How My Brother Died Twice and the Wild Adventures of Grief
by Quinn Simpson
This was written in honour of International Grief Awareness Day and those we have all lost, loved and grieved.
On Tuesday last week, we buried one of my brothers, Colin David Simpson. Laying him to rest reminded me of the importance of a possibility mindset and sense of adventure. Colin was a risk-taker, a true rascal, and could make you laugh until your belly hurt. Then we lost him.
His schizophrenia diagnosis hit him hard and changed who he needed to be to fight the illness for the last 20 years. He showed a level of courage and bravery against everything that came with what he had. As my family stood around the grave, my brother Bradley shared that this was the second time we were grieving him. That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t realised why I brushed off his second death.
When his heart stopped beating in May, we lost Colin a second time, so when people said, “I’m so sorry for your loss”, I would respond awkwardly, “Oh don’t worry, I have four other brothers.” They would make a face. I would appreciate the insensitivity of my comment, but also, I didn’t know what else to say. Now I realise, the reason for my lack of sensitivity is because I had already lost him. I had already grieved the brother I thought I would have. The brother I had when I was little.
Grief is an upside down and backward adventure and that’s why Rachel Baldi and Christie Mann wrote the book Lil’ Amina. If you are going through a period of grief, or know someone who is, remember you are not alone. The journey is not linear and there are many people who will walk the maze with you.
When our Operations Manager, Amy, lost her husband two years ago she didn’t anticipate losing him more than once, either. Being his spouse meant she took on responsibility for notifying family and friends, explaining to her toddler that her daddy wasn’t coming home, making funeral plans, registering his death, contacting the bank and so on. Each task was like its own micro death. Chris didn’t die once for her, he died over and over and over again.
However, the grief intensified when the doctors couldn’t determine the cause of death and they decided to perform a post-mortem. The time between his death and the funeral was nearly six weeks and all these parts of the process were drawn out. Here’s how Amy explained it in her own words, “each time I moved to a new step of the process it felt like I was hit with the magnitude of the loss over and over again.”
Our ability to experience and process a spectrum of emotion is what makes humans unique. It is our responsibility to afford ourselves with the gift of feeling. I know that Amy and I will like experience more grief going forward but we are doing it in community and that makes all the difference.