As I mentioned here, when talking about the passing of my friend Martín, the price one pays for a long life is having to say goodbye to people we love. Unfortunately, my brother Brooks is now in the end stages of dealing with cancer, and has transitioned from treatments aimed at holding off the disease to palliative care aimed at making his passing easier. Not surprisingly, the idea of “legacy” has again been on my mind. And there is a lot to say about that with Brooks.
First, there are the legacies he left with me personally. As a kid growing up in a stunningly dysfunctional home, Brooks was one of the few steady voices I could always turn to, and he helped form many of the values I carry to this day. He always put a premium on doing what was right, even when it wasn’t easy, and on working to support those less fortunate than ourselves. When I was in elementary school, he would pay me to clean his car before he went on dates (an old-school VW Safari Van, with 23 windows that needed to be cleaned inside and out). He was generous with the pay ($5, which at the time seemed exorbitant), but also was very insistent that the job be done well (cleaning is not my strong suit, so it required a lot of QA/QC on his part). I recall once asking him why he needed the car to be so clean, given that it was a old and beat up. He told me that it was because if a girl didnt like him because his car was old or inexpensive, that just means that he didnt want to waste time with her anyway, because that means she cares about the wrong things. But that if your car was dirty and cluttered, that reflected on something you could do something about no matter your economic circumstance. Fifty years later, that still seems wise (full disclosure - my car is consistently a disaster inside and out, so wisdom observed is not necessarily wisdom received).
From the time I first recall, Brooks wanted to be a lawyer. But not just any type of law - he always aspired to be a public defender, so he could defend those who didnt have the means to defend themselves. He scraped by financially in law school at UC Davis so he could reach his goal - I recall that he would allow himself the luxury of as many banana pancakes as he wanted and a carton of orange juice on Sundays, to treat himself for his skimping the rest of the week. And right out of law school, he got a job at the Orange County Public Defender’s office, where he spent his career until retirement, doing exactly what he hoped to do. I recall him coming home with his brand new vehicle - a white, 1984 Toyota pickup (base model, of course). Years later, he gifted that truck to me, and that was the car Theresa and I used to travel down Baja in 1994 where we got engaged.
Years later, when I was finishing graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Theresa had started classes at UC Davis herself, I was living in my office for 6 months while I finished my thesis. I was sleeping on the floor at night, and eating ramen 3 times a day, when one night Brooks called from outside the building. He had brought a foam chair that folded into a bed, blankets, and boxes of food and drink. He didnt stay long, and certainly was not looking for gratitude or plaudits - he was just being generous for the sake of being generous.
This was how he lived his life. I could tell a thousand similar stories, but the one that strikes closest to home is when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had the misfortune to have some doctors who did not think his symptoms/PSA levels merited more than watchful waiting of annual blood test results, and by the time he got treatment, while things initially looked successful, his PSA essentially never got to zero, so they knew that it had metastasized. Unfortunately, they could not find it on any scans for quite a while, making it tough to treat. Brooks used this experience to tell all of his brothers to be vigilant about bloodwork and checkups.
Coincidentally, I at the time had elevated PSA, but my General Practitioner confidently assured me that, despite family history and elevated PSA, he was certain there was nothing amiss, and refused to refer me to a specialist. Brooks, as usual, helped me. He spoke with his oncologists to find out who *they* would turn to if they wanted the best possible care, and they all recommended Dr. Christopher Kane at UCSD (who is, by the way, phenomenal, and now dean of clinical affairs for UC San Diego School of Medicine and CEO of UC San Diego Health Physicians). Unfortunately, Dr. Kane was out of my network, and it was going to take weeks to transfer primary care physicians to get to see him. So Brooks, being Brooks, paid for me to go out-of-network for my initial testing, and the results showed I needed to immediately get surgery to avoid metastasis. Dr. Kane and his staff helped me get through the administrative mess, and I had surgery in 2014. Of course, when I woke from surgery, there was Brooks - sitting in my hospital room, reading a book and offering to get me water. Now almost 8 years later….well, I am still here and feel healthy. And I quite literally owe this not only Dr. Kane and his staff, but to Brooks, since I would undoubtedly have let my GP doom me with his incompetence.
I was fortunate to get to spend a good deal of time with him near the end, while he was still in full control of his (remarkable) faculties. As always, he had a sober, rational attitude about his fate that I am confident I could never manage. I once mentioned that it seemed particularly unfair that he, who almost never drank, never used recreational drugs, and worked out his entire life, should get struck down by multiple cancers while we less-salubrious Talleys were still around. He replied that life simply wasn’t fair, but that had he not been so healthy, he might not have made it so many years, and been able to spend so many great years enjoying his family. I can guarantee I would not be so sanguine in similar circumstances.
So back to legacies. It is easy to get caught up in the “big” stuff…Brooks saved my life, he supported friends, family, and strangers; he raised two wonderful kids, and left a legacy by instilling knowledge, ethics, and life lessons in many of us. But I also am kind of blown away by how many lives he touched - the literally hundreds of people he defended who had no one else to defend them; the thousands of people he touched by the small acts of kindness that typified his life….the ripples from where he stepped in the world will be radiating out for many, many decades.
Brooks passed away early this morning, and while I miss him already, I also feel very fortunate to have had him as my brother.