Losing a brother

I feel like I’ve not still dealt with my brother’s death. There are moments when I break down crying because I think of him and I miss him so....

It was awfully quiet when he died. I couldn’t even post about it because my brother was worried my parents would see it and lose it more. But that wasn’t the only reason why I didn’t post anything about his death. I’d been self-exiled from social media for quite a bit and it seemed rather performative to have to go back there to post my grief. What would I gain? The sympathy of virtual strangers, some of them family and acquaintances who had not checked on me in years?

But I needed to let ‘it’ out as much as I could. Something kept and still keeps pushing me to let ‘it’ out, to shatter the silence. I wrote a poem which was published about his loss. I wrote a piece in my blog, with pictures of him and us together. The latter piece still lies in my draft box. I tried to hold on to the dreams of him I had, relishing his quiet but companionable silence when he came.

But it doesn’t seem to be enough. No one gets over a loss. It’s been three years, but time has not healed a single thing. Maybe time just can’t heal such a huge loss as this. He was my ‘twin’ and I regretted neglecting him a bit towards the end when I focused on my own new family, when his non-frugality became an issue for me. Maybe I should have held tighter. Maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should have prayed harder. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so harsh to him when he wasn’t being as economical as I was. Maybe I should have promised him more that day before his death when I promised he could come stay with us in the UK for a research degree or whatever else he wanted and escape the stress he had been undergoing in Nigeria. It never crossed my mind that that would be the last time I would hear his voice, that he would be gone a day later.

Even now, as I write this, it's still so difficult to believe I will never see him again on this sphere. I still can't believe he’s left. I still can't believe we're beginning yet another new year without him. I still can't believe he’s left.

There's a part of me that still thinks he’s here, tinkering around with his PhD thesis in Nigeria; that any minute he'll chat with me on WhatsApp, laughing apologetically at how bewildered I have been, we've all been, serenading me with his stories and aspirations, punctuating them with our mutual experiences.

I hate that I can't just call him now and share a joke, ask about his plans, and just vent?

I miss the good and the bad about him – his kind-heartedness, his unassuming nature, his obsession with taking hundreds of selfies once he lays hands on my phone, on anyone's phone, his last-born tendencies to ask, 'anything for the boy?' time and time again.

I miss him. There is a part of me that seems to be gone and I shudder to think what it would be like if I lost any other person. I pray everyone I love lives as long as Methuselah, whether they like it or not. Lol.

But I’m not sure what else to do to ‘get over it’, to let go. Somehow, I know I never will, and I should stop trying to, but how do I stop?