Skald, My condolences. I am sorry for your loss, 48.
I’m sorry Skald.
May he rest in peace.
Strength to you.
Someone said this in another thread, rephrased for actual relation: “you’re mourning the brother who went away a very long time ago”.
In some sense you lost your brother twice. The first time it happened over a period of years, as you grew disenchanted with him and decided to distance yourself from him. The second time happened this past weekend. You may be going through a kind of double mourning.
Anyway, I’m really sorry.
This is the truth. Neither is a zero-sum game.
The more people realise this, the happier everyone will be, I reckon.
Oh, and sorry you’re feeling bad. {{Hug.}}
It’s to be expected. Like him or not that is one fewer person in your family still alive. Someday it will be another. Then another. It’s how life keeps moving on.
Sorry for your loss, Skald, and best wishes to you and your family.
Any feelings are okay. None of your feelings are wrong.
Thanks to all. I’d write more, but I seem to be mired in the anger stage of grief.
Some say love and hate are not opposites, apathy would be the more correct opposite of love.
Hate is to some people a misplaced misidentified feeling of ‘love the person, hate the act’ onto the person, but the love is there which allows the hate. Or you can’t really hate someone unless you care about them first, and that caring is love.
Good luck, my sympathies and wish you well on this.
Oh my god, I cried for my mother when they cremated her. Just sat down and cried like a child. Not because I missed what she was, cause god she tormented me, but for the loss of all the things that could have been, and the loss of any chance of any of those things ever coming true. As long as she was alive, there was some hope, no matter how futile. Once she was dead, the hopes burned up with her body.
Lots of hugs and kisses, Skald. Grief is a hard and confusing thing.
I’m sorry for your loss, Skald. I have a brother, who is a good father, smart, a hard worker (although not particularly successful), and who would kill for me. He’s also thoughtless, racist, and someone I don’t particularly like to be around. Still, when he was having cancer surgery a few months ago, I was in the hospital waiting room waiting for word. I brought him chocolate chip cookies with double walnuts. I sat with him while he slept. And it’ll probably months or a year before I see him again.
Family is complicated. You deal with them because, barring absenting yourself from your whole family, you can’t just escape one. We are all interconnected, even when we don’t like each other.
StG
I can somewhat understand your feelings.
Your brother was a jerk. But he was your jerk.
Don’t beat yourself up over mixed emotions.
I’m sorry for your loss, Skald. Take care of yourself.
I am estranged from my oldest brother going on 10 years. I have often thought how I might feel should I “get the call”. My hunch is that I will feel the exact same way that you are feeling now. I appreciate your sharing your story. Gives me lots to think about.
Peace to you and your family.
I think every death causes that grief for what could have, should have been. Humanity is such a jumble of actual and potential that it’s hard to separate out the grief for the former from the latter. And it’s not really necessary. All that matters is that something is lost, and feelings remain.
I remember when a woman I did not like at all died. I was in my early twenties and it hit me with such a blow. She was the first person I can remember really REALLY disliking and her death made me realize how sad it wa that I would never really know if that dislike was justified, I’d never know if there was something to be done, never know if either of us could change or grow. She was just dead, leaving me to try to finish a story that used to star both of us.
I join others in expressing condolences, though I understand your feelings are mixed so even receiving such wishes may feel odd. There’s no one way to grieve or react to death. It could be that your tears as much as anything were a response to your sister’s emotional state, or even (apologies for how harsh this may sound) on some level something like relief. Based on your description of how your brother treated some members of the family, that would not seem completely out of left field, to me. In any case, maybe take comfort in knowing many people have some degree or another of estrangement from a family member or members. Again, there’s no one ‘right’ way for any of us to do these things. Go easy on yourself either way.
Skald, I know I’ve said this on this board before, but it’s true, I think. Losing someone you simply love is a straightforward process in a lot of ways. It’s both horrible and easier than losing someone you had huge issues with, because guilt for how we felt, or are feeling now, or will feel in the future always seems to ride along with the grief and make things incredibly complicated.
We all grieve differently, but there are some common things: Grief is hard, confusing, and fucked up. You can grieve someone you would kill with your bare hands if they were standing alive in front of you. And guilt is an incredibly weird and difficult emotion.
Try not to set limits or constraints on how you feel and just feel. Even the weird stuff. Even the stuff that is inexplicable or freaky or that someone else might tell you is wrong.
I’m sorry about your brother.
Skald, I’ve thought about your post all day. I’ve gone over the losses in my own life (my mother), and those to come (my father).
I had a relationship with my mother that was good, I felt loved and respected, and though she had some disagreement with my being gay, we had a solid.
With my father in his 80s now, I just don’t know. It’s always been troubled and he still seems to disrespect my life, with another woman, and his grandson.
I don’t think there are any pure feelings one can get out of a family member’s death. There’s good, there’s bad, and there always will be after they pass on. I think it’s beautiful that you remember your childhood with your brother in positive ways. Put aside the differences and/or look at it all as part of the whole.
Your brother was part of the whole you, Skald. You have what he contributed to your life-- the bad and the good.
It’s also the case that the man had isolated himself to the point where no one missed him, and only his unclaimed mail tipped off the outside world. You’re a compassionate and social person, Skald, and part of you may simply be saddened that he had put himself in such a lonely position.