Grief Graffiti

We did the best we could & celebrated in our own way. But for my younger, and only surviving, son this was a hard day. The the Survivors Guilt, the hopelessness, the lack of purpose & meaning all hitting at once for him. His older brother was his hero, his best friend & has been part of his identity since the day he was born. Troy has had his own setbacks in life, a near-fatal accident at 16 that shattered his humerus causing paralysis of his Right arm, a grand mal seizure at 19 that put him in the hospital in a semi-comatose state for over a week (and random recurring seizures since), and the subsequent battles with addiction from the opioids prescribed for these injuries. Add on his brother’s death & you have recipe for depression & anxiety.

I do my best to hold space for him through the waves of anger, despair & self-deprecation he experiences in waves while navigating my own waves of grief. It’s hard. It breaks my heart to hear him say “It should have been me. He was everything I’m not. It would have been better for everyone if I died & not him.” It’s not true, of course. But it’s his truth, it’s how he feels, and nothing I say can change that. I tell him his brother would want him to live life to the full, to do all the things he will never get to, to be happy & remember he’s always with him. But in the end those are really just nice thoughts, ones none of us knows for sure are true. On good days it’s a comfort, on the more difficult days they’re an insult.

Like everything I’ve experienced in the grief journey I turned to those who walked this road ahead of me for guidance & understanding. Here’s an excerpt of what I found:

“Losing a sibling as an adult feels like you’ve lost your past and your future. You can feel like you’ve lost your identity and your role within the family. Survivor’s guilt is common in adults, perhaps even more so than when a child loses a brother or sister.  In children, it’s often an undefined feeling of thinking that it might somehow have been their fault or something they did. With adults, it can often take the form of ‘it should have been me’ and an inability to be able to enjoy yourself because you don’t deserve it if your sibling can’t be there too. There are also so many ‘what ifs?’ especially when the death was an accident. What if I had gone there too?  What if I had driven her home?  What if I had gone to the shops instead? 

You can also feel like you’ve lost the part of your identity which defines your role as a brother, or a sister.  Whether you are the older or younger sibling, the scientific one or the artistic one of the family. We define ourselves in terms of our position in our family and that has irrevocably changed. Your job as a brother or sister has gone, and often the other relationships you have within your family change too with that loss. This aspect of loss can be greater the older you are when you lose your sibling and depending on how close you were and how much time you spent together. You might wonder who you are now and it can be a struggle to re-find yourself.  You have lost an anchor point and perhaps your support in life. You may feel a loss of sense of strength and balance.

One of the most common, and hardest things after the loss of a sibling is that grief can become a competition between the remaining child/children and the parents. You might hear: “you don’t know what it’s like to lose a child” and frequently people will ask you how your parents are but not how you are which can perpetrate the competition. Of course, if you’ve lost a sibling you’ll know it’s just not true that the grief is not as hard for a sibling.  It is just different but often siblings need to work harder to receive the respect and sympathy.

~Karen Castaño, griefandsympathy.com

And this article below which I sent to Troy today, his first birthday without his brother:

“Some people tend to imply that the loss of a brother is not as painful as that of the loss of a parent or a partner, but I beg to disagree. The pain and the void are no different. Losing a brother will be like coming home to an empty house. For the first time, you will miss the annoying sound of his bullying. You will search for the messy clothes scattered on the sofa, or expect him to be snatching your food at any moment.. You will look around and see a peaceful house without his crazy antics, loud laughter, and petty fights, but you know that this was not the peace you wanted. Silence has never been this uncomfortable.

This is how his absence sets in. You lost your best friend and your worst enemy at the same time. You will go into his room, sit on his bed, and hold on to every little thing that still bears his presence. His scent will linger along with the fading memories of all your good times. The pain will creep slowly into your system, and a part of you does not want to believe it yet. He was just here yesterday, calling you funny names and teasing you over the phone. He was just here reminding you that you cannot have a boyfriend unless they beat him at some stupid games. He was just here loving you in a subtle and weird way as every brother does. Who would have thought that he would be gone in a blink of an eye?

The acceptance will not spread like wildfire. Instead, it will be a slow burn. His death will sink in slowly as if it is just a bad dream and there is still a chance to wake up. You will wrap yourself in memories of the good old days when life was as simple as playing heroes and villains. Your big brother was always your brave knight who would come to save you from monsters and bad guys. You will smile at the memory of him being your real-life hero against all the bullies in school and the jerks who came to break your young heart. And as you go through this painful stage, you have no other wish but for him to come and rescue you.

But you know that it is never going to happen anymore.

You know he is not coming back, so you have to take over his role and save yourself. You will have to endure the harshness of the world without your hero. There will be days that you have to cry alone. There will be victories you will celebrate without being completely happy. There will be good days that would have been better if he was here, ruffling your hair or patting your back.

The pain will be comparable to breaking your leg and losing your crutches, except that this pain has no end. You will fall on your knees and feel helpless because he was always one of your strengths. Your backbone. Your lifeline.

Regrets will then flood your thoughts. You should have been a better sibling. You should have ditched classes and come home to his birthday had you known his years were numbered. You should have appreciated every irritating tease while it lasted and told him how you love him still.

You should have answered his last call to you that you chose to cancel because you were in a bad mood.

And you wish you could turn back time.

Here’s what I’d like to say to others who are living with the loss of a brother . . .

Be strong. There will be dark days ahead, but he did not save you from your problems before, only for you to give up after his death. Embrace the pain as if enduring it will make him proud of you. I know it will never be okay, but he would have wiped your tears and laughed at your messy face if he was here. He would tell you to be strong and to live for him. He would tell you to continue breathing no matter how painful it is to live without him. 

Live the life that he wanted for you. 
Go to places he always dreamed of going to. 
Chase the dreams you once told him you would reach.
Take him with you as you move forward. 
Honor him in every step of the way. 
And remember him. 
He may have taken his eternal rest, but you were one of the reasons why his life was well lived. 

Whisper to the winds all the words you longed to say to him as if he is here – because he lives on . . .

   through the memories you kept in your heart.
   through the everlasting love you continue to give him.
   through the person you have become.

It will be a long and painful journey towards healing, but you are your brother’s sibling. You are stronger than you think, and he will forever be proud of you.”

~Frances, griefandsympathy.com