#38 New Angel

When my brother was diagnosed with ALS, he didn't cry. Everyone else seemed to, but he didn't, and so I didn't, because someone had to be strong for him. In those three years, between diagnosis and death, I became closer to him than I had been my whole life.

But it wasn't just because he was dying. Somehow, the disease made him stronger inside. Before this twist of fate, he was a Big City banker and I ran a small bookshop in the sidestreets of Soho. I never saw him then, only at Christmas, and my children never knew their uncle.

Then, on a Tuesday, I got a phonecall at work. My mother was in floods of tears, and begged me to come and see him, because it may be the last chance I got. She was being melodramatic. The disease took three years to switch off the last part of him, but I came.

He seemed fine, at first. Then he struggled to walk, then he couldn't talk, and two years ago he was put onto a breathing machine. I stayed next to him until the last, and his last breath was his happiest, I think.