This is something that was inspired by a pic that  autumnsunrise did last year. I am sorry for the pacing and the it is disjointed, but this is the way it played out as I was putting pen to paper.

The pic that inspired me can be found here: www.furaffinity.net/view/2453085/
The colored pic in the thumbnail is here: www.furaffinity.net/view/3860088/

The thumbnail of the pic was colored by none other than the uber talented  krechevskoy which can be found here: www.furaffinity.net/view/3860088/

now on to the story...


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In Memorium

By: Ainoko Ironrose

Pic © Autumn Sunrise



Author’s note:
This story is inspired by the picture drawn by Autumn Sunrise.
This is dedicated to my brother who was my birthday wish come true who was on this Earth for a short time.

For B.J. 2-11-1974 to 3-17-1981
May you forever be the dear little monster that you were here on Earth up in Heaven


You know, life changing events always hits you when you least expect them to and are more often than not very painful. This is one that has spanned a few years and is a story that needs to be told.

Where to begin, that is the most important question one asks when writing a story, well this time for me, it is very easy. You see I am the oldest child in my family and I have two sisters both younger than me (Three and four years respectively), and ever since they came into my life, they have been a constant source of trouble for me. They were always getting me into trouble with our parents every chance that they got which is what leads me to the story you are about to be told.

By the time my eighth birthday rolled around, I was a lonely little boy who longed for someone to be my confidant and best friend, so when it came time to blow out the candles on my cake and making the obligatory wish, I knew then what my wish was going to be. I wished that I could have a little brother to have adventures with, a brother to share secrets with, and a brother to help knock our sisters off their high and mighty pedestals. Little did that little boy know, at that moment his biggest wish was in the process of being granted and on February 11 the following year I got my wish. A baby brother! I was happy, ecstatic! I had a hard time waiting for our Mom to get home with B.J. so that I could finally see my little brother, needless to say that event finally happened. Nothing from that day on could ever take that happiness away. But I was wrong.

The day that began the long, but yet short road to complete devastation began when my brother was only five years old. I can still remember that day. We were living in Germany where my Dad was stationed in 1979. It was a Saturday and I was outside playing with a few friends while my Mom and B.J. were in the house. He had just woke from a nap and was playing tag with Mom. Somehow, he slipped on the wood floor and slid into a door jam hitting the right side of his belly pretty hard. From what my Mom said immediately he started complaining that there was bad pain in his belly, so my Mom called me to the house and said that she was going to the hospital up the road to get him checked out to be safe and to make sure that the injury wasn’t serious.

Two hours later, a good family friend came to the door telling my sisters and I to get some changes of clothing because we were going to be staying at her place for a couple of days. We were curious and was asking why. She then told us that our Mom and our brother were on their way to a hospital 75 miles away to get my bother an operation that he desperately needed and that our Dad would not be home for the next few days until B.J. was out of danger.

Three days later my Dad came home, and told us that we were going back to the States in two weeks because our brother had a serious cancer and that the facilities that he needed for his treatment was in Texas. So two weeks later, we were on the first flight back to the States and a short time later, we were in San Antonio going to the hospital where BJ was a patient. In the three weeks that he was in the hospital, he became a shrunken, withered little boy. The change that he went through was a result of the chemo-therapy and radiation therapy that he undergoing in order to fight the kidney cancer that he had. It was the sight of how frail that he looked that almost killed me that day, but, I knew that I had to be strong older brother and be there for him.

Shortly after getting back to the States, my sisters and I were sent to St Louis to stay with a close family friend so that we could get back to school, until Mom and Dad was able to get housing for us. Three months later we were back in San Antonio because my brother missed us as much as we missed him. Little did we know then, that we were only going to have him around for another year and a half. This, my friends, is where the story becomes interesting, and where you will quickly learn how my brother became an angel with horns AKA an angelic demon.

My brother’s ethics became known immediately after him and our Mom arrived in San Antonio and he was admitted into the Ft Sam Houston Beach Pavilion Hospital’s children’s ward. It all started with his first meeting with the charge nurse for the ward. She never let the children there play, watch TV, run around and make noise like children are wont to do whether or not they are ill. He would encourage the kids to play with toys all the while getting into arguments with the charge nurse about letting the kids play to help them get better. Eventually he did get the nurse dismissed from the children’s ward and into an adult ward that was more suited to her temperament.

He was also known to befriend kids who came into the ward for illnesses that were as bad as or worse than his. His closest friend was a 12 year old boy who was diagnosed with Leukemia and was going to lose his right leg to the cancer. This kid whose name was Richard, was going to run away as soon as his parents left the hospital when BJ approached him. I don’t know what all was said, but BJ and Richard talked for a long time before BJ convinced Richard to go through with the operation. Needless to say, Richard and BJ became the closest of friends, often disappearing for hours on end talking about things that close friends are wont to do.

Shortly after that, he began terrorizing the hospital every time he came in for his chemo and radiation therapies. Usually it involved giving the doctors a hard time for filling his veins with the poisons needed to kill the cancer and losing his hair from the radiation. One thing that you can say about BJ, is that he never let the cancer keep him down for very long. He was a staple in the hospital almost on a daily basis visiting the doctors, doing his own blood work in the path labs when he wasn’t sick, taking X-rays of his cat at times. I can honestly say that he knew more about what went on in a hospital, than the doctors and nurses did. One thing that he did for the kids in the hospital was getting our Dad to play Santa at the hospital every Christmas to help make the kids there happy. Our Dad played Santa at the hospital for nearly 18 years to honor BJ. Those were the happiest days that we ever had at the hospital.

It wasn’t until about a month before he was to leave this mortal plane that he really earned the title :The Angel with horns” That month was both the best and worst of my young life. My brother was put on a new type of Chemo that had to be taken orally, instead of getting it injected. He was on this new chemo for about a week when he told his doctor that he wanted to resume getting the chemo injections, surprised the doctor asked him why, and BJ said that the shot took the pain away faster. Mind you at that time I was terrified of getting shots until that day. It took a frail 7 year old boy to show what it is to do something that needs to be done even though the cost of doing it may be the same as or more than what your problem is then.

During that month, the hospital was having at health fair promoting proper eating habits, and had a special guest, the Nutra-Bird (Don’t ask). Well when Nutra-bird left for the day, it left behind a plush version of itself help promote healthy eating habits. Well, my brother decided that he was going to snag the little plushie and take it to the burn ward were there are some kids who had suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 50% of their bodies. He left the plushie in the burn ward telling the nurses that it will be their job to protect the bird after he was gone.

Then a week before he died he pranked his ICU ward by hyperventilating himself and putting the entire ward on code blue status. When the crash team ran into his room, they were surprised to see him on his bed laughing his little ass off at their expense. Come to find out, he discovered that the faster he breathed, the higher the numbers on the monitors he was hooked to went up, and the slower that he breathed, the lower the numbers dropped, hence the hyperventilation.