a younger brother's love for his sister

Am I speaking of one of my three younger brothers expressing heartfelt emotion for me?
No, my dears.
I speak of Christopher Soucy's brave and constant love for his older sister.
On this eve of the farewell party for her cultural hub, he offered remembrances of her from their early years as children.

"Fears My Sister
Taught Me:
tales from a BIG little brother"
promised us a retelling
of the laugh-out-loud stories
we had heard over the years,
as well as hinted at new tales.
As Chris is a master storyteller,
of course I went,
as did mi dos amigas!
The place was packed!

The stage was pretty sparse.
A big armchair sat
in the lone spotlight,
a big armchair soon occupied
by the BIG -
in every sense of the word -
little brother of JinHi.
The were-deer
offered the only distraction
from the words on the screen
or the man in the chair.

Chris engaged the crowd by having us laughingly chant the words as they appeared on the screen.
Bugs!
(Especially those that would crawl into your ears and lay eggs that would hatch and EAT YOUR BRAIN!)
Spilled Milk!
(Don't let it touch you or it would rot your flesh!)
Toilets!
(Dumping sewage straight into the Devil's house and making him roar in anger!)
Dwarves Without Hats!
(Sneaking into your bedroom capless so you wouldn't know they were there!)
Hilarious!!!

Then, suddenly, the tone changed.
When we repeated the words "Osteogenic Sarcoma",
there was no lilt to our voices.
Now was there one in his as he told of being a twelve-year-old
whose adored teenaged sister
was losing her leg -
and possibly her life -
to a disease he'd never known.
How did she happen to get it?
Through her age and her genes,
just like the football player Freddie Steinmark.

Then came the truly scary stuff.
"Doctors are just people."
I remembered telling that to JinHi four years ago, when the cancer showed up in her lung.
Dr. Peggy Byck had related that fact to me some years earlier, when my abdominal distress sent me through a summer of specialists and tests (before an ultimate diagnosis of lactose intolerance).
How unsettling to see the words illuminated on the screen.
How sad to realize the truth in them, once again.

At the end of the almost hourlong program, we all had a much better understanding of the depth of love between Chris and his "big" sister.
We all felt closer to both of them, too.
As Chris once told me, after a ghost tour he led, "you and me, we have a history."
We all do, now.
Thank you, Chris, for sharing your story.

i thank You, God, that I was there to bear witness, in a room filled with love.