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...

It perhaps says something about the ‘bigness’ of suicide loss that it takes a Pandemic to block it out of mind. Up until last Friday, I’d not thought about my brother for a good few weeks – that is, I’d not had the daily flash-through-the mind reminder of his used-to-exist status or the how-he-died detail I’ve come to expect. Ordinarily, I’d view this as progress, as a sign of relief-at-last and acceptance being achieved. But when I look at the wider circumstances impacting life at present, I’m not sure I can claim this as being the reality – it’s just that a head only has so much space to accommodate massive life-changing events, and right now, in its process of prioritising what needs to be addressed or thought about first, my brother’s death has, however surprisingly, been demoted. I felt, honestly, a bit guilty about this, a bit confused, having grown used to having Martin ‘still there’ in some manner. I've been living in a 'new normal' long before that was someth...

In 1995, BBC2 broadcast the 10th Anniversary Concert of ​‘Les Miserables​‘ at the Albert Hall. I had just turned 14. After hearing the opening lines of Lea Salonga ’s turn as Eponine, I raced to my bedroom, returning to our living room at Concorde speed with my double-cassette-decked stereo, stabbing my microphone into the machine before pressing its latticed head to the small grid of a speaker box on our television. I statue-d there, waiting to catch Salonga’s next scene, slamming on the record button as her rendition of ​‘On My Own​‘ began. Her voice and that song in that moment hit my very core. I replayed and karaoke-d along to that cassette moment so much the tape eventually mangled. From my mid-teens singing started to be ‘my thing’. Outside of school and other fixed commitments, if I wasn’t listening to music, I was singing it. I sought out vocal lessons (the clarinet was unceremoniously usurped by voice); I sang in school choirs, concerts, stage productions and competition...

Between June and September this year (2019), I had 10 sessions of EMDR. I have written previously on why I opted to try EMDR specifically (to address the persisting vividness of my brother’s death by suicide) - what follows here is a little of what I learned from the actual experience of having this still-relatively-niche form of therapy. Firstly , it’s quite something to have someone look directly into your eyes and say without a shred of exaggeration, “you’re traumatised”. Not gonna lie, it made me uncomfortable. My face, I believe, revealed no real reaction to the therapist’s comment, but in my mind I pictured another me, head tilted, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, sarcastically responding “Am I, though?” Middle class, white woman, good home, family, job etc. etc. “Am I really ?” My first feeling was fraudulence, a lacking of justification to ‘own PTSD’ - I’m no veteran recovering from horrific conflict zone experiences or victim rebuilding after living through natural disaste...

During the first half of this year, I had a fair few, more than usual, trips to my former city of residence, London. On one of these jaunts southward I experienced a sort of pang of realisation - Tottenham Court Road tube station made me sad. ‘But it has that effect on all, dear’ might be a natural response to such a declaration, but the sadness I felt, I realised, moved beyond the location’s inner-city-inherently-dull nature.   Rather, the flash of melancholy I experienced came from the memory that was prompted - the last time I had oyster-carded my way through the barriers, I had been with my brother. I don’t recall why we were there or why we ultimately separated at that particular station, but there we indeed had been. I remember I handed Martin a tenner to enable sustenance for his stomach and nicotine-need for the afternoon before we headed for our different exits. I can still sense in my body the people who bumped into us both as I rummaged for my wallet. At the time of o...

In the near seven-and-a-half years since my brother’s death by suicide, I’ve had counselling on 4 different occasions, with 4 different counsellors. The first bout of sessions began about 14 months after his death (after I sought it – it has never been offered to me). All of the session-groupings have opened with ‘we’ll have 6 sessions and see how it goes’ - ultimately I’ve ended up attending at least double that amount on two of the runs. Accessing these counselling sessions has involved being patient on waiting lists ranging from around 20 weeks (NHS) to 6 weeks (university student support) to 2 weeks (charity-provided). In my quest for relief, I’ve also had a series of aromatherapy massages and attended a Cruse/Samaritans ‘peer support group’ , both of these also assigned a 6 week timeline (6 is apparently the magic number). I’ve been prescribed anti-depressant medication on two different occasions, (without wanting to use tablets, might I say, as I think having a non-judgemental s...

[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...