In the weeks following what happened to my brother, I was ruined with sorrow. I remember little about the detail of that time, but am left with an overwhelming awareness of detachment – I was me… yet somehow… not. That is to say – my body was there, but I always feel like my spirit was elsewhere – wrenched away from the rest of me by the weight of my anguish and helplessness. In desperate attempts to get it back, I used to spend all night scavenging the internet for scraps of comfort. I felt a razor-sharp sense of isolation; I was looking for solace in someone – anyone – who would really understand how I felt but my searches bore no fruit. I whirled in an agonising loop -- I could not be comforted or of comfort to anyone. It was a very dark time. I’d lost my baby brother, and I didn’t know how to stop myself from falling out through the hole that he had left.
Even though it has been 15 years and the title of this post is exactly what happened to our family, I can’t bring myself to actually say that word. I’ve jailed those three syllables at the bottom of one of my lungs and never let them even whisper themselves out. I say, “…since we lost Jonathan,” or sometimes, “My brother died when I was 20.” I’ve talked here before about how talking about what happened usually makes other people uncomfortable on my behalf, so I don’t solicit conversation about it for their sake, really.
Jonathan is always in my thoughts. Sometimes I think about his life, sometimes I cry about his death. Sometimes I delight in his presence. Lots of times I am reminded of him because I hear sad news of similar tragedies in other people’s families.
A few years ago, what happened to me happened to someone I used to go to school with. We weren’t close; I couldn’t claim any particular acquaintance with him other than that we’d been in the same class in elementary school and high school but when I heard the news that his younger brother, too, had taken his own life I felt the shadow on my own heart make its presence known.
I feel an odd sense of … I don’t know – duty and obligation are both too strong a word; but I still wonder if I could be for others what I so desperately searched for all those years ago. But how do you make such an approach? You couldn’t, without appearing intrusive or creepy. But that sense, whatever it is, doesn’t ever seem to abate, and I think about my former classmate occasionally and wish we lived in the same town, such that the likelihood of our paths crossing might be increased. There is a lingering unresolvedness (and I know that’s not a real word) which burned a little warmer this week, fuelled by some sad news that another brother - a friend of a friend - had ended his own life as well. Last night I dreamed about it all. I woke up and wrote it all down (er… well, typed it into my iPhone). Click on the picture to read the dream properly.
I hope they're all okay.
Some reference: