Submission 206

Reader,

Where to begin? Well,
typically, anniversaries might celebrate something like a relationship or a work achievement. This anniversary certainly didn’t feel like an occasion for celebration. My brother died just over a year ago and recently we had his one year ‘anniversary’. If you can call it that. How do you define the marking of a death of someone you love? The word “anniversary” barely scratches the surface of the meaning. My parents and I felt a weird warm up to the day. Something similar to the excited feeling you get leading up to Christmas eve, rather those days were filled with dread and anxiety instead of excitement. We cried together the night before after discovering we all felt the same desolate anticipation for the upcoming “anniversary”. The day came and we went for lunch overlooking the tors on Dartmoor, where we spent many happy memories together with my brother. We laughed, we chatted and we breathed in the manure filled air, all with my brother with us. It was a really nice day and In reflection it was just like any other day. I had lots of messages along the lines of “thinking of you today” but what striked me was that his anniversary didnt mark anything. I wasn’t grieving anymore than I did any other day. I thought to myself “What difference did a year on make when I feel the same heartache and pain every other day?”. I don’t doubt its a milestone for my parents and I but it has some food for thought on how grief is perceived. When I have felt the saddest in my grief, its usually related to the mundanities of life, that I have wanted to share with him on my day to day. Or the special times like christmas where we would watch harry potter together, scoffing our faces with too much chocolate. Wanting to share good news or a funny picture. That day, I named this stage of my life the grief chapter. But I had soon realised this wasn’t going to be just one chapter of my life but all of the chapters of my life that are to follow. Because my Brother’s absence encompasses every aspect of my being. The way I laugh, the way I cry, the way I turn up, the way i don’t turn up, the way I hate and the way I love. There isn’t one day that can or will ever go by without his presence being missed.

I wrote this in my notes two years ago now, we just surpassed his third “anniversary”. We didn’t do anything this year, we were just together as a family with my brother in our thoughts. For me, I want to celebrate other days like his birthday as I feel it is about my brothers life and not a deeply traumatic day. And to be quite frank the day he died haunts me and isn’t a day of nice memories. With suicide, it has an added layer of unexpected trauma. In my case and I am sure in many others, my brothers life was complicated, as was our relationship, which adds another layer of difficulty around the anniversary of his death. Plus, no one warns you about how terrible and debilitating it can feel leading up to the day. The uncertainty of what you should be doing or feeling. So, if you’re reading this and you have an anniversary coming up. It sucks and you are not alone in that feeling. What I have learnt so far, is that you are in control of how you want to navigate days like anniversary’s. There is no blueprint. If you feel like working, taking the day off, doing a skydive or doing absolutely nothing at all that it is okay and it is your choice. Because we all experience grief in our own way and our relationship with our loved ones is so intimate and personal to each person. Ultimately, your loved one is not physically here anymore. So you can only be the one to decide what is right to do for you. I honour my brother not only on anniversaries and birthdays but in my day-to-day life. When I hug my family, when I eat our favourite food, when I laugh, when I care for other people, when I put dedication into something I care about, when I’m silly and when I laugh until my belly hurts. Because those are the things that he taught me to do. What I’m trying to say is that it’s okay if you don’t do something monumental on the day of the anniversary because every day is an anniversary of my brother, not being physically here anymore. And so in my daily life, I honour him by being kind and taking care of myself and my family.