winter

Someone I care about recently suffered a deep, life-altering loss. Her pain expands in ripples, and when I close my eyes at the end of the day I feel it brush against me. I want so badly to help, but I know there’s very little I can do to ease her suffering. It’s the kind of thing she’ll have to walk through, and with, forever.

Loss has me thinking about loss. And maybe too it’s the time of year. The cold, the dark.

In a couple of weeks it will be five years since my brother suddenly passed away. Winter now holds many occasions: Christmas. The New Year. Two birthdays. The anniversary of the day my big brother died. He was 43 years old, which is younger than I am now. He was old enough to have lived half of a long life. When he died, I thought: Am I still a middle child without an older sibling? What is a family of five when there are only four of them left? What happens to the things I didn’t have time to forgive? The shaky bridges I didn’t get around to fully mending?

After my brother died, I thought almost nobody could understand the complicated grief that comes with losing a sibling, but it turns out a lot of people can. I became part of a club that of course had always existed, I had just never stopped to think about it before. I heard from others who had lost brothers and sisters too soon. A friend of a friend told me about her partner, who was one of four kids. At around 50 years old, she was the only one left living.

We all have our stories. Eventually we are all touched by grief.

But there are losses you carry on from, different but still intact, and then there are ones that threaten to tear you apart. If I manage to avoid the latter type, it will only be because I have lived a lucky life.

What am I trying to say? I don’t exactly know. Maybe just that life deals some people an impossible hand. That we shouldn’t ever shrug off the discomfort of someone else’s pain. That even though we can’t stop them having to walk through it, we can stay nearby in case they ever need a hand to hold along the way.

With love. xx