My oldest brother would have been fifty-five years alive on July 4th.  He died by suicide in 2012. Eleven years later, I find it hard to express how it affected me and continues to weigh on my being.  

His only child, a son, turned sixteen this year.  He and his mother daily face the stark reality of my brother’s death. I have the LUXURY of distance. I can choose to avoid the pain of it, at least temporarily.

His death demarcates the EXACT moment my parents began to visibly and mentally age.  They were in their mid seventies then, enjoying retirement and grandparenthood. A wonderful life stage. For a time, their loss numbed their energy and emotional availability for the rest of us, the sibling survivors, and our families. Our relationships have been forever altered.

The night IT happened, my second oldest brother called me in the middle of the night.  We had a very strange conversation. I wasn’t really awake. I wasn’t aware of the time and tried to sound like it was just an ORDINARY call.  But it wasn’t. It was surreal. My brother, on the other end of the phone, was clearly not himself. It took the rest of the night for our words to translate into a small hint of understanding that my oldest brother was ACTUALLY DEAD.

I spent that first day sitting at the computer, watching all the messages stream in on Facebook, where I’d unceremoniously dumped the news.  I was too overwhelmed to do anything else.

I did not see the place where it happened. I did not have the opportunity to go through my brother’s things. I didn’t even see his body (only his wife identified him). He was cremated. I arrived TOO LATE to be a part of those moments. We’d had to make many arrangements for a long road trip with young children and an uncertain date of return..

I did get to go with my disoriented father to “PICK HIM UP” when the funeral home said he was “READY”.  Dad got lost on the way. He pulled into a fire station to get directions. Irrelevant details. Everything was irrelevant. We were stunned and enduring what we thought were necessities. We were moving like puppets with no self resolve, through what felt like someone else’s nightmare.

When I first saw my mother, she hugged me, tearfully saying, “This doesn’t happen to OUR family”. After the funeral, my father said to my sister, brother and I, “Don’t any of you PULL anything LIKE this on us again.”  Their words have remained in my ear as my mental health struggles play out and my own family’s difficulties have evolved. What Mark opened up (that was his name, MARK,) was a Pandora’s box of all the things that were NOT talked about in our family.  We knew my brother was a recovering alcoholic. We knew he took medication for mental illness. We knew he’d been a psychiatric in-patient. WE KNEW. 

I always worried he’d get killed doing something wild like rock climbing or from a grizzly bear attack. An accident was probable (a gruesome, unintentional death would have, perhaps, been easier for us, I don’t know).  I wasn’t prepared for his death by his own hand.

I held what was my brother in an urn on my lap. That’s the closest we’d been in many years.  We’d always  had a complicated relationship. I feared him as much as I adored him. Clutching his urn felt like a violation on my part. It was a much needed confirmation of his death.  However, I wondered for months whether it was really him in that jar. Maybe he faked his own death? He was smart like that.

During the ensuing months, I morbidly pored over the internet for information and descriptions of the “how’s” and the “what’s” of his method of dispatch.  I think he wanted to feel it, to know it was happening. You know, to be sure. I wonder if he changed his mind when it was too late?

I understand that he was in so much emotional agony that death seemed his only way to relief. Maybe he didn’t want to die, but it is certain he needed the pain to stop. The health system had worn out their resources without giving him peace. 

He loved his son more than anything. It doesn’t make sense that he would leave him or believe his son or any of us would be better off without him.  How could such an intelligent, creative man think so little of himself?  It is simply irrevocably tragic.

My faith tells me that God is not the source of our suffering. God walks this road with us and leaves no one alone. Suicide does not deter God’s love.  I take comfort in knowing God was with Mark, even if he wasn’t aware of this truth.  I believe God wept for my brother and received him into all peace.

We don’t remember him for that terrible day or his final desperate act for relief. We remember him for his life, and we honour him by living out  what we loved about him.  

I empathize deeply with his pain. I am angry with him, and with the powers that be that failed him. I am ashamed for not supporting him in his struggle.  I know now.  I will do everything I humanly can to make sure my children, my husband, and all whom I love really know it. I will tell them how important they are and how worthy they are to live. I will take my meds and engage in self care to ward off the lure of that horrible surrender.

Please take good care.  Be gentle with yourself and make lots of room to hold space for the ones you hold dear.