Sophie & Abigail

As much as this is about Brennan, this is about his sisters.  What happens to him has impacted their lives significantly.  I am not sure that sisters could love a brother any more than Sophie and Abby love Brennan.  

Sophie's love shows with the tears and emotions she shows whenever Brennan isn't doing well.  She will run and hide, but she will also cry.  She just doesn't know what to do when things aren't as we know they should be.  It hasn't gotten better.  Sometimes she puts on a brave face and tries to be part of the team that we turn into when Brennan has a seizure - someone stays with him, someone runs for the oxygen, and if there's another person, the pulsox machine is brought too.  Occasionally Sophie will run for something and bring it right to the person who stayed with Brennan.  Other times she will stand only so close and be unable to move close enough.  I knew that seeing Brennan in the hospital would be the most difficult for Sophie.  She never really wanted to visit.  Phone calls and texting was perfect.  When we brought her to the hospital for her first visit she stayed in the bathroom for awhile, complained about being sleepy, and curled in a ball on the little couch.  The next visit was after surgery and I suggested she stay on his left side since the scar might be difficult for her to see.  She hid in the bathroom, complained about being sleepy, and eventually she came around and looked at and talked to Brennan.  We all laughed about inappropriate jokes and it was good.  

Alan recently described Abby as the kind of person that takes you as you are, and that includes her brother.  There is no warming up to his scar.  She has never panicked when seizures happen (she's been known to wave us off like she's got it all covered).  She adapts games to whatever his ability is for the day without saying a word to him about it.  She just bounces over to him in the same way she has always bounced through life - except for the moments that she is setting someone straight about something she feels they need to be set straight about.  She isn't going to take shit from anyone and she isn't going to let the situation with her brother take anything away from them living (she's the one that begged for me to let them go on bumper cars just minutes after Brennan had a seizure at the Arizona State Fair).  

And Brennan loves his sisters.  More than once Brennan has told me that if it had to be him or them to have epilepsy, he would rather it be him.  

  

Abigail, Brennan, & Sophie