Title:My Brother
Author:Jamaica Kincaid
Published in 1997 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
I got a phone call saying that my brother is sick and dying of HIV/AIDS. I return home Antigua to go visit him. He thought i would not come to see him but i did after all. I found out that he got the disease from having unprotected sex from multiple different women. I always told him to be careful but he always seemed to brush it off. Everyday my mother seemed to be taking care of his every need in her own way. i don't think i loved my brother, i don't know what it is was love or not. I made a phone call to get my brother medicine called AZT. My brother soon started to take the medicine and began feeling better. He gained weight and was able to do normal things. It was impossible for him to do start a family and do things he wanted to do because he had the virus but should i kill his dreams? I said my goodbyes to my brother and my mother finally returning to my onw family.
"My mother loves her children, i want to say, in her way! And that is very true, she loves us in her way. It is her way. It never has occurred to her that her way of loving us might not be the best thing for us. It has never occurred to her that her way of loving us might have served her better than it served us."(Pg. 16)
I felt like i understood where Jamaica Kincaid was coming from about her mother having a way of loving their children. I feel like some mothers feel as if the way they love their children is the best solution possible but maybe it isn't at all and i think that's why she had some many issues with her mother because of that.
"But when he lay in the hospital, none of his friends came into his room and they would say something to him. They never came in. After they had seen him they left and they never returned again." (Pg.42)
When i think of somebody being sick or dying, we greet those people and try to cheer them up and make them better no matter what disease or sickness they have. In Antigua if you contracted AIDS you are automatically abandoned and nobody pays attention to you. I find that to just be rude and disrespectful to the person why do they have to be mistreated even though they might possibly die wouldn't it be good for the person to have that special comfort?
"I missed him sometimes when i took my children to the school bus, sometimes when the snow fell; i talked about him, his life, to my husband, i talked about him to people i knew well and to people i did not know very well. But i did not think i loved him; then, when i was no longer in his presence, i did not think i loved him."(Pg.50)
It wierd how she only "loves" her brother when she sees him but other times she doesn't know exaclty if it's love or not. I don't understand that maybe that she doesn't see her brother often that's why she doesn't love him or is because of the whole relationship with her mother. WIth my sister i love her dearly and would kill for her. I feel like ever silbing should be there for each other no matter what and should love each other, that's your blood.
Reading so far, it's made me think of the other side of illness and dying such as people not caring about you and moving on with their lives. Not everybody sees this as a chance to do everything in their power to spend that special time with someone but to just continue on with their life and not have any sympathy. Jamaica Kincaid seems to do everything in her power though to make her brother better or slow donw his illness and it's something i would do for my family as well. It didn't matter how long she didn't see her brother or how much time passed she did what she needed to do to improve his life and so did his mother even if both women didn't see eye to eye for things.
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