Losing a sibling is like watching your past, present and future fly out the window. Memories of days gone by, a phone call we should make today and the dreams we take for granted in all of our tomorrows are swept away in a wave of grief so deep that it grips your heart like a vice and as it rushes it steals your breath, carrying it away. Suddenly you understand how it is possible for a heart to break. Suddenly you understand that heartbreak is tangible.
The events that lead to my brothers death are like pieces of a puzzle that still seem surreal in many ways. I still carry a guilt for not acting on my gut feeling, for not being there the way I should have, and for not trusting what I knew in my heart was true. I can’t imagine what my mother felt on that night. He called her, and she would later describe the deperatioin in his voice as tortured. To this day, and probably for the rest of time, I will wonder how her legs held her when the emergency squads told us what I already knew. Stephen was gone. An hour turned into days that night. Nothing seemed to move fast enough, not the ride to his home, not the arrival of the police or the length of time it took to enter his home. Thinking back, I don’t know why those minutes were so important, because inside I knew. I didn’t have to wait for them to say it. They wouldn’t allow either of us to see him, was there someone we could call? There is a time where automation seems to take over, and you move because you have to, but you certainly don’t want to.
In a split second, the nieces and nephews I hoped to hold, the sweet smile, the hugs that were so enveloping and so warm that they consumed your soul, the smile and laughter and teasing were gone. Faded photographs, a message on an answering machine, the small scar on my elbow from a water fight gone awry years before, vacations as children, and questions were all that we had to hold on to.
In early days, all of us experienced the same feeling, a well meaning “How are you?” had us gathering every bit of strength we could possibly muster. The screams and tears we buried so deeply because if we allowed them out they would be a force that could destroy humanity as we know it. I wrote. I prayed that a gunshot released my brother from the demons that held him in life, I got angry, I cried in the night, I dreamt, I spoke to him and held everyone else at arm’s length. Still, I can’t understand how my mother stands.
My mother, my remaining sibling and I have embraced this lesson. We are well aware that life is temporary. We allow nothing to beat us and we have learned an ultimate lesson in forgiveness.We all are like the Phoenix. We rise from the ashes, wiser, stronger and more determined. We believe there is a force that stands behind us, urging us on and pulling a few strings here and there. We heed what we know to be true within ourselves.
Through his death, we have learned to embrace life.
Logically, we know that none of us have the power to change the path another opts to walk. Logically we know that a minute or two would not have made a difference. Logically, time heals, but logic and emotion are two different things. Tomorrow marks five years since my brother’s suicide and though the waves that physically steal my breath come less frequently, still they remain.
Just for today, I allow myself to miss him and to let myself summon the feeling of those hugs…the ones that, miracously still comfort me
