What people don’t tell you, is that when someone dies that’s really close to you (especially for the first time) hits your harder than you can imagine. This is because you are suffering with 2 things at the same time:
A few years ago, my brother died.
He was about 10 years younger than me, and it was my first experience of a close family member dying.
I woke up on a bright Sunday Spring morning with a call from my mum. She said I needed to get down to Salisbury hospital as quickly as possible to see Tom.
Now you know when you get a call like this something bad is about to happen. So I put my clothes on as quickly as possible and drove the 40 minute journey to go and see him. Trying to mentally prepare for what might happen next.
When I got there, I rushed to his ward as quickly as possible. At the reception I asked which bed Tom was in. To which the Receptionist replied, “have you been told the situation”.
Now, I thought this meant that he was in a bad way, which is the reason I had rushed down, so I said. But what he said next floored me in a way that I can still feel now, 6 years later.
He said, “sorry for your loss”.
You see Tom had died the previous night, and there wasn’t even a chance to say goodbye.
I saw a comedian once, I’m not sure who, who pointed out that as soon as someone dies, people always say; ‘but I talked to them last week’. To which this comedian pointed out ‘of course you did they were alive then’. This is funny because it’s so obvious, but it is the first thing you think.
But it’s not just that. Time in those moments feels tangible. It feels like even though they are dead, you could still call them, because 24 hours ago you could have. To someone who has never experienced this, this will sound crazy. But as soon as you have it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
Walking into that cubicle and seeing my brother lying there with some of my family members weeping audibly is a moment you can’t easily forget.
I can only remember 2 thoughts after this moment.
With this I resolved to not let my parents go through what I just had, and that I would meet them in the car park and tell them.
I didn’t know at the time that this resolution to tell them, would be just as hard for me as I hadn’t realised that telling a parent their child has died is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when it’s your own parents.
This only dawned on me when I saw them parking up and walking in. I realised I might not be able to do it and hid in the coffee shop which was closed due to it being a Sunday morning. I watched them hurry past whilst I tried to find the strength. In the end I had to run to catch up with them.
I’m not sure what I said but I remember my mum breaking in front of me and running faster to the ward despite it being even more futile than before.
There isn’t much to tell after this.
Because the story past this point always involves you. The one who is left.
I remember driving back and crying so audibly that if I saw an actor crying that way in a film I would say they were over acting. It’s a cry that comes from a broken heart. A cry that doesn’t feel better when you have stopped.
They say that it never gets better. But it does. It has to.
The next morning you wake up and don’t realise just how lucky you are in those moments where you haven’t yet remembered that you are one person more alone in the world.
Every morning after that, the pain goes numb, whilst you learn to let other things back in.
By other things I mean everything that makes you, you.
I had just sold my house when Tom died, and I remember thinking quite clearly that I would give every penny of what was in my bank just to have one last conversation with him. Eating became functional, and hobbies seemed trivial. But these things are vital to getting back to normal.
You need to be able to set time aside to grieve, and in order to do this, you need to not do it 100% of the time.
But this is hard to do. I would start playing the PlayStation and see that ‘Tom was last online 3 days ago’. I watched that notification on my friends list go until it said over a month. It still does now.
The stages of grief are so widely known now it feels like you are a cliché when you go through them. But the one that hurts the most is the guilt. And it’s never something you can avoid. Because you could have always spent more time with them.
I found myself asking myself, why I didn’t ask him to play online with me every time I was.
Its always about time. Times that thing we spend like we are billionaires, but you can always make more money, never more time.
What people don’t tell you, is that when this happens for the first time it hits your harder than you can imagine. This is because you are suffering with 2 things at the same time:
You realise just how naïvely happy you were before this knowledge. And you start craving this naivety.
Your mind betrays you at odd points then.
Instead of daydreaming about what you will do at the weekend, you think to just how unaware you were that the last Sunday roast you all had together was your last. You were at a final meal and didn’t know it. What would you have done differently?
The truth is though, is that as hard as it is to understand. Coping with death is part of growing up. And how you do it is important. You can remain angry at nothing at all, or you can choose to accept reality.
This may sound strange to have only a choice of 2, but really in accepting it, you can move to the next stage of remembering the good times. Or times that make you feel a little less guilty.
For me it was something silly.
I was staying in my parents house for the night so I could catch the train to London early in the morning to get a tattoo. And Tom was next door chatting really loudly to his new girlfriend all night. And I mean all night. I didn’t sleep a wink. And yet, for some weird reason, I didn’t go in the room to tell him to shut the hell up. I just laid in bed all night awake, with a vague satisfaction that he was happy. I am more thankful for that moment than any other in my life. Probably because that would have been the last time I had ever seen him.
This knowledge made me a better person. I don’t shout at people any more. And actively try not to leave anyone I care about in an argument.
It’s a shame that part of growing is losing, but it is true.
I remember a girl in my school called Catherine. She was a truly lovely person. I was never her friend or anything like that, but always struck me as more mature than other kids. More measured, more kind.
I later found out that her mother had died, and I am sure to this day, it had an effect on her character.
Now I know saying that the death of loved ones has a positive effect on you sounds awful. And obviously it isn’t a choice we can make. But think of it this way; everyone wants their life to mean something. How did we leave the world a better place than we found it? What did we do that mattered?
I imagine that if you died you would want your loved ones to be happy and be better if possible.
And in this I see that in the acceptance we can accept the final gift from them, to be a different person. To live in a new world that won’t last forever anymore, but the opportunity to live it in a way that you will regret less. To live it in a way that when more loved one’s pass, and they will, that you can feel less of the guilt, because you have lived your life in a way that prepares for it.
So, I choose to accept the gift. The gift of the realisation of time, and the opportunity to live in a way that observes it.
I still dream of Tom occasionally. And I wake up crying every time, but its easier to be thankful for what I had than ungrateful for what I didn’t.
