emotions are a strange thing....
I've mentioned that I had a brother who died five years ago. This week has been one that has seemed to remind me of him regularly.
Partly because the debate over faith schools has blown up again in the media, and it was the last thing we discussed before he died. i was waiting for him to explain the party-line on why they were being increased, because i didn't, and still don't understand how a labour Gov't has promoted state faith schools! it made me feel angry that I never got to have that (and so many other) discussions with him.
Earlier in the week I took a phone call at work. the woman on the other end asked to make an appointment, and then broke down in tears telling me that she had just found out her son had died. She used exactly the same words that my mother used when she phoned me that Thursday evening to tell me she had just found out my brother had died. I don't think i can explain the emotions that suddenly welled up at that - sadness, compassion, and something more.
Then I heard through the grapevine that his biological mother died a few weeks ago. She died alone, in a mental hospital, thanking some unknown woman for being a good mother to her son. She married when my brother was still quite young, and had three more children, and she lived with them & her husband all the way through his childhood - he visited her every year until he was 18 & refused to continue. So why do I feel in some way guilty?
It would have been his 30th birthday in January. I still think about him most days. Which is wierd, as I rarely "thought" about him when he was alive.
Partly because the debate over faith schools has blown up again in the media, and it was the last thing we discussed before he died. i was waiting for him to explain the party-line on why they were being increased, because i didn't, and still don't understand how a labour Gov't has promoted state faith schools! it made me feel angry that I never got to have that (and so many other) discussions with him.
Earlier in the week I took a phone call at work. the woman on the other end asked to make an appointment, and then broke down in tears telling me that she had just found out her son had died. She used exactly the same words that my mother used when she phoned me that Thursday evening to tell me she had just found out my brother had died. I don't think i can explain the emotions that suddenly welled up at that - sadness, compassion, and something more.
Then I heard through the grapevine that his biological mother died a few weeks ago. She died alone, in a mental hospital, thanking some unknown woman for being a good mother to her son. She married when my brother was still quite young, and had three more children, and she lived with them & her husband all the way through his childhood - he visited her every year until he was 18 & refused to continue. So why do I feel in some way guilty?
It would have been his 30th birthday in January. I still think about him most days. Which is wierd, as I rarely "thought" about him when he was alive.
posted by Juggling Mother @ 9:22 pm
3 Comments:
At Friday, October 27, 2006 11:30:00 pm,
Unknown said…
How very poignant and...special. Lives intertwined yet separate, touching yet apart. A rich tapestry which merits mulling over for the deeper meaning.
Thanks for your thoughts on my blog.
At Sunday, October 29, 2006 11:44:00 pm,
Anonymous said…
I still think about him most days. Which is wierd, as I rarely "thought" about him when he was alive.
The human psyche is fascinating and utterly unpredictable.
My brother died in 1990. I thought of him rarely before that day (he was much older than me and we had little in common). I grieved intensely, which took me completely by surprise. But I can't say that my thoughts turn to him with any great frequency since then.
At Sunday, November 05, 2006 8:35:00 am,
Juggling Mother said…
Hi Stephen & thanks for the comment. I guess I rarely thought about my brother before he died, because if I wanted to know what he thought about something, he was just at the end of the phone, and we talked often, if iregularly. He was at EVERY family occasion, and even popped up on TV every now & then (not a great sight at 7am with a hangover - turn the TV on & see your baby brother lecturing you *grin*).
Now whenever I see or hear something interesting I wonder what his take on it would have been, and as I have no way of finding out, each time that topic re-appears I think about him again. Obviously, as time goes on, more topics appear, so I think about him more now, that immediatly after his death. In a purely selfish way of course, but everything the living think of the dead is selfish. Whatever your beliefs, the dead do not need our sympathy (unless you're big int Hell, I suppose).
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