I hate this time of year.
It will be 3 years in a few weeks.
3 years. It seems impossible that so much time has passed since I lost my brother.
I've been spending a lot of time being angry lately. Angry that my brother could do this to our family. Angry that I didn't know something was wrong. Angry for all the time wasted and time lost with him.
When does it get easier? When do I get to a point where I don't flash back to the call from my dad telling me my brother was dead? That I don't feel myself there, at the funeral, watching his casket lowered into the ground and his friends throwing dirt onto his grave?
I'm so angry at him, at me, at God, that it has to be this way. Why me? Why did I have to lose my brother? Why do all of my friends get to keep and enjoy their siblings and I had to lose mine?
I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of being sad.
I just want him back.
Dear Rella,
ReplyDeleteI think of Etan often. I think that we tend to torture ourselves wondering if we could have somehow, stopped this. But we didn't know. We weren't allowed to know, because he was very good at hiding behind his wry smile, taking pride in that inscrutability. It is difficult to allow ourselves to truly believe that our inability to penetrate that mask was not, somehow, our fault. There is no way that we can possibly know if we had done some specific thing, it would have turned out differently. The guilt of self-recrimination does nothing useful. Perhaps before we can forgive him, we have to forgive ourselves. Wishing you and all those who loved Etan comfort for the empty space in our lives and hearts, and the consolation of forgiveness. I posted this article the other day on my FB page, thinking about Etan.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/05/22/why-suicide-has-become-and-epidemic-and-what-we-can-do-to-help.html