Grief Awareness, Sibling Suicide Loss and Researcher Positionality

The Ninth-Year Reflection

15^th December 2020 - At 9 years since Martin died, I do find myself making memories out of the experience of living after his physical departure. I am no longer confined, restricted to the still arduous task of trying to locate past moments (fond or otherwise) from the times we were physically in the same world - I have raked and raked over the history at this point, and whilst there are still some blockages, inaccessible stories, (something that is certainly a painful, frustrating truth to reckon with), I now can welcome the fact that he sometimes pops-up in new life-moment recordings (albeit in a differently-toned form). I may no longer be able to make or share new memories with my brother, but he can still appear in ‘present moments of significance’ nonetheless, like the one I wrote below (about my daughter, then aged 4 years, drawing a picture of us all for the 6th anniversary of Martin's death). And these new moments in themselves, firstly, are important as markers in reference to my sense of my own movement after losing him; secondly, help me to see and fully recognise that my brother is entirely connected to and embedded in me and my family going forward (a comfort in itself – he’s not forgotten), and thirdly, can create images about and help explain to others what the losing of someone close to suicide means at the detailed, daily-lived level, (and how the longer term experience manifests once the ‘original dust’ settles, so to speak). Martin's essence endures. 

The Portrait

Shoulders hunched over, heavily breathing, she carves into the paper, pressing the pen so strongly it cuts a groove with flaked edges into the sheet.
“mmmm, then aaaah”, I spell.
“I know that, shhhhhh!”
Silence. I watch her form the letter shape. I can’t resist.
“And the next is rerrr.”
“I can do it myself Mummy!” she yells, raising a glaring, chin-shoved-forward face at me, jamming her hands to her hips in such a way that dread of trying to remove in the next wash the pink marker that’s just been scraped into her clothing is immediately provoked. Why did I not give her the washables?!
“Ok, ok!” My palms in arrested-resignation, I lean backward from her fury.
Concentration resumes. She runs out of white space, meaning his name has to be split onto two lines. It would have been so perfect to see it on one line. She concludes and presents the page to me as a certificate. Proud as punch. “Look, Mummy! I wrote Martin!”
“That is just beautiful darling! What good writing, what a clever girl you are!”
“You can keep it.”
She pauses, and I can see the cogs a-twirling.
“Actually, you can’t, it needs a picture.”
Hunching resumes, and she puts her right forefinger tip to her lips.
“What colour eyes does Martin have?”
Sapphire, utterly, until they faded to grey. “Blue,” I reply.
She beams, gasping “The same as me!” before clapping and bouncing. Pointing straight at my head, the demand comes: “Get me the blue pen.”
“Yes, boss,” I salute, before rummaging in the old tea-set suitcase that is now home to a multitude of drying out or blunt felt tip pens.
I watch her create a circle-ish body and attached head (no neck), stick legs and u-shaped feet, twig arms (blob hands).
“I’m going to put a blue flower on his dress because he liked blue flowers.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, he did” with affirmative nod.
I have no idea if he liked blue flowers; she makes me wonder if he did. Wish I knew. Can’t check now.
“What colour hair does Nunkle Martin have?”
Well, he started off as the blondest baby you ever saw, almost brilliant white in the sunlight. One time, he must have been about 11, we were on holiday in Denmark, and he got so much attention because of the incandescence of his hair, it was unbelievable. That was before the depression and the cigarettes dulled his mane to a mousy, dirty colour, usurping the beauty with gloominess.
Yellow, I tell her.
She jumps up and down, won-the-lottery ecstatic, “Like Elsa?!!”
Nodding and feeling sure he would have been just thrilled at the comparison of himself to a Disney Ice Queen, I suppress a slight snort and view S trace the hairline atop her uncle’s brow. Then, “3 kisses,” she whispers as she strikes them under her portrait. She pushes the paper towards me, confirming creation conclusion and the reaching of saturation point in reference to her concentration.
“Can I have choclit now? Puh-LEASE?”, said with accompanying slight flutter of eyelashes.
It’s the best thing ever. I reckon he would’ve at least smiled at this. I stroke her cheek whilst simultaneously taking a mind-held imprint of her work of art.
“After dinner. I’m going to make it now.”
She harumphs, slumping angrily behind folded arms and jumping her bum back into the sofa corner so fiercely her newly drawn Martin is blown to the floor in the breeze of her huff.
“Paw Patrol?”, comes the new negotiation offer.
I rush my right-hand fingers to the floor to retrieve the page whilst simultaneously pulling myself in the opposite direction as my left hand reaches and waves about to retrieve the remote from the nearest groove between sofa cushions, to grant S’s wish. TV is better than chocolate, right?
Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol
Whenever you’re in trouble
Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol
We’ll be there on the double
We both lean into the sofa. S nestles into the crook of my left arm and we sit cosy till the song closes and today’s story starts. I look at my right hand where her creation is clasped. Extraction of self from child successful, made possible via replacement of self with cushion for child, I head for the kitchen with the paper in hand, taking care to keep the corners pristine. Eyes moist. This must not crease more.