HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

So far in My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid the distance between Kincaid and her brother has grown alittle bit again,but Kincaid is stillcompelled to do all she can for her brother.Her brother is being treated in a poor nation with few resources to spare on the terminally ill.In Antigua, hospitals don't have drugs on hand. So Kincaid had to have a family friend fill a prescription at a pharmacy for her sick brother.


"I felt myself being swallowed up in a large vapor of sadness...I became afraid that he would die before I saw him again...It surprised me that I loved him; I could see that was what I was feeling, love for him, and it surprised me because I did not know him at all."

"My brother who was lying in the hospital dying, suffering from the virus that causes AIDS,told the brother who is two years older than he is, the brother i am eleven years older than, that he had made worthlessness of his life"-p.g.29

"The way he said it,though,alerted me to something.He had not known or imagined that I,his own mother,could have in her life a someone about whom I felt the same way he felt about me."- p.g. 62

I found it intresting how Kincid's wonders whether or not if her mother's actions did indeed drive her into a better life as a writer in the U. S., than she could otherwise have had. And also, whether Mrs. Drew's relative coddling of Devon did not lead him to his carefree, Rastafarian lifestyle. I made think how many choices are decided for us ? how many paths are closed or open? I hope that in my final days wheather that be today or tommorow that Im overall happy with my choices , my decisions.It make's me think back to a quote in The Stranger "Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated."