By Ruby Saggers, Editor-in-Chief
The 19th July 2022 placed me in an eternal loop of grief. I lost my eldest brother, my absolute best friend, after he was missing for two days. Detectives informed us they had found a body at the bottom of our local reservoir: a short period of distress was met with sudden grief and everything fell apart.
Since that day, it hasn’t stopped; the bad news just keeps on coming. I lost two beloved cousins, my grandparents passed three months apart, and my father has been battling a brain tumour longer than I’ve been alive. Last September, we discovered he has a second tumour growing on his brain. Some days, he has trouble remembering who we are. Now, after all this, all I feel is guilt.
I haven’t truly been able to grieve the loss of my brother, whatever that is supposed to look like, and I definitely complicated the cycle further when I moved to university in 2023. A year had passed, and I thought I was ready to embrace the feelings. But what I discovered was that moving away from a home full of memories meant slowly losing grip of them. By the time I reached my second year, I would sit and think and hate myself for struggling to remember the sound of his voice. This is why I feel so guilty.
Though I understand why people tell you that grief should not reign your life forever – that you should move on – it is difficult to do so when you are still fighting to retrieve memories. I remember the things we did, what we spoke about, but I cannot remember what is most important to me – his presence. Time is grief’s biggest enemy. But there are things that have helped me immensely: cues.
Senses have been the biggest contributors to helping me find my brother again. The smell of tobacco and Stella Artois on pub visits sends a flood of images through my mind. The sound of his laughter in old videos eases the pain. I began to realise that, though I took a little longer to start truly accepting the loss, my grief is no less valid.
The death of my brother, however, has now affected my ability to grieve the loss of others. Having lost someone so close so soon meant that life could throw me anything and I just couldn’t feel it as strongly. I have attended four funerals since my brother’s in 2022, and those days have been amongst the only days that I have really cried and mourned properly. I didn’t think it was possible to get used to grieving, but I suppose that’s what is happening to me. So, again, the guilt follows me. My mum tells me somebody I love has passed away, and I struggle to believe it is even real. When I begin to believe, I have little tears left to shed.
But, having lost so many people in such a short amount of time has also given me a reason to get in touch with my emotions. Living alone leaves a lot of room for thought, and that is precisely all I have been doing. Even though it can be hard for me to think about my brother, having the time to think means that I have the patience to wait for a memory to reappear. I no longer feel scared that somebody is going to walk into my room and find me mourning; I can set it free, have a shower, and disobey my lactose intolerance for the evening with a nice cuppa splodge (as my brother would call it) and some chocolate.
I do feel dreadfully guilty for struggling to comprehend my grief, for not being able to grieve others properly, and for ‘forgetting’ how it felt to be with my brother; but I also understand now that it is inevitable. It is terrifying – the thought of growing up and moving on. I’m in my twenties now, and my brother never got the opportunity to see twenty-five. It feels unfair. Time moves cruelly forward, leaving you in a scrambling mess trying to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, you cannot stop time moving forward, so you need to learn to move with it.
Consequentially, I have become petrified of death – of losing more people. It has been a fear of mine from a very young age, as soon as I could understand what my dad having cancer meant. Every scan result, every operation, forms an ever-growing pit in my stomach. Now, unable to be operated on, it feels like a tormenting waiting game. Losing my brother increased my desire to clutch onto and make new memories with my dad, so that I do not end up in the same scrambling mess.
But it does get easier. I have gotten into the habit of reminding myself that my attempts at regaining lost memories are a vivid indication of just how much I love my brother. The impact he had on me is so strong that half of my time is spent trying to remember our time spent together. I think that is incredibly valuable. Memories may begin to fade, but the love for that person does not. So, I may not have my eldest brother there for my graduation, on my wedding day, or after I bring new life into the world, but he will always be a part of me. He is written into my history, thus he will remain in my future – perhaps not physically, but in the memories I fight hard to keep alive. Writing and revisiting old videos is all I can do to remember, to reflect, and I hope that he knows how remembered he is.
Image via Ahmad Pishnamazi on Unsplash