A Story: 002 (Not much like grief)
Dec. 28th, 2017 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_storyA year before my brother's death I broke up with my girlfriend. Tears flowed freely then. I cried on the day of the breakup; I drunkenly sobbed on a friend's shoulder on New Year's Eve; I shed tears while listening to her favourite band, The Knife, indulging myself in an almost masochistic nostalgia for my lost love.
The emotions I felt then were raw but simple, despite the seemingly complicated circumstances that led to the event (a subject for another story).
A year later my brother died. I cried only twice - shortly upon hearing the news, and then at his funeral. Tears, as I learned then, are a luxury given only to straightforward emotions. No such luxury was available to me that time.
The afternoon I learned the news, I was at a site visit for a building project that I was overseeing as an architect. My mobile phone flashed the name of an acquaintance who had never previously called me out of the blue, someone from my hometown in Siberia who, like me, lived in London. I was in the middle of a meeting so could not pick up, yet the caller left no message. Some minutes later, my mum tried to ring me, and again I could not take the call, but I instantly new something terrible must have happened. I called back after the meeting was over, and dad picked up. His words were hollow and slow, as if he had extreme difficulty speaking, "It's about M. It's finally happened." "What's finally happened? Has he disappeared?" I asked, still not understanding. "No, not that." "Oh," I said as the realisation dawned on me. "You are our only child now", added dad.
The acquaintance from my hometown called again and after a short pause uttered, "Tania, umm... I don't know how to tell you this, but..." I interrupted, "I already know." She sounded relieved that she wasn't the first person to tell me the news. I listened to her sorry-about-your-loss utterings before blurting out a curt thank you and hanging up. I finished up my day in a haze. I remember telling off the builders about some steel fireproofing they had forgotten to put in, but feeling as if my mind had left the body and was floating out there somewhere.
Eventually the day drew to a close, I got on the train back to London, hid myself at the back of an empty carriage, and cried. Yet I did not know who I was crying for. Was it really for my brother? We had been estranged for quite some time. He had been living in Russia and I in the UK. I had not spoken to him on the phone in almost a year, and had not seen him in person for nine years; I had studiously erased him from my life. I had no meaningful relationship with him and therefore surely could not care less whether he lived or died.
Indeed, the first emotion that I could identify in my jumbled up brain was relief. "Thank fuck" were the words that kept circling in my head. Thank fuck that he was no longer my family's or anyone else's problem. Thank fuck that his tragic and tortured life came to an equally tragic and tortured end. Most selfishly of all, thank fuck that I no longer needed to worry about how I was going to look after him after my parents passed away.
Or was I crying for my mother? At that point, I viewed her as a reluctant martyr, forced into one of the messiest and ugliest situations through maternal love and a misunderstood sense of duty. Was I trying to imagine her suffering upon hearing the news, but wondering whether, like me, she was able to feel some sense of relief? Thank fuck that she could at last find some respite after decades of self-sacrifice and self-flagellation... Right?..
As time went on, guilt, dread, melancholy and a perverse nostalgia for my childhood were just some of the other emotions I was able to identify. None of them seemed much like grief at all, at least not in a conventional sense.
The guilt grew and grew until it formed into an ugly thought, "I killed my brother." This began repeating in my head, obsessively. Of course, I knew I didn't kill him, not literally. Yet the thought kept returning, growing like a black cloud until it eclipsed everything else.
The emotions I felt then were raw but simple, despite the seemingly complicated circumstances that led to the event (a subject for another story).
A year later my brother died. I cried only twice - shortly upon hearing the news, and then at his funeral. Tears, as I learned then, are a luxury given only to straightforward emotions. No such luxury was available to me that time.
The afternoon I learned the news, I was at a site visit for a building project that I was overseeing as an architect. My mobile phone flashed the name of an acquaintance who had never previously called me out of the blue, someone from my hometown in Siberia who, like me, lived in London. I was in the middle of a meeting so could not pick up, yet the caller left no message. Some minutes later, my mum tried to ring me, and again I could not take the call, but I instantly new something terrible must have happened. I called back after the meeting was over, and dad picked up. His words were hollow and slow, as if he had extreme difficulty speaking, "It's about M. It's finally happened." "What's finally happened? Has he disappeared?" I asked, still not understanding. "No, not that." "Oh," I said as the realisation dawned on me. "You are our only child now", added dad.
The acquaintance from my hometown called again and after a short pause uttered, "Tania, umm... I don't know how to tell you this, but..." I interrupted, "I already know." She sounded relieved that she wasn't the first person to tell me the news. I listened to her sorry-about-your-loss utterings before blurting out a curt thank you and hanging up. I finished up my day in a haze. I remember telling off the builders about some steel fireproofing they had forgotten to put in, but feeling as if my mind had left the body and was floating out there somewhere.
Eventually the day drew to a close, I got on the train back to London, hid myself at the back of an empty carriage, and cried. Yet I did not know who I was crying for. Was it really for my brother? We had been estranged for quite some time. He had been living in Russia and I in the UK. I had not spoken to him on the phone in almost a year, and had not seen him in person for nine years; I had studiously erased him from my life. I had no meaningful relationship with him and therefore surely could not care less whether he lived or died.
Indeed, the first emotion that I could identify in my jumbled up brain was relief. "Thank fuck" were the words that kept circling in my head. Thank fuck that he was no longer my family's or anyone else's problem. Thank fuck that his tragic and tortured life came to an equally tragic and tortured end. Most selfishly of all, thank fuck that I no longer needed to worry about how I was going to look after him after my parents passed away.
Or was I crying for my mother? At that point, I viewed her as a reluctant martyr, forced into one of the messiest and ugliest situations through maternal love and a misunderstood sense of duty. Was I trying to imagine her suffering upon hearing the news, but wondering whether, like me, she was able to feel some sense of relief? Thank fuck that she could at last find some respite after decades of self-sacrifice and self-flagellation... Right?..
As time went on, guilt, dread, melancholy and a perverse nostalgia for my childhood were just some of the other emotions I was able to identify. None of them seemed much like grief at all, at least not in a conventional sense.
The guilt grew and grew until it formed into an ugly thought, "I killed my brother." This began repeating in my head, obsessively. Of course, I knew I didn't kill him, not literally. Yet the thought kept returning, growing like a black cloud until it eclipsed everything else.
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