My brother Nick died suddenly in a car accident 20 years ago, he was only 30. I think of him every day . Those years that have passed since he died have not eased any of the longing to have him back , to see him walk in the room with his big grin and put his arms around me. I loved him so. He was the only ally I had as a child growing up in an abusive family, so the closeness and meaning our relationship shared was very intense for both of us. When he died I carried on living, just breathing, one foot in front of the other. The pain flattened me to the core. Pinned me to the wall, put me on the floor, rendered me still. I could not move or speak and went to a place within where I could only feel my love for him and it was so huge and sad and powerful that all I could do was surrender to it. Living became existing. Just getting out of bed in the morning and making breakfast and a cup of tea was a major achievement. Having to carry on and function, doing daily activities seemed like an insult to the fact he was not here anymore. I was newly sober at the time and stayed sober going to AA meetings. I didn’t want to drink or use drugs though, I wanted to die. I would leave a meeting, go home to bed and cry in the darkness feeling as if I was falling through the bed to an unknown place deep inside my grief . I consented in that time to let my grief take me where it wanted to go, I lost myself to it for a good two years. During those nights I would cry I felt the pain of him dying would kill me. Grief is physical pain, it was often a pleading to the darkness for him to please come back, a begging so painful it felt like it was tearing my body apart. I would promise myself suicide in the morning, if I made it through the night, but I always woke up and knew after all the tears that he would not want me to take my life, but carry on living. I dreamt of him all the time, and in my dreams he would walk towards me smiling holding out his arms before we would hug and laugh together. I saw him in the street so many times, young men who looked like him and I would follow them, then suddenly realising it was not him and that the truth was he was dead. Then the world would start spinning and I would have to get home quickly because the pain, fear and dread that rose up in me was unbearable. Being in my skin was unbearable, but somehow I got through it, days passed I existed, I didn’t kill myself. I guess I made that choice to go on living because that’s what he would have wanted, that’s how he loved me and that’s what it all came down to in the end, love. Nothing else mattered. The love we shared saved me. I honoured the loss of his life, that was the pain, but I also had to honour the love and that meant I had to carry on living, usually just one moment at a time. And that was enough. My world became small, I became small and life felt as fragile as it is, with this huge glowing love at the centre that I felt and had lost.
I wrote a small poem at the time about how I felt .
For Nicholas, how I grieve
I have wept long nights alone in my bed, under the dark sky full of stars where you are. I have no words only feeling, deep, intense, universal. The walls have heaved beside me my body cracked in two dissolving in bright light, the brightest yellow and white, as sunlight and the moon.
I fall. The knowledge of my tears as they break like waterfalls lead me to my resting place. The sum of my pain, simply Love.
It has to be enough to carry on breathing moment by moment because in grief just breathing is painful. Two weeks after he died I went back to work and it probably kept me sane. Friends questioned me on whether I was doing the right thing, but there are no rules with grief, you do what you have to do. I guess work gave me the structure that I needed, to survive at all. I had to learn to live with my loss, I had to learn to live with my grief for at least two years before I even started to surface from the unbearable emotional, physical and mental pain. I did find a way because I am still here, so I am going to share that, because right now people are experiencing grief , sorrow and trauma on an unprecedented level. Grief is an extremely lonely experience by it’s very nature. Those friends who were able to help me the most had experienced the loss of a loved one and knew what I was trying to express, and what I was going through. Just being with those friends without having to talk probably saved me too. I lost friends who had not experienced the loss of someone close . They could not handle my pain, I found out who my real friends were. That was ok because in the end I found I got what I needed. My life changed forever when he died, I was changed forever. But what never changes is the love I have for him. The love I probably took for granted when he was alive because it was as much a part of me as one of my limbs. Living with my grief has been loving him when he is no longer here, learning to handle that, to hold it and not be destroyed by the pain of the reality. Living with grief is unbearable but somehow it is possible.