I lost my little brother last year. A man fell asleep at the wheel, pressed on the gas going 70+ miles an hour, crossing over two lanes and hitting my brother (who was going about 55 MPH) head on. The coroner told us he (my brother) didn’t know what hit him. The man was driving a new chevy 3500 quad cab duelly…my bro, a 1996 2 door Honda accord. He was killed instantly from a broken neck. He was only 26. I need some facts that no one else can seem to give me. I still lose sleep every night over his loss. We were very close. I know nothing will change that but I need to know that he did not suffer. That is my worst fear. Any advice out there?
I’m sorry for your loss, but the coroner would have a lot more information on the demise of your brother than us and from the speeds you tell us were involved I do not see any reason to doubt his statement that your brother wouldn’t have had any time conscious to suffer from his injuries.
The OP was originally posted to this thread in GQ, but moved since it’s a request for advice.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Bonding mine.
First, I am so sorry for your loss. To lose a sibling and at such an early age is positively gut-wrenching and my heart goes out to you.
You say you “need” to know something that 1) is essentially unknowable and 2) may not be true (hence your doubt). By telling yourself you need this thing to be true, perhaps you are subconsciously distracting yourself from focussing on the loss itself and the future good times you will not be sharing with your brother. It’s not a healthy distraction to focus on the circumstances of the death itself. Whatever happened cannot be changed and you are obsessing over a detail that changes nothing.
The circumstances of your brother’s accident imply that at worst he may have spent a very brief time (fractions of a second to a second or two) of fear anticipating the accident, then possibly a brief time in pain, followed by death. If he suffered, his suffering was brief. As deaths go, his was likely much easier than most, in spite of being untimely–dragging on in agony for weeks, months, or years from disease is not atypical, after all, and at least he has been spared the countless worse deaths that may have awaited him. Of course you’d have chosen to have him for as long as possible, but it turns out this was it. There is only one possible past and no matter how he painfully or painlessly he died, it’s done and he isn’t suffering now.
When you start to focus on his death, take a moment to think about his life. Don’t let everything wonderful be obliterated by this tragedy. You are still alive and can honor his life and the things you loved about him. Try to think of something positive you can do to celebrate him whenever you start thinking that knowing this unknowable thing that seems to matter so much is essential for you to go on. You must go on with him in your heart now instead of by your side. That sucks, but his death was the tragedy, not his life.
RandomSlater, I’m very, very sorry for your loss.
I think it’s unlikely that your brother knew any pain or fear. In an accident such as you described, the brain doesn’t register everything that’s happening. He may have consciously registered an “Oh, s***”, or “What the…?”, but not much more.
Broken necks can be a fast and painless way to die, because the pain simply can’t travel to the brain.
I agree with naita that you should contact the coroner for more information. Coroners often speak to survivors, and this may give you some comfort.
I also think that AnaMen has some good ideas when it comes to redirecting your thoughts when you think of your brother. If you can’t do this on your own, speaking to a counselor can help.
That’s a terrible loss. Very sorry to hear it.
I know just a little bit about this from writing for the automobile industry and working as a medical interpreter.
The g-force in a crash like that is so great that it blacks a person right out. Typically, if people recover, they have no memory of the accident.
Thus, regardless of the exact cause of death, your brother was almost certainly already unconscious when he passed.
As a medical interpreter, I helped a family who lost their son and daughter-in-law in a crash. He had what appeared to be fairly superficial damage to his leg, but his brain was so damaged simply by the forces of the crash that he never recovered consciousness. He was taken off life support and lived only a few hours longer.
It is quite possible that your brother suffered the same method of death as a hanged man, but without the sensation of falling.
When the neck is subject to stresses along a line it cannot move, there is an immediate (as in instantaneous) disconnect between the brain and the spinal cord.
Any pain sensations the body attempts to send to the brain will find ‘bridge out’ when they reach the top of the spine.
No pain.
It may or may not be appropriate to inject this truism: Death is much easier on the one doing the dying. It is the ones around him which suffer more.