my brother was an ace chemistry major. I was more like my philosopher father. I loved books. I loved to write. I was emotional and broke every Asian math-whiz stereotype as I agonized my way through algebra and geometry. I still remember peeking in to our kitchen well past my bedtime to find Stan and our mom sharing hot chocolate and a private joke, or the latest New England Journal of Medicine.

“Why can’t you be more like Stan?” our mother would say, shaking her head in wonder at my latest report card filled, like it usually was, with mostly B’s.  Stan, on the other hand, made earning straight A’s look easy.  I was always “Very Good” in my mother’s eyes; Stan was always “Excellent.”

Her comparison haunted me and I have longed for her approval for nearly 30 years after my last report card.

When our mother was diagnosed with cancer, I wondered to whom she would turn for comfort?  Me, her “very good” daughter?  Or Stan, her “excellent” son?   

Despite Stan’s Ph.D. in cancer research from the esteemed Johns Hopkins University, he did not take leave from his academic career at Wesleyan University to manage our mother’s cancer treatment.  He stayed put.  I couldn’t understand why.  It was his calling. She was his mother and he was her favorite.

Instead, I flew back and forth from Atlanta where I worked for CNN, to Los Angeles to look after her and help her make decisions.  I was the one who took my mother’s HMO to task for not diagnosing her cancer sooner.

Where was Stan? 

Rightly or wrongly, I imagined him working happily in his lab, spending quiet nights grading his students’ papers, ordering take out and watching TV in bed, while I juggled single-motherhood, a demanding career and our rather grouchy mother who was losing her hair to chemo.  I did not call Stan and he did not call me.  It was much easier to imagine what the other sibling was thinking or feeling. Our differences through the years prevented us from sharing the most important moment in our lives. The silence grew into resentment. After years of playing second fiddle, I had a starring role in my mother’s life but it was not what I bargained for.

“Stan’s so busy, Carol. He can’t just leave,” my mother would say.      

I did not feel her gratitude or my brother’s admiration.  I felt used.  I felt like my brother was lost in academia. I wanted to shout over the phone, wake up! You’re the one she loves the most!

Cancer calls us to rise above our own expectations of what we think we can tolerate, or what we think we can give. It took months for me to understand this about my brother who in his own quiet way was doing his best. I didn’t fully understand this until I called him after our mother’s doctor told us she had run out of treatment options and said she “only had a matter of time now.” 

Stan paused for a long time over the phone. He did not react to the diagnosis. Instead, he shared a memory: “The last time I was home with mom, I was watching her through the garden window. She was moving slowly from rose bush to rose bush, pruning the dead flowers from the stems.  She seemed so small, so old.  But she was strong.  I can’t believe she could be anything else.”

There was nothing more he could say.

Stan stayed away in order to let something else grow:  Hope. His scientific mind would not allow for that. As a cancer researcher, he knew the odds of my mother’s survival. Her rare cancer, a skin lymphoma, was slow but adaptive and clever. He knew too much. 

I had chosen a life of diving fully into the lives of people in a breaking news story.  Stan had chosen science as a refuge, only to be tormented by our mother’s condition and the limits of modern research.  In the months—and now, years—since our mother’s diagnosis, we have all grown closer because indeed, modern research, a clinical trial has inexplicably bought our mother more time at the kitchen table, where the three of us can share our lives together, all doing the best we can.    

Former CNN anchor, Carol Lin is the mother of one daughter and the co-founder of TulaHealth.  She is a regular ShareWIK.com contributor.  Visit her on the web at CarolLinReporting.com.

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