A Long Time Going

by Jami Hunt-Williams

A miraculous life deserves a resounding tribute... this is mine. My 54-year-old autistic and developmentally delayed brother, John, is battling colorectal cancer for the third time in his life. This time, he will lose; it has metastasized, and it is terminal. John knows this, as do I, and yet he lives. I don't mean that he survives; I mean he lives with a passion that can only be described as... odd. I suppose the easiest way to break it down is to say that he is not living like he is dying. John is living a simple, quiet life, the life he always wanted. As his caregiver and sister, I have spent my life surveilling my brother, from trying to figure out why he is the way he is to bearing the brunt of the punishment for childhood misbehaviors that were usually his idea... I swear. This man has been the forerunner of my own existence. I rightfully inherited all of the ridicule and cruelty heaped upon him because in the 1970s, in rural Missouri, no one knew what autism was. It was something more lethal than a gunshot wound to the it was misunderstood and different, and it was seemingly neverending. At least the gunshot wound, if positioned correctly, would kill you quickly. But something happened that changed all of that. As I fought tooth and nail to get out of that town and never come back, John found a rhythm to living there, sharing a home with our mother. He became a member of the community, a contributing member, volunteering his time to help in community projects, attending church regularly, even procuring a golf cart so that he could go fishing out at the community lake. He mowed yards, helped Mom take care of the house, even went on a trip to Washington, D.C., as a chaperone with the high school. And as he was changed, it changed me as well. When John received the first diagnosis of cancer, it was stage four. John not only lived through it, he thrived. The doctors were stumped. I had an idea that it was his autism that saved him. There was no emotionality, no anger, no pleading with the universe, no giving up. There was only cancer and the battle against it. And he won for nine straight years. It came back three years ago with a horrifying vengeance. It is more extensive, uglier, and more malicious than before, wrapped around bones, settling in his lungs. And yet, John lives, through radiation, through chemo, through COVID-19. Most people spend their lives trying to figure out their ministry to the world, the gift that they can give and leave behind as a legacy. John's ministry is living as John does. Simply living, and living simply, but living as if he understands the complexity of finding joy in every single day, every single task, every single breath. Everyone is born with a question, my mother would say. They spend their life trying to find the answer. But John, my mother insisted, was born with his response and would thus live his life accordingly. As a writer, I feel a deep obligation to tell not only John's story but the story of those of us who have been so intersected by his life. Finally, as a sister, I feel it is my purpose to settle my own odds at the universe, so to speak. This book has an accompanying podcast where I interview my brother. At the end of some of the chapters, you will find QR codes that, when scanned, will take you to one of the podcasts where I interview John, and he tells his story in his words. This project was started as part of my thesis project for my MFA at Lindenwood University, the blending of writing as storytelling and audio from the primary source as a structural scaffolding to make the story more alive. In the middle of it, I was interviewed by some veteran podcasters who told me that what John and I were doing was actually creating a new genre of the legacy podcast. We hope you find something useful in this unexpected legacy.

199 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2021

About the author

Jami Hunt-Williams was born and raised in mid-Missouri, an hour away from the Mississippi River in the small town of Shelbyville. She began to write poetry at the age of six and by the time she was seven she had pretend published over 100 poems, all of which were approved with love by her Grandma Mac who suffered through days of playing school as the student and playing church as the lone member of the congregation.
Williams was, as one might suspect, an awkward teenager and she grew into an awkward adult. She left high school a semester early and landed in her favorite "small town" in the whole world, Hannibal, where she attended Hannibal-LaGrange University.
Of course, she had absolutely no business going to college because she had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Oh, she had a plan: she was going to drive around the US and write poetry just like Jack Kerouac. But that dream was cruelly crushed by reality and a full-ride scholarship.
At college, she found acting and dug into her writing. She managed to cram four years of learning into five and left with a completely useless Liberal Arts degree and floundered around for the next approximately 15 years working in theatre, voicing over commercials, working as an on-air talent and radio producer. During this time she met and married her best friend in whole wide world, James and, despite the expert opinion of five specialists, they managed to produce one son, a ginger whom they named Kyser. Jami tells people who won't understand that they named him Kyser because he is the "king of their hearts." That's a lie. She chose the name Kyser because she has a daddy crush on actor Kevin Spacey and her favorite character of his is Kyser Soze (a.k.a. Verbal Kent) in the usual suspects.
At age 38, Jami finally found her place in the world as a journalism and broadcasting teacher at Mexico High School where she is now put into contact daily with impressionable young children who teach her how to properly use the lingo of today's youth and encourage her to listen to Bruno Mars and Niki Minaj.
When she is not working, she can be found reading, writing, watching every single episode of The X-Files ever made, and spending time with her beloved "boys," James and Kyser.
Jami makes her home in Mexico, Missouri, where she teaches, but also counts Hannibal and Shelbyville as home.

Reviews

[Kathy Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, my friend. ❤️❤️❤️