S-A-S: Sibling After Suicide

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 imp...

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...