The Moments After | Coming to terms with suicide.
- Katriya Ross
- Aug 2, 2020
- 5 min read
There are certain phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime. Do you remember the morning of the day when you received the news? You wake up with no knowledge that grief will swallow the floor beneath your feet. And then it does, and things are permanently shifted. There’s the person before, and the person after, never to meet again.
In most areas of life, we hold comfort in the temporary nature of things. We know there is always the possibility of a way out, to change things, or fix a mistake. Maybe that's why we take a lot for granted, or sometimes don't even try, we think there's always a tomorrow, but tomorrow doesn't always come. Death holds a permanence that is difficult to swallow, and then there's the added layer of guilt when you feel you had the power to stop it.
In the moments before I was laughing on the phone about also receiving a miss-call from a number I didn't recognise, thinking it was one of our friends up to something. Then Rue blurted out the news to me. Time paused and I could hear the walls shake.
Brian had written our names and numbers down that morning, and text a list of them to his best friend, with no explanation. He went straight to his house but it was too late. It was that friend who had tried to call me. We spoke straight after I knew and he told me what had happened. I remember him apologising to me but I couldn't imagine how he had the strength to call every single one of us on the day of losing his closest friend.
The moments after my first instinct was to call Brian. No response. Then text him 'please let me know if you're there. I'm so sorry'. Denial screams loud as if the higher the volume it can erase the truth. I was clinging onto the hope that this was some sick prank they pulled on me, or he was in hospital and there was a chance he would make it out okay. I just wanted to hear him call me hysterically laughing, making some cheeky comment about how he was sorry and would make it up to me. I wrote I'm sorry in my notes repeatedly as if it were a prayer to bring him back.
Nothing made sense, I spoke to him two days before and he was the calmest and happiest I'd heard him in a while. We were bantering the whole time and talking about our plans to meet that Saturday. Rue spoke to him on the phone the day before and said the same, he seemed completely fine. I often wonder how far ahead he had planned things. He had set aside bags of clothes for his younger brother. The last time I spoke to him he asked for my address to send me and Rue something to say thank you, told me not to read it infront of him when we meet because he'll tear up, I never received it. Two weeks before he wrote a blog post about his struggle with mental health and the importance of talking and seeking help. I wonder if he knew then and was just trying to help others, he would always try and help others. Like when he was the first to call when my granddad passed or could always clock in a second if I wasn't okay and wouldn't budge until I told him.
The next few days were surreal. The guilt eats you up and you start to unpick everything. All the 'signs', if they were pre-planned at all. We knew about his struggles, all of us would check up on him but also respect his space. He speaks about that in his blogpost, how regardless he still struggled to talk. I think about the long conversations we had a few days before about our futures and his plans. You start to wonder if he meant them or he already knew what he was going to do. I told a few of my close guy friends who were in the same class with us at uni. It was the first time I heard them cry. They shared the same guilt, of feeling they hadn't done enough or hadn't been kind enough or if they had just said the right thing at the right time maybe Brian would still be here.
That Saturday me and Rue still met. We laughed and cried and cry-laughed about feeling guilty for dressing up. We both heard Brian laughing at us that morning for being silly. Told us we better show up, and make sure we slayed today. The synchronicity in grieving and sisterhood. Those days I felt him with me, I thought, 'of course you're not gone, how could you be gone when we hear you speak to us with every step'.
Weeks passed and I gradually heard his voice less and less. That was one of the scariest parts, I felt like he was slipping through my fingers, irretrievably out of reach. Here, I was carrying on with my life, still living, in this world without him and it felt wrong. In the midst of my busy day to day every now and then I would stumble across parts of our chats or photos of him, or the notes I had written just after and my stomach would knot, the guilt rushing back.
As the months passed I came to understand that I wanted Brian to be alive for my own reasons. I could picture us in years to come, I could see the light on the other side for him, and I cared for him deeply and wanted that life for him. But ultimately I wanted him here as my friend , to be at all the important moments of my life and have the life I deemed he deserved. When we lose people to suicide it is easy to get lost in our need for them. I've come to realise that although it is painful, it is a decision they have made. We must respect that, even if we see all the other possibilities for their life and our heart aches without their physical presence. I just hope where you are you are happy.
I wasn't in the country on the day of his funeral, but was told it was a beautiful day with many people who came to show respect. At his wake the following year I met his grandma for the first time. As I embraced her goodbye she held my face and told me she loved me with so much tenderness my eyes welled up. I suppose that is what happens when you keep an open heart through the hurt. When you lose a daughter, and then your first grandson. Sometimes, people don't lose loved ones and become broken in the hurt, sometimes they become love itself.
That day, the words of his Aunt stuck with me, "you were more loved than you could ever have known". I know that is true, he really was, and we all are.
Rest in peace Brian ~ 24.02.1996 - 02.09.2018
If you are struggling with your mental health please reach out for professional help or people you trust. You will never be a burden.
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