S-A-S: Sibling After Suicide

Today is my Graduation Day … for the PhD I completed in memory of my brother, Martin … whose birthday will fall exactly one month hence … he would’ve been 40 years old this year. I am somewhat without words to explain the messy mixture of emotions that such details cumulatively provoke - I think I still fail to fully comprehend the totality of what has happened since 15 th December 2011. I am not able to see my brother’s face in mind without photographic aids, and many memories I reach for I cannot grasp as I’d like - they are stuck or lost or both. Yet, with certain songs and sounds, I am permitted moments of reconnection, permission to linger in a good memory.   So, I’ve made a playlist. I used to make playlists all the time. It is not over-egging things to say that across my 20s, I couldn’t/wouldn’t leave the house without my music catalogue. The arrival of the iPod Classic provided a life-altering and indispensable treasure - my entire musical life in my pocket, a...

I have been struggling to write. Re-phrase that - I have been experiencing a total freeze as far as writing is concerned. It amazes me that I’ve even been able to put together this initial admission, given that for the past few weeks - this is now the third - I have been unable to see thoughts from my mind in shape-form on paper or screen.  It sounds ridiculous, (definitely to me personally), to state ‘I can’t write’ as though that word grouping constitutes a factual statement. Not uttered dramatically, emotionally to illustrate ‘just stress’ or something, but rather physically meant. It’s like, ‘c’mon, just do it.’ But I’ve tried and I CAN’T. This is not like me. True, I find writing ‘important things’ hard - academic writing has always been equated with pain for me - but not messages to connect with others or my own daily experience-reflections/thoughts, where blockages have now also been experienced. (I’ve just about managed a few social media posts, but things as everyday a...

My brother and daughter painted by a friend. [originally posted on WordPress 10th Aug 2017] Tomorrow is my brother’s birthday. Having mentioned this as a little reminder at the family dinner table, my four-year-old said “But Martin can’t have a birthday because he is died and lives in the sky”. Yes, but…. What followed was a discussion that connected her uncle ‘being died’ with Inky the nursery fish also going to ‘fishy Heaven’… Just the latest in a string of scenarios where my daughter has begun to show how she is making sense of death in general, but also a conversation that tells me she’s growing older and sooner or later questions about the nature of her uncle’s death will be asked. My daughter never met her uncle, but through me entered ‘suicide survivordom’ even before conception. And from my perspective this adds another facet to the suicide bereavement experience and process (as in many respects I must manage it for her AND me). Consequently, herein lies an issue that I be...

How often it is that the unexpected triggers a return to memories. My daughter finishes school for the summer holidays in a week, her first year done and dusted. In the end-of term run up, though, she won’t be told to gather with the ‘other summer birthdays’ in front of a whole school assembly for a communal well-wishing. My brother and I, with August birthdays 3 days apart, were always given that dubious honour during our primary years together. It was never so much the 3-year part of our age gap that bothered me; rather the 3-day element, Martin’s birthday inconveniently (I often perceived) following mine. I do, for instance, recall one occasion when, such was the level of my annoyance at seeing him playing with my birthday presents, coupled with being armed with knowledge of what exactly he was due to receive in 2-days-time, that I was unable to curb the jealousy and revealed the secret to him to get him to just buzz off. It worked – he was ecstatic, and I regained control over m...