My Son's Little Brother

15 years ago they took a picture standing together at the top of the Empire State Building. This weekend they recreated that pose. It was so much more than mere testament to the passage of time.

When my son was in college he volunteered to be a mentor for a young boy, then aged nine, from a neighboring town. The young boy's dad was very ill and would soon succumb to cancer. Throughout this period my son would try to give comfort and friendship to his new "younger brother". It was a wonderful act on my son's part and one fully in keeping with his large heart and his abiding concern for the welfare of others.

Time passed, my son graduated from college, and for so many that would mark the end of this chapter of one's life. Other matters would intercede and this would become but a bookmark to be recalled with fondness and a measure of pride. But my son is not like most others.

The years have not always treated either my son, or his younger friend with unqualified kindness. My son has struggled with health concerns that have sometimes made the simplest of activities a chore. There have been times where it would have been most understandable if he turned inward to address his own issues.  And for the boy, turned young man, who lost his father at such a young age, tough times did not end with his dad's passing. Yet through each of their travails, there was a constant: my son would never waver in his focus and attention to his "ward".

Even when circumstances prevented these two from reuniting physically, there have been the phone calls, texts and emails. My son has also remained a committed presence to his younger brother's mom, whether it be in the occasional visit to her home, now more than 200 miles from where my son resides, or in remembering a birthday or other important milestone in her life, or that of her two children.

When the young boy's dad was so sick, their family made a trip to NYC and stayed in our house. It was intended as one last vacation as a group, one final memory of time well spent. And it was on that occasion that my son and his younger brother found themselves together at the top of the Empire State Building taking a photo to memorialize the moment.

This weekend the young boy, now a handsome, strapping 24 year old, came back to town for a visit, again using the residence of my wife and myself as temporary home. This time he arrived with a different family, his girlfriend and her daughter who was virtually the same age as that of a young boy who had stayed in our house a decade and a half earlier.

During the course of these past four days, my son, now 36 years old, stood next to his now taller younger brother recreating an image from a time long since passed.

I am proud of my son in ways that he will never fully understand, of his perseverance through the trying times, of his innate goodness, his unending compassion and brilliant mind. But if there is one image that most captures his essence and is of greatest meaning to me, it is of him standing next to his younger brother at a spot that commemorates the most unlikely and enduring of relationships, and the quality of man that my son is and will forever be.