Notes on losing a sibling to suicide. By Harrison Christian.
Photo: Unknown
A World Vision ad used to come on TV depicting starving children. Their ribs were showing and one of them was being fed a porridge-like mixture. I remember mocking the ad over dinner, and my sister scolding me for it. She experienced genuine empathy when it came on.
In the summers when we slept in a garage at Hahei Beach, we had a deal that neither of us would fall asleep before the other; we were both afraid of being the last one awake. That was a lie she went along with. I, the older brother, was the one who was scared of mice and the dark. My sister wasn't.
When we were older I visited her room for help. We formulated texts to a girl at school I was trying to date. Her own phone would be buzzing with messages from friends and admirers.
***
At 16 she had an emotional breakdown, and it was beyond our comprehension. During the next two weeks, my parents worked hard to make her better. I was mostly oblivious to what was happening; I kept going to university and drinking jugs of beer, both of which were still a novelty. I was an ill-fated first year. I'd discovered marijuana.
That year, my family moved out of the house we grew up in and into a stucco monolith in the hills behind Albany. I remember the sound of cracking gravel as cars came down the drive, the smell of wet leaves mingling with cold air. It was a dark place, with bush leaning in around it.
In a waiting room my father made me a cup of tea. It was the first cup of tea I'd ever had.
Media laws prevent me from mentioning my sister’s method of suicide. Overseas studies have suggested the reporting can lead to copycat deaths. Years later, as the night reporter at a regional newspaper, suicides would bloom and fade on my radar. I spent my late shifts listening to chatter on a police scanner. Cops would say they were dealing with a "1X," which is code for an attempted suicide.
I listened to these exchanges first with deep, second-hand dread, then fascination, then bored indifference. Sometimes a "1S," or sudden death, would be confirmed as a suicide and our editor, coming down from one of his frenzies, would tell us to drop the story.
***
I remember my mother taking me through the halls of the hospital, urging me to breath deeply into my stomach. I think she was worried I was going to faint. So we inhaled and exhaled as we passed through the hospital. Our breaths became slower and deeper and time began to stretch out.
When we reached my sister it was like we were moving in slow motion. She occupied a corner of the intensive care unit. She did not look critically ill. There was an almost perplexed expression on her sleeping face, and a ventilator tube in her mouth.
In a waiting room my father made me a cup of tea. It was the first cup of tea I'd ever had. My grandfather came into the room, looked at me, said “It’s terrible,” and broke down crying. I embraced him. I remember the acceptable, almost religious smell of his jersey.
***
For the next three days my friends and family ferried me back and forth from the hospital. I lay in bed and said stumbling prayers. I wasn't religious but I prayed a lot, mostly bargaining with God, telling Him I’d live like a monk for the rest of my life.
We stood in the hospital room, with its weird lights and machines, and watched my sister’s heart rate go down to zero. It was a co-ordinated thing; the doctors had turned off her life support. The song 'Lightning Crashes' by Live was playing on my sister’s iPod speakers, which had been set up near the hospital bed. We all stood in a semicircle around the bed, crying and listening to Live. There was that feeling of time slowing down again.
After that I didn't eat or feel hungry. I didn't know the day of the week. We all said a lot of strange things to each other.
Mourners came to the house in waves. Some were crying before we opened the door. Some cried harder and more frequently than I did. Acquaintances, vague relatives; the house kept filling up. Then it drained, leaving behind the flotsam of sympathy; flowers, cards and home baking. Then silence.
They seemed to perceive sudden loss as an isolated blow, which could be fully recovered from.
When I thought grief should be at its most intense it could be absent altogether. Where I anticipated despair there could be empty space; unreasonable joy; an irrational calmness. People told me to “let it out,” or "be strong.” They seemed to perceive sudden loss as an isolated blow, which, through strength and resilience, could be fully recovered from. Really it involves a long and obscure reconciliation that may not have an end. The symptoms of grief can return in times of stress or low immunity, long after the fact. They can be recognised and managed, but not cured.
My mother’s approach was to memorialise my sister. My parents were given a print of her on a big canvas, and they hung it in the house. I didn't like the sheer size of the print, and didn't want my friends to see it. I took the opposite approach to my mother. I thought I could bury what happened, and for a while I did.
***
I gradually became fearful that I would lose again. That there would be more lightning bolts. I had seen fate’s ability to snatch away the things I held dear, and I was flinching in anticipation of fresh catastrophe. But this fear was as latent as the grief itself. It could masquerade as a general insecurity, the murmurings of which were so easy to listen to and believe. Soon it became anxiety and panic.
The first attack happened in a movie theatre with friends. I managed to trick myself into thinking I was going insane. My eyes unfocused and people’s faces became shapes with holes in them. They looked, I guess, as they would to wild animals. I came back to the monolith and broke down, told my parents I was schizophrenic. I kept my running shoes by the door so I could pound away the onset of an attack on the roads in the bush.
I saw a psychotherapist who did a lot of listening and, once, wrote furiously in his notebook when my monologue began recounting a dream. Later I saw a psychic, considered religion, took drugs. I worked and didn't work, had brief and tangled relationships; became passionately involved in obscure interests and dropped them; grew apart from friends; reconnected with others; read books and finished some. All the time the grief was with me.
***
The support group for people bereaved by suicide met in a midwifery. The walls were covered with thank-you cards and photos of newborns. At night, with the low light in the room that doubled as a community space, the building felt like a ghostly portal for new souls. We, the bereaved, drank coffee and ate biscuits. The hosts could see the black comedy in it. I realised I was among people who knew black comedy very well.
These meetings were happening across the country, in the back rooms of churches and hospitals; makeshift venues which seemed to hammer home the obliviousness of the world to personal upheaval. Meanwhile, babies were born. The local church band had its weekly practice. It had been several years since my sister died.
If you need to talk to someone about your (or a loved one's) mental health, try these helplines. If it's an emergency, call 111.
Lifeline - 0800 543 354
Depression Helpline - 0800 111 757
Healthline - 0800 611 116
Suicide Crisis Helpline (aimed at those in distress, or those who are concerned about the wellbeing of someone else) - 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
Youthline - 0800 376 633, free text 234, or email talk@youthline.co.nz