S-A-S: Sibling After Suicide

[Originally posted 15th December 2017] Mrs Higson was a fearsome woman to behold. At least to me. With Margaret-Thatcher hair, heels and handbag (and a personal vendetta against the word ‘nice’ because “it is a word that means absolutely nothing”), she was an English teacher and a half. I don’t remember the specifics of the task set, but when I was fourteen or so, for homework I had pilfered the characters of Pride and Prejudice to write ‘a next chapter’. I also don’t remember the specifics of the text I produced; but I do recall that after hearing the work of others in my class, during an unexpected ‘read your work aloud’ session, I panicked. I subsequently didn’t read mine out as written because, basically, it to me sounded nothing short of diabolical. Consequently, I stumbled all over my words and all I really remember is mumbling something about Mr Darcy getting run over by a horse-and-cart, and standing isolated as my classmates, leaning back in their chairs behind their individ...

The  15th December 2018 marks 7 years since my brother, Martin, died by taking his own life. 7  years is a weird space of time - short yet long, not recent enough for grief to be thought of as fresh, but not so long ago in my life to feel far in the past.  I’ve taken some time to think about what I’ve learned about being bereaved by suicide over these years. I speak for no one but myself - these are my own thoughts and experiences.  1. If a person dies, they are lost to many, to a community, but the individual experiences of the loss are so important. One person does not have to, indeed can’t, feel the effect of a person’s death in exactly the same way as others (others who have their own memories and thoughts). On the Christmas Eve after Martin’s death,  his  friends invited my Mum and Dad and I down to his favourite pub, to join in reminiscing. There were so many people there, the majority of whom I did not know very well ( some not  at...

The run-up to the festive season can provoke anxiety for many who have lost, especially if they've been bereaved by suicide. Here I'm re-posting a short piece I wrote in 2016 about my views on Christmas:  "Christmas 2011 involved a visit to the funeral home to see my brother’s body in the casket and an evening where my parents and I, separately and silently but together, ignored the “Dr Who” Christmas Special blaring out of the TV in favour of drinking wine while looking through photos of Martin’s life, choosing our individual favourite moments as well as deciding what should be collated together for inclusion in the funeral image projection. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, given these circumstances, for any person to think that Christmas could never be marked by us “properly” again. But it would also be an incorrect assumption to say automatically “you must find Christmas so very hard” or suggest “well I just couldn’t do Christmas if that had happened to me” – it’s just n...