Recently My brother took his own life.
We had much pain as children, we moved to live with my Aunt (who has recently developed severe dementia) and older cousins when I was 8 my brother 11.
Our mother was bedridden from M.S she moved to be closer and had to share a room with four people with dementia. Her fingers would curl tormenting her, she would feel spiders crawling up her arms (common with M.S. from the neurological damage).
My father having lost his father young, also witnessed his own mother killed by a drunk driver after her crossing the road to see him, two years before my brother was born, he became a heavy beer drinker and became incapable of looking after us. My father was unable to calm his internal storm and process his pain other than to numb it with alcohol. After his wife developed M.S and his children were removed, he in a moment that lasts forever took his own life..
When I was 13 and my brother 16 we witnessed our mother die after several days in a coma like state gasping for air, it was a lot on top of what we had already experienced to take in.
I eventually found my peace in our past, it took many years searching in a very dark lonely depth that most people will thankfully never have to know. Death metal, torment, anger, depression, writing, martial arts, meditating, philosophy, spiritual questioning, music, dancing healing the road was long probably had some wrong turns but I learned to express and process that pain. I don’t think my brother ever did, he would not talk of our past, and has taken pieces of that childhood puzzle he would not talk of, being my older brother with him.
My brother has followed my father by leaving two children fatherless. Most people including his best friend did not think he was suicidal, or thought especially with our history that he would do to his two children what our father did to us. Most people who knew my brother even really well did not even know he was mentally ill, such is the case of so many who suffer in silence. I worried if his wife and children left him, history may repeat itself, but they had not so it was a complete shock for me.
We were raised in a very ‘country’ way back in the 80’s and 90’s, emotions were not something boys/ men were expected to express.
How could we not with the story we had. Alcohol become my brothers medicine and eventually his poison.
He loved his children, his wife, his brother, his sister in law, his niece…..
But in one moment a split second in time the wanting to escape the pain was stronger then the thought of burden he knew too well would be left in his wake. Alcohol had numbed his reasoning at the time.
And now he is gone.
The only constant I have had in my life is no longer here. His wife lost her Husband and his 11 year old son and 13 year daughter lost there dad, they are around the same age I was when my mother died from MS, and myself being a child sufferer of the effects of suicide I know its going to be such a difficult, painful and life changing time for such a thing to happen at their age.
My heart cries for there loss, along with mine and the worlds, my brother was a long term country fire association member, always put his hand up to help at the kids sports club, genuinely a really nice giving person. I know from my own experience, how fathers day for my niece and nephew, along with other special dates will be one of crushing pain for many years to come.
Counseling was not something placed on our path at the age we experienced such pain and trauma. I know if it was, then my own journey through the dark depths I ventured would have been shorter, and I believe my brother also would have developed tools of exploring, expressing, and processing the pain that he never did, other then to suppress it and drown it in beer when it would awaken in him.
Sharing this opens my vulnerability to those who know me but do not know of this recent event in my life. But I do it as an honest plead to anyone who is going through the deep dark tunnel of depression and mental illness. To raise the discussion of mental illness and suicide. To encourage if anybody has children who have had severe trauma, please get them professional help, remember children will often say they don’t want / need it, but I believe we as children we did not have tools in our emotional first aid kit to process this alone. I am glad my niece and nephew will be given this help.
If you as an adult can not process what you feel and its overwhelming you and you feel you can not cope, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE seek help, and continue that contact if you have already made it. If alcohol or drugs is your only way of coping with the intense waves of despair, you need more tools in your emotional first aid.
Don’t give up. Don’t hide from the your struggle with mental illness. Don’t leave your family with the emptiness that will never be filled with you gone. There life is not better without you. Seek help the wave of despair will pass, it may come again, keep seeking that help, increase the tools you have to process and express this pain. You are not a burden on the world, you not being in it is, that one moment can not be taken back if you choose to escape your pain, it will be transferred in a way and become the livings pain.
For the generational trauma that was left to us by our father, my brother has now passed onto his children, who will now be the less for losing there father they loved so dearly, who if they have children will not have a grandfather for there children.
I have lost my father, now my brother to suicide the only other soldier who experienced the great wars of our childhood which had other hardships on top of what I have mentioned.
At the moment I will be honest it hurts like hell, I feel empty this pain frankly sucks its deep, its one I know he wouldn’t want me to feel..
I know I will rebuild myself, I know this space too well to get lost in it, but when I mend the hole he has left, that scar will always be there. I must say goodbye to all the things I envisioned to come, sharing my daughter and his children’s life’s together with him, camping trips, sharing a fatherly tear at his or my daughters wedding or even inappropriate fart around a dinner. That table at Xmas, will be missing a irreplaceable person this year. It was one moment in time that can never be changed and its effects ripples through time and hearts.
If this helps one person step away from that crossroad of forever and help them seek the tools to transform there pain, in doing so allowing those around them to be gifted there presence for many years to come, then it is worth holding my wounded heart for all to see.
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Much love to you all Raven.
renewed spiritFor further help and resources please click on the following links.
https://www.beyondblue.org.au/
https://www.lifeline.org.au/
https://www.coroners.nsw.gov.au/coroners-court/help-and-support/coping-with-suicide.html