Wednesday 18 May 2016

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

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