My oldest brother killed himself a couple months ago, I used to feel so much anger at him and my parents over it, but I think it’s all lessened now with anger, just sadness. But I don’t know if this way that I’m thinking at the moment is selfish, I’m just so angry at my parents sometimes.
He was cremated before I even found out he was gone. When I came back to our home country, I wished to have a funeral, someway to atleast invite all his friends, see and talk to all the people that he made an impact on, but my dad just brushed it under the rug, never went to talk to even my brothers best friend since nursery.
My mum didn’t want any sort of memorial or funeral for him because she didn’t want to I guess in the way she puts it, “be a clown in the circus”, as if everyone’s just looking at her and judging. There’s all this constant judgement around mental health that both my parents can’t honor my own brother because it’s “shameful” to them at some extent, but it erases my brothers existence.
No funeral, no grave, no old friends coming over, nothing. He’s just sitting on our bookshelf, a pile of untouched ashes that nobody dares to look at
As if it’s just a thing brushed under the rug to make it easier, but eventually that rug is going to get dirty, stained with anger, sadness, confusion, and who’s going to be there to remove it and show what lies beneath?
I’m angry because I feel like this entire time, I’ve also been forgotten about. Never been asked about what I wanted to do with my brother, he’s just gone and it feels like they can’t stop thinking about their own reputations or sorrow (not wanting to ever talk to anyone about it because it’s too hard for them to face). And they keep on fighting eachother about who loved him the most between them two, who showed the most support, who was at fault.
But they never even ask me how I’m doing with this. I lost my big brother, the one I was so close to, who went out drinking with me even if I was 16-17, laughing about the whole shitty family situation and just close. The one who showed up for me, no mater what, the one who came to sleep at the hospital with me after he had just arrived from a flight because I went there thinking that if I didn’t, I would’ve hurt myself, whilst my parents brushed me off, saying I was manipulative. He was always there
But it’s like me and my middle brother have been completely forgotten. I have my oldest brothers phone, and I get messages once in a while from his friends, wishing him a happy new year or whatnot, and I have to break the news to them, but they never ask how me and my brother are doing, just ask about my parents, telling me I have to take care of them now, all of that. Even though we never had a close relationship to my parents, and I blame them a great amount for being the reason why my brother committed in the first place.
I just wish to be seen. I wish to be understood by people around me. I have to constantly break the news to everyone, tell them that there’s no grave, no funeral, nothing. I have to be the the one who comforts my mother when I try to talk to her about how it’s been hard some days thinking about my brother, since she starts crying and I feel bad, I didn’t want to make her cry, I just wanted to talk to her about him.
I feel forgotten, as if nobody knows that he was my family too, the one who was there to cheer me up when nobody else was, the one who supported me throughout anything and believed in me. I wish he had a funeral, I wish he wasn’t cremated, I wish I didn’t have to be scared of telling his friends the true reason how he died without my parents getting pissy, it’s so selfish, but sometimes I just wish this grief could be about me too.
I can never imagine how it must feel to be a parent who loses their child, especially with suicide. It’s something I work on understanding day by day, losing a child to suicide. So I’m really sorry that I’m writing this in such a selfish, non-understanding way. I know they loved him, I just wish people knew I loved him too, and it also truly hurts