I don't know who I am: life after my brother's suicide

My younger brother, who would be turning 41 this Sunday, violently and messily completed suicide almost 9 months ago. Since his death I have been on an exhausting, sometimes terrifying, cycle of emotions and thoughts and reactions to what has happened. And I just do not know who I am anymore. I don't know how to feel, what to think, how to react, how to be, what to say, what not to say, and what to do.

One minute I am walking around with a big strong smile, telling the world that I am fine, that my brother is now at peace, that i have so much to be grateful for, that life goes on for those of us left behind, that the world is beautiful, that the spirit lives on. This is what I want to hear, and this is what family and friends and neighbours and people in the butchers want to hear.

However, out of nowhere, while cooking supper, or brushing my children's hair, I get a sudden and sharp stabbing in the stomach that is so powerful that I can't breath. My brother is dead. And he died by his own hand. It is final, and it is very real, and surreal in equal measures. My physically healthy, handsome, intelligent, sweet, loved and loving brother, saw no other way, than to kill himself. And I'm not going to see him again. I'm not going to hear his voice, or hug him, and tell him that he was one of the most significant and important and loved people in my life.

I feel deep despair and darkness. I isolate myself, because the world carries on, and this doesn't feel right. I tell my friends to leave me to grieve, and then feel angry and alone when no-one is there. I feel an unbearable sense of guilt for not being able to stop this tragedy, but also livid that my brother has left me in this truly horrific way.

But then my seven year old comes home from school excitedly wielding a snowman made out of a sock, and my heart sings. And my ten year old makes me roar with laughter with one of her impressions of 'a Londoner' and in that moment, I feel pure joy again, and so very grateful and blessed for all that I have.

I don't know who I am anymore. For the first time in forty years I am brother-less, an only child, and this is completely alien to me, and wrong. But I do know that I am so very lucky to be a mother, and a wife, and a daughter and a friend, and that one day I will hopefully be me again too.

My brother's suicide: missing the signs

My brother was my friend, my enemy, my confidant, my thesaurus, my safe person, and we drove each other nuts.  But there has never ever been any doubt that we loved each other more than anything.  

We knew the loveliness, and the naughtiness, and the quirks of each other inside out, that only siblings can.  

Coming from a very tight single parent family, we had a unique closeness and a fierce protection of each other.

We shared our first flat in London together, we holidayed together, we made up songs, we went sailing, we bent the rules of Monopoly, we made dens, we cried, we watched films, we explored caves, we jumped in 12 foot waves, we fought, we climbed mountains, we had snowball fights, we laughed, we camped, we drew pictures, we went on bike rides.  We did everything together, and we really enjoyed each other's company (mostly!) 

As we went on through adulthood we became more separated by life stuff. Living in different parts of the country, new jobs, different lives.  

I got married and had children, and during this time he gradually became more distant and difficult to be around.  I became frustrated and upset with his unreasonable behaviour. He would say hurtful things, and I felt like I no longer knew him. 

In the last year we began slowly rebuilding our relationship.  He became more approachable, less angry, more peaceful.  This made me happy beyond words.   

I had absolutely no idea he had been hiding such an unbearable and painful mental illness all those years.  Looking back now, he may have had Asperger's, depression, or schizophrenia, and quite possibly all three.  He smoked a lot of cannabis, and had done so for years, and I believe this was a massive contributing factor to his ill health. 

I will never forgive myself for not seeing and understanding the signs.  It breaks my heart that he only opened up to me three days before he took his own life.  I begged him to see a doctor, get therapy, think about medication.  I told him to keep talking to me. I told him he could stay with us for as long as he wanted.  He nodded politely and said it all sounded like a good idea.  But I remember seeing the deadness in his eyes, his body limp and fragile. It was too late, he had already gone, and he was saying goodbye in the best way he knew how. 

Since he died, a large part of me has gone with him.  My connection with my childhood, everything that shaped me, and us, in those important formative years; all our first critical experiences, our shared memories, co-history, joys, sorrows, everything.  The roots to my past have gone.  For the first time in forty years I am brother-less, an only child.  This is totally alien to me, and wrong.  It's not who I am.  

He has left an unbearable, painful, gaping hole, but I take comfort that he is now free from his pain and has found peace.   But I wish with all my heart that there could have been another way. 

Mental health needs to be talked about.  #MHAW16 #mentalhealthawarenessweek

A few questions that I need to know...

What happened on the night you died?  Were you calm? Crazy? Possessed? Scared? Numb? 

Do you have any idea of the pain and devastation you have left behind? 

Could any of us stopped you from doing it, if we'd known?

What is it like in heaven? 

Can you hear me talking to you?

Will we be together again one day? 

What do you think of the rainbow bunting and fairy lights I've put in your room? 

Are you happy now? 

How do I reset the timer on the water heater? 

Why didn't you reach out and let us help you? 

Is there any part of you that misses us and your time on earth?

Do you love me?

Do you know how much I love you?

Will you come and speak to me in my dreams?  

I need you to.  

My brother’s suicide: Haunted

On Wednesday 30th March 2016, my little brother, aged 40, walked into my mum’s bedroom where she was resting, gave her an apple and a kiss, and then drove up to his special place in the mountains, and hanged himself.

Three weeks later, dealing with the hurt, the anger, the guilt, the shock, the unbearable sadness, and the what-ifs, I am haunted by so many things. 

Haunted by the walk we had in the woods three days before his passing, where he was paranoid, and told me that he was scared, and that he felt something really awful was going to happen.  I assured him that nothing bad was going to happen and tried to persuade him to see a doctor, and seek therapy and that there was nothing to be ashamed about.  He seemed open and receptive to the idea. 

Haunted by the last conversation I had with him next to my car in the driveway, where he told me that he had just started a new job, that he was happy, and that I must not call the doctor and make an appointment for him - just 24 hours before he took his own life.

Haunted by the 2.30am visit from the police, telling me... 'I'm very sorry but...'  I knew before they'd finished their sentence.

Haunted by the middle-of-the-night phone call to my dad, and the visit to my mum, telling them that their son, my brother, was dead.

Haunted by the police bashing down his bedroom door, and then searching the house for a note, while my mum lay in her bed in the next room, and I was hysterical.

Haunted by my brilliant and drunken night out in London, while my brother was alone, and scared, and in pain, in the middle of nowhere, ending his life.

Haunted by what I saw the following morning, when I visited the place where he ended it.  His car parked up, his shoes and socks and glasses on the floor next to the bed, the peel of an orange he had eaten, and a lot of carnage.

Haunted by the awful arguments we had in recent years, and my frustration at him being so utterly unreasonable and selfish and difficult, and not knowing that all that time he was covering up an unbearable mental illness.

Haunted by the rope he hanged himself with - it was the rope we swung from as kids, over the stream - such happy, great times. 

Haunted by his much loved childhood teddies I found in the bottom of his chest of drawers, and remembering the happy, gorgeous, sweet boy that he was.

Haunted by the way he left his bedroom - his washing drying neatly on a clothes horse, his unmade bed, his phone and his wallet both on his desk, together with the job application form that my husband and I had helped him fill out a couple of days before he took his own life. 

Haunted by the food he left in the kitchen: spaghetti, tea, herbs, garlic, marmite, salad creme, which I am now eating.

Haunted by my last actions, or lack of them.  I told him that he could speak to me any time about his worries, but I didn’t hug him.

Haunted by not seeing how tortured he was, so much so that he felt he had to end it all.

Haunted by guilt.

Haunted by how he must have felt the night that he hanged himself: scared, confused, 

desolate, desperate.

Haunted by my mind constantly playing tricks on me, and thinking that I catch a glimpse of him, or that I hear him, or catching myself worrying that when he comes back he will tell me off for eating all his salad creme.  

Haunted by the regular nightmares I have of chasing him around the mountains trying to stop him from doing it.

Haunted by not entirely believing that what is happening is real.

Haunted by the bouts of anger I have about why he would do such a stupid, selfish thing... about leaving me an only child, brotherless.

Haunted by never ever finding out what was going through his mind, when he left his new job at lunchtime that day, to go and kill himself.

Haunted by me not being able to make things ok for him.

Haunted by me thinking that him opening up to me recently, and joining us for meals and walks meant that a new happy and exciting chapter was starting for us - I thought I was getting my brother back, who I had missed so much. But what was actually happening was, he was saying goodbye. Forever.

Haunted by the realisation that him hanging himself is irreversible, and what’s done is done and there is no going back, no getting him back, no chatting with him again, no telling him that I love him with every tiny piece of my heart.

The pain is unbearable.