He was telling me something so I began to ask him everyday how he was feeling. Sometimes he felt okay and other days he admitted a bad day, but what I did was extend compassion. I provided a comfortable, safe place to be open with our feelings. And even on his apparent bad days, he pulled me aside a couple times and offered to be my listener, "You can always come to me, Yolie. Anything you want to say, I won't judge you, I'll just listen. Come to me and cry it out". He looked into my eyes and held my hands. I silently cried while he embraced me. And still, I said nothing. Looking back, even though he was being the natural big brother, he was also reaching for me for himself. I can't tell you how often I dig my hands into themselves wanting nothing more than to hold him and have him cry it out. He needed a good, open, snot everywhere cry with nothing but love.
To be perfectly honest, I didn't know how I would feel. My friend worried that I'd fall into a pit of despair looping his loss in my mind and the experience surrounding it. But I didn't fall as hard because the night before he passed away was the tough day...knowing he was in his desperate moments the night before he died- not the entire day of. By the time we woke up that morning, he'd been gone for a few hours and already in a place of love. Of course, I didn't think about that when I found him; it's taken me a year to discover a fraction of peace in that fact.
A year of denial and sorrow and guilt and desperate attempts to bring him back, has been beyond exhausting. Emotionally draining, tired all the time, mentally preoccupied and prone to a nap if given the opportunity. Geez, and so forgetful. Dramatically so. I forget things as I'm remembering them- I've truly become that absent-minded.
Anytime someone told me that I seem to be "doing better" or "managing well", I became defensive for having progress pointed out. Distance from the emotional core of my brother's passing meant losing him and the day he died-- pain makes me feel close to him. The initial shock and pain of "he's dead" is the last time I was with him in the same room. It's the last time present emotion ties back to him while he was physically present was with me. Does that make sense? And "doing better" also meant I was betraying him.
I've consumed myself with his life and his dailies and his activities and his friends and his traditions to keep him alive for me, to feel that he's physically here still. That was unsuccessful so I began to try instead, to do what his close friend says he began almost immediately, "I live my life according to the positivity in his life and not his last few weeks. His darkest life was at the very end and only in the end". I didn't understand this notion but I envied his optimism. How do I shut out the worst and live with the best?
A shift occurred a couple weeks ago when words and messages were communicated to me from him-and everything spoken to me was spot on- his words, his thoughts, my concerns, his love.
The gears shifted as I found my footing and fumbled with, "If you want to forgive yourself, forgive yourself for creating blame". Ahhh...here I was begging for forgiveness, profusely apologizing to the air and in my dreams, only to suddenly realize that he wasn't forgiving me because there's nothing to forgive me for.
How poetically beautiful and resigning this is!
It's taken a year, an entire year of deep-seeded grief to slowly make my way out of, and gravitate into healing. The last year I compare to the prior year with him when memories were tangible and he was physically alive. Now, as i move forward into the second year without him, I will compare my healing to my grief of losing him. It's only been a year, but the needle has moved and so am I.
