alive, living.

   **TW**

Death, Grief and Mental Health

Rain pours down, sagging my brother’s coat with water. As everyone knows, rain is the cloud’s tears, it only storms when someone is experiencing something so dreadful the sky has no remedy for the grief of a human. No rainbows, no sun, just drops of water falling from the sky, an unfortunate imitation of the immense sadness a human soul can contain. The clouds turn dark, mourning the heavy feelings one is carrying. Whilst it might be annoying to others, the wet weather reminds me that someone has it worse than myself.

    Today I am that someone.

    I pull up my brother’s soaking hood above my head, feeling it droop against me, embodying the dread and grief wilting inside of me. Staring through the raindrops and out onto the road it is clear to see that there is no evidence apart from some flattened bushes. No evidence of the things that have been lost. No evidence of death. No evidence, to any stranger, that my brother existed.

    Whilst drivers are rushing to Christmas dinners or rushing to buy late presents, I can only see the dying bushes.

    Mum used to collect bundles of marigolds and spread them all throughout the house. Yellow and gold became the colours of my life, encasing each room in elegance and beauty, permitting happiness into our home even in times where it seemed unlikely. Dark greens enveloped every area not flooded with flowers; my father’s sadistic attempt to derive our home of any colour, capable of causing joy. I used to wonder why my mother left. It’s all clear now.

    She left to escape the hostility brought on by my father. His personality, single handedly capable of freezing hell over with his harsh, cold words. She left to free herself from the man responsible for half of her children’s DNA. The only question I still have at age nineteen is why she didn’t take us with her. She left us to bargain with the devil. Bargaining over freedom. Bargaining over individuality. Bargaining over happiness. He sucked the one reason for living out of our lives and didn’t live to apologise.

Apologies are words, only meaningful if actions are shown in the aftermath of the admittance of guilt. Guilt is the foundation on which apologies are based on and yet is also the foundation on which deceit is built upon. One only lies if they have something to hide; something to be guilty of. And that is just what my father did.

Lie.

Lie for all the years up until his death. I want to believe that he felt regret for the stupid things he did but I’m not naïve enough to believe that. The only way lies can form and not drag guilt behind them is if the aforementioned is as narcissistic as they deny themselves to be.

As I stare across the rain ridden road and out onto the partially destroyed marigold bush, I imagine his car as it crashed through the bush. The panic in not being able to brake. Not being able to pause and think of all the little things he couldn’t achieve. Being forced to accelerate towards his demise without so much of an afterthought on Death’s part. My fists curled by my sides, my teeth, clenching for how undeserving my brother was of his death

Death has always been present, even as someone who has tried their hardest to stay alive. Staying alive is different from living. Living implies that you experience all the things humans were born to. Love, hate, excitement. Staying alive is simply breathing. Breathing through the pain and hurt. Oxygen requires no love or excitement to enter your body, it is simply chemicals, furiously pressuring your heart to beat. Beating through the trauma and pain. Beating through the few moments of happiness. Just beating. Contrary to living, for me, staying alive has always been equal to Not Dying. Death, whilst being the opposite to functioning as a human, was always close behind me. Following me, anticipating the collapse of my very existence. Awaiting the last beat of my heart, pumping blood into my already impassive body for the final moment.

After having left my brother’s place of death, I ran. I ran and ran and ran, my body running on pure adrenaline. I collapsed under a tree, the sky turning dimmer and dimmer with every passing minute, a cruel echo of just how fast something can change. The sky goes from light to dark in mere minutes. The ocean goes from high to low in hours. A life can be gone in seconds.

I sat under that tree for what could have been forever. Time doesn’t matter when you’ve lost someone you love, all you can think about is how they’ll never experience time again.

I have experienced all five stages of grief in under twenty years and yet they’ve never all come at once. The tears came slow and soon turned into a waterfall of bottled-up emotions, being let out at a moment of weakness. I looked into the sky, waiting to wish on a shooting star to replace me with him. I imagined all of the memories I hadn’t yet made with him. The smiles I hadn’t shared and the laughter I rarely heard.

I push myself up against the rough dirt beneath me, wiping the tears from my face. I breathe because that’s all I can do. All I can do as a human. As someone with the power to feel the strongest of emotions and still live. Someone with the ability to cripple to the reign of their thoughts and still have a heart beating within their chest. Some aren’t as lucky. Some cannot feel. Some cannot breathe. Some don’t have the blessing to be able to feel so strongly and have an outlet to express themselves.

That was why I walked back into town. For everyone who cannot feel as someone should. I walk around puddles of water, reflecting the speckled sky above. Carols are sung aloud, and Christmas lights pulse on their strings like flashing beacons of joy and colour, illuminating a way home.

As I approach the road once more, I ignore the sight of the Magnolias. I ignore the feeling of dread that pools in my stomach as I see someone running a red light. I walk, for the first time in years, to the diner my mother worked at. I take my old place in a booth and order a milkshake with chocolate chip pancakes.

I blow bubbles through my straw and smile back at the chocolate chip reindeer staring into my soul. A woman wearing a coat just as soaked as mine walks up to my table. She has piercing blue eyes, just like mine. She pulls off her hood and there before me sits my mother.

“Mum?” I ask, my heart pounding uncontrollably in my chest, a subtle reminder that I am alive.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” she says, smiling as though she hadn’t been absent for the last ten years. “I heard about your brother. I thought it was about time that I came home.”

I ignored all the questions I had about her disappearance. My head swam with everything I’ve thought about her since she left and yet I hugged her. Hugged her like I hadn’t done in years. Hugged her like I found something I hadn’t even realised was missing. Hugged her like I would have my brother if he were still alive.

My brother wasn’t coming back. I knew that. And with that it was time to start new stories, even with old characters. With tears in her eyes my mother cupped my face in her hands. “Merry Christmas, Sweetheart.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

And this time it was. Even after the loss I’d experienced. The pain at current is one chapter in a whole story of events. You can’t just read one chapter of a book and justify the ending, so why should you your life?