Grief can be a peculiar feeling, in both the ways it is felt immediately, and the way its absence is felt over time. My brother, Jason, died by suicide about thirteen years ago, and as I approach the anniversary of his passing, I’ve begun contemplating what it is I really feel, now. That is to say, how it is different to what I was feeling in the immediate aftermath of his death, and how it compares with the reality of what I felt in those days, weeks and months after he took his own life.
“Time heals all wounds” is a concept I’ve never fully believed in, although I’m starting to more clearly understand the sentiment. Time doesn’t erase the hole in your heart that you may feel so deeply the moment that an important person in your life dies. The grief and sadness take on a different form, something that may not be felt so urgently, so desperately. There are moments that can bring you right back to the feelings of the day you lost them. All the while, time can scab over the wound. While the hurt is still present, the pain burns less.
In the time right after Jason’s death, grief took the form of sadness, depression, anger, and a bucket full of what-if’s. “Why did this happen?” “What could I have done differently?” “How dare he think his life isn’t important to us!” Emotions ran high, and the riptide that is grief ran the risk of pulling me out to sea with its power.
Since then, I’ve done a lot of personal growth, discovery, and development. My brother’s suicide and my own mental health journey are inextricably linked. To put it succinctly, I would not have sought help if I did not witness my brother going through the difficulties he had suffered through. His passing opened my eyes to my own struggles. I was able to ask for help, and while it hasn’t always been a smooth voyage through good times and bad, I’ve gotten to a place where I can enjoy life, find meaning in things small and large, and truly feel alive again.
The grief I’ve felt in the past few years has felt distinctly different to what I felt in the immediacy of Jason’s passing. This grief is more subtle. It doesn’t often come with the weight of a crashing wave when a thought of him appears. Instead, it’s found in simple reminders. “Oh yeah, me and Jay used to watch this show all the time.” “Wow, my brother used to love this band.”
There is and always will be a twinge of sadness when I think of Jason. It is a sadness that comes with no future history, no further memories made together. My life is completely different to the one he knew. There will come a day where I’ve lived longer without my brother than I had with him, and this thought brings some discomfort. Honestly, I’m not certain what emotions I’ll feel most strongly when that day comes: such is the ever-changing nature of grief. The reality, though, is that life ticks on, and the calendar continues to move forward.
As I sit here today, I’m stricken by the absence of sadness that I feel as we approach the anniversary of Jay’s death. Not that every memory of him isn’t touched with that pang of mourning; moreover, that I’m not sitting in this depression in every waking moment. I’m able to go to work, go to therapy, go out to dinner. I’m able to love and be loved. I’m able to live.
I’ve grown accustomed to saying that I had a brother, when the question of siblings is broached. Now, my sister has three young children of her own, and to my nephews, she says of Jay, “You had an uncle.” They’re still too young to grasp the concept, but in time, when they’re a little bit older, we’ll be able to share memories of this person they never met. We’ll be able to tell them all the ways they remind us of him, and that he would have had so much love in his heart for them. That we wish they could have met.
No matter how long goes by, time will never fully heal the shared pain that myself, my family, and all Jay’s loved ones have felt in the years since his passing. It does, however, morph into something different: and that “something” takes on a different meaning for everyone. There are those who will feel that sense of loss just as urgently, twenty years on from losing a loved one. There are those who will only think of him in passing, these days.
For me, the passing of time has meant that when I think of Jay, more often than not now, I smile instead of frown. You may call this healing. I still live with the grief, but grief is a shapeshifter. It changes as time goes on. I’ve learned to have space in my life for these shifting feelings, however strong they are felt – and even if the emotions are sometimes felt more, in a way, through their absence.
And when I do share happy memories of Jay with my nephews, someday, I think that perhaps somewhere out there, Jay will be smiling, too.
Tom's brother Jay, with their sister Brandi