In the news

After my brother's inquest last Thursday there was a piece in the local evening newspaper on Saturday. It seemed strange reading it in the paper, like it was something that happened to someone else.



I've been thinking about my grief a lot lately, about how different I feel about mum's death compared to Sim's. As I have said before, I hadn't even spoken to Sim for 10 years, right up until the point when we were in the hospital and they gave us mum's prognosis. There was no avoiding each other after that as we both wanted to spend as much time as possible with mum before we lost her. Then afterwards I did feel as though I had to offer what support I could to him. I knew how devastated he was and that he was threatening to take his own life. When he killed himself I felt shock and dismay, he was so young, he had a whole life ahead of him. He could have done so much, he had done so little. There was also the element of guilt, could I have done more to stop him? I stopped thinking of the bad things he had done, all I could think of was my baby brother that I grew up with was now gone, and gone in such a dreadful way. I lie in bed at night agonising over how desperate he must have felt, how sad his life was, how he was let down and never given the proper help he needed, how he was always despised by those he'd upset. Did he deserve it, some would say yes, some would say good riddance. I probably would have felt the same had he not been my little brother.



With mum my feelings are completely different. I feel loss like I've never experienced before. I miss her so much, I think about her all the time. I can hear her voice in my head telling me things. I long to just pick up the phone and call her, talk to her, I want to talk to her so badly. Every day, no matter what I'm doing, there are always moments when I just think of her and how much I miss her, and it hurts, it's still raw.



When she was alive I would call her every day for a chat. I would see her twice a week. Midweek, if she wasn't feeling too bad, we would go out somewhere, shopping, for a meal, or take the kids to a soft play centre. On Friday's we would go to her house for tea, generally a take out. Before we went I would do her shopping for her.

It had only been like that for about 8 months though. She'd been hospitalized last year with her emphysema and it had been touch and go for a while. I went to the hospital every day and after she came home I decided that I wanted to see much more of her. Before then we'd only seen each other a few times in a couple of years and I'd call around once a fortnight. We had been out of touch from the beginning of 2000 right up until early 2005. Then she wrote me a letter and we resumed contact. The first time I saw her was in August 2005, just before Lucy was born.
I feel sad that we lost those 5 years, but grateful for those last 8 months because I have memories to hold dear. My sister-in-law said it would have been easier for me if I hadn't grown close to my mum again, but I don't see it that way. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard now but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. If we hadn't been so close then I would probably harbour so many regrets and I'm sure that would be worse.