I will always remember visiting my best friends house as a young girl. Not only because we had a LOT of fun, but because something there is similar to my own situation now.
Her mother’s brother died. And there was a photo of him on the wall. An outdated photo, with faded edges and dust on the frame. I never thought much about that photo. Though I saw it each and every time I visited, I never asked or knew his name or how he died. I didn’t think about her Mum and what that really meant.
Now, twenty years later, I have a photo on the wall. It is outdated. Taken with a FILM camera in Bali.
It hangs nicely on my kitchen wall and I look at it each and every day.
But now I know that when Jaxon brings his friends over to stay or play, they will see that photo and behind my back Jaxon will tell them it’s his mother’s brother. And Terry will be like a no one to them. A picture on the wall.
People don’t even ask any more. They just look at it and think nothing of a photo of someone they have never met on our wall. And if they do ask, then I say “that’s my brother Terry”. Like maybe he’s on holidays. Maybe he just lives overseas. Or maybe we just don’t talk anymore.
Like that would ever have happened.
Eleven years ago, I would have broken to pieces having to say he’d died.
I remember the day he died like it was just the other day. When nothing seemed to be real. When driving home from my camping place the thought of putting myself in front of a truck was appealing. And gliding through the rest of the day like my entire body was just on auto pilot.
My best friend came right over. And she sat with me while I cried and cried on my bed. While extended family sat in the kitchen consoling my Dad. I remember how much I loved her that day. For without her, I would have otherwise been alone. She let me rest my heavy head on her knee and cry. And she held my hair back off my face and she wiped my tears away and she cried with me. When the tears had dried out and I could no longer keep my eyes open, I drifted. And she sat with me quietly while I stared off in to nothingness.
I remember the days where I would go to work and have to be driven home within an hour because being alone with my animal’s and just my thoughts would rip out my insides. I couldn’t stand up, let alone work. I couldn’t even talk. I couldn’t find the right words that would properly describe having your world yanked out from under you at 120 kilometer’s an hour in a 60 zone.
All gone in a matter of minutes.
I will never get my dreams back. I will never get the future I had in my head. The future that had him firmly planted in every plan I ever made for myself. The children. The BBQ’s. The parties. The birthdays. He was there in every thing. Intertwined throughout my life, growing with each other. Until we were old and grey, and had to stand by the grave as we buried our parents together.
But instead, I stood by his grave. With my parents by my sides. Watching as his young body was planted firmly in the ground. Forever. His laugh nothing but an echo in my head.
Terry will never meet my husband. The love of my life. He will never know his nephew. He will never know what it feels like to grow old, or to watch as the life you create takes it’s first breath. He will never do any of the things I had planned for him in my head.
Tim will never get to meet my brother. One of the most influential people in my life. One of the people that made me exactly who I am. He will never know what Terry was like. What he sounded like. I can’t talk about him enough. What I have to say about him doesn’t even begin to give you an idea of the life that Terry had. The way he changed the mood of the room just by being there. Only Terry could tell you you were a fucking idiot to your face and not hurt your feelings.
Jaxon will never have a cousin with my maiden name. Because my maiden name died when Terry died.
That hurts. All the time.
No words can express it. You don’t know it until it happens to you and you will never understand me. You will never understand the emptiness that is created the day someone so close to you dies. The void that is created. That photo on the wall means everything to me.
It’s not just a photo. It’s my life. It’s my lost dreams. It’s my broken heart. Deep down inside me, no matter how strong I seem and how little I seem to need to talk about him and remember him to you, there will always be a large hole. A large broken piece that can never ever be repaired. Or replaced.
Every day I cry on the inside for the life that I lost when Terry lost his.
Your words come at a time in my life where I completely understand you. I used to think I knew what Grief was until 3months ago at 51 Mum died. I had had plans too and she was in them, I even had plans for her….travelling with Dad around Australia. For me it is fresh, raw, and very very painful and I honestly dont thinnk it’ll get easier.
I remember Terry like he was here yesterday, full of live, energy and carisma. He for a while was a good friend to me, sort of like that older brother I never had.
How he would drop in to see Mum and Dad and raid the cupboards for biscuts and lollies or how he loved his metal music….LOUD but when he first got is P’s and borrowed my Dads kingswood he would not even turn the radio on (deep in concentration I guess lol).
I remember the last time I saw Terry, it was in the Brunswick swimming pool and we was on one of his training kicks again. We chatted for a bit ( dont even know what it was about) but all the while I was busting to tell him I was almost 3 months pregnant…It would have been like telling a brother but for what ever reason I didnt tell him. The next week or so Mum rang me and said I should go over to her place, she had something to tell me. She sat me down and told me and honestly I lost a piece of my heart that day that will never return.
I go to the cemetery and sit with him every now and then and always end up in tears. I look around at the grave sites around him and they are all elderly and right in the middle there is Terry. I clean his plaque and talk to him, on time is was hoe bad Metallica’s album St Anger was crap and he would be discusted.
I cant listen to Mama Said without balling my eyes out but in a way i feel closer to him when I do listen to it.
Look at that photo on the wall and be proud everyday and say with pride that he was and always will be your brother..until the wheels of time turn hold him in your heart and someday you will meet up with him again but until then just know all you have to do is call his name and he will be there.
Because I knew Him I am here for you, You want to talk about him for hours and just need someone to listen I am here.
Take Care Boo, you are not alone
It is also the loss of your shared memories of childhood and growing up…
*hugs* Boo
Hi Boo
I am still unable to put Terry on the wall for many reasons. He is in a part of my heart that stays pretty well locked because I have had more practice than some with loss, life…and death.
I am not mourning but celebrating his life for the brief period that we all had with him. I could have many regrets but they serve no useful purpose.
We have had so much more than others and more will have suffered a lot more but I guess that doesn’t help Boo.
He would want you to face the future and remember him for the fun times not the lost times.
You are the one who misses what he cannot experience. He is forever 24. If his life taught us nothing else it taught us all to take charge of your lives and live everyday, don’t waste a moment.
If he was here he would say get on with it because you have to…and guess what you can and you do most days.
Mourn missed opportunities but not what you cannot change. He would want you to live and live your life to the full as he did – the amount of time is irrelevant.
Love him, you don’t have to forget but we need to let him go
Love Mum (to both of you)
Boo, your grief touches me deeply and I wish for you to find peace. I have a picture on my wall too, of my cousin who was like my brother. I don’t think my husband even really knows who that picture is and why it is important to me. No one asks. Last year when I went to my uncle’s funeral, I found his headstone in the cemetery and that hurt more than the funeral I had just been in. But…but somehow with the strength of family around us, it became the right time for me to lay down the burden of grief for George. Though I still cry at times considering the absence in my life, and I still find it frustrating trying to explain the absolute idolatry I had for him as a young girl, I cherish the few years we had together and the deep impression he left on me in just 16 short years. You never have to forget your brother, but at some point I hope that you will come to a place where you can rejoice at his living rather than feel the anguish of his leaving. Hugs from here!!!