Remembering My Brother on the Anniversary of His Death

April 17, 2023

I've never had the same relationship with death that most people seem to. It's never really been a thing that bothered me. Even working in the emergency room, it was only the particularly tragic deaths that made me reflect on the sadness of the situation. Under normal circumstances, I don't really view death as a tragedy, but simply a part of life. We are all going to die someday and that's always been a pretty easy fact for me to accept. Perhaps it's the goth in me that is able to appreciate the darker aspects of life and therefore also able to accept them so easily.

Up until a year ago, I had never experienced grief over someone's death. I had lost family members, but never really been affected by it. When my father died, we didn't have a relationship anymore by my own choosing, and his death honestly didn't faze me. My grandparents had lived very long lives at the time of their passing, and I wasn't really thinking about it in terms of losing them, but more in terms of them being at peace now. All part of the circle of life.

In the absence of tragedy, I probably could have gone my whole life without experiencing true grief. But a year ago, that tragedy came: my older brother Brad passed away at the age of 39. And I haven't been quite the same since.

I'm not going to sugarcoat my brother's lifestyle or our relationship. The truth is we had been estranged for years because of his drug use and unstable lifestyle. The last time I saw him in person was almost 16 years ago. But I also want to make it clear that I don't blame him for that.

I work with individuals who struggle with addiction, and I know that drug use, while it might start with a choice, eventually becomes something that the person feels powerless over. Addiction is a medical condition, and fighting it is hard. I also know that the decision to use drugs, the decision that sparks an addiction and all the long-term problems that come with it, can sometimes be made because of trauma in that person's life. Although Brad is not blameless in his lifestyle and even his own death, I view him as a victim of tragedy more than anything.

And I want to remember him as the person he was deep down, the person he could have been for decades to come if he hadn't fallen into this way of life.

Brad was 7 years older than I was, so we were always at slightly different stages of life, but were pretty close as kids in spite of that. Of course, most siblings annoy each other, and we were no exception. But I know that Brad took his role as big brother pretty seriously, even if he was a goofy teenager who was always joking and being a dork.

I remember we had a lot of inside jokes when I was a kid. We would always talk and laugh about the older woman in our neighborhood that he thought was hot, as well as staying up late watching old TV shows together, playing video games on the many consoles we had for short periods of time -- he would trade them around the neighborhood, so one day we'd have a Sega, the next day a Nintendo 64 -- and generally just being siblings. When he got his first job and vehicle, a 1970 "hippie" van, it was fun riding around in it with him... even after the engine (which was inside the cab) caught fire and there was fire extinguisher powder all over the inside. I remember him turning the music up so loud in the van that you could feel the bass pounding in your chest. The music could vary anywhere from the oldies we grew up with (I specifically remember "Time of the Season," which leaned into the hippie van joke) to the pop music I listened to as a 10-year-old (the A-Teens cover of ABBA's "Voulez Vous") to a ton of Weird Al (we listened to the Running With Scissors and Poodle Hat albums a lot when they were new). Occasionally the harder rock, metal and punk we would both get more into as we got older.

When I became a huge Star Wars fan at age 10, Brad would occasionally come home with random Star Wars things that he'd found for me. In fact, the first time I saw the complete original trilogy was because he found a VHS box set at a pawn shop. I had seen A New Hope already and recorded it from the TV when it was shown on Thanksgiving, but I desperately wanted to see the two sequels. It was because of his gift that I was able to see The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi for the first time.

I'm the first to admit that things were unfair toward my brother when we were kids. While it wasn't my fault, I know that I was the "golden" child, as well as the only one who biologically belonged to both of my parents. Brad's father had left him and my mom when he was too young to even remember. He never knew his father at all. Mom married my dad when he was four years old. On the surface, that might sound like a good thing for my brother, because now he would have a father; but the reality wasn't like that.

Long before I ever got back in touch with Brad, while we were still estranged and hadn't spoken in years, there was a time when I began thinking about him and the trauma he must have experienced as a child and youth that potentially led to where he was now. It made me feel so sorry for him because, as an adult, I can truly understand how our childhood must have messed him up.

My childhood wasn't perfect, either, and I'm sure I also carry some trauma as a result of it. Especially after age 14, which is the point where pretty much everything came crashing down (a subject I won't go into right now and I'm undecided if I'll ever go into it at all). My relationship with my father was very distant. We lived in the same house, but we might as well have been thousands of miles apart because we never really knew each other. My parents fought a lot, and I don't think I ever kept it a secret that I preferred my mom, even when I was as young as two years old. My relationship with my dad was mostly just awkward, and he said some things about people of other races and lifestyles that bothered me even as a small child (as an adult, I find them downright abhorrent).

But it was a hundred times worse for Brad, whom my father didn't even claim as his child. I know that he never treated him like his own, and Brad never referred to him as his dad, always calling him by his first name despite being only four years old when they got married. I've never understood why someone would marry somebody with such a young child and then never try to make the child feel like they were family. And it wasn't because my brother already had a loving father and he didn't want to try to take his place; like I already mentioned, Brad never had a dad at all. His biological dad left him, and his step-dad never made an attempt at making him feel loved.

I can't imagine what that did to his self-esteem. My relationship with my dad might not have been great, but at least I knew who and where he was, and at least he claimed to love me, even if I kind of feel like he loved me more as a possession and status symbol than a person. Still, I know how much it must have hurt my brother to know that I had a dad and he didn't. We were technically half-siblings, but we never considered each other anything other than just plain old siblings. And yet one of us had a father and the other didn't. That had to be damaging to him. On top of that, because I was the youngest and the only girl, I was given preferential treatment when my parents had to choose between us. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't spoiled; our family was poor, and our home life wasn't great for our mom or either of us kids, but when it came to things like there not being enough room for all of us, I was the one who had the bedroom due to being a young girl, while my brother had to sleep on the couch.

But Brad understood that none of this was my fault. I had never asked for our existence to be the way it was. A lot of people might have resented me for it anyway due to the circumstances, but Brad never did, or at least never made me feel like he did. We always had a special relationship regardless.

For the record, I don't blame my mom for most of our childhood, either. She, too, was a victim of a bad marriage and home life. My brother and I both understood that.

When he was 19 and I was 12, the tension between him and my dad came to an ugly head, leading to the end of their previously distant-but-civil relationship. At this point, Brad had already started going down the wrong path to some extent, and my dad had no empathy for him. When he found out Brad had stolen something from him, he kicked him out of the house. He ended up moving in with our grandparents about an hour away from us. I think it was hard for both of us because we didn't get to see each other much anymore. There were now two people in my maternal grandparents' house that my dad was not on good terms with (the other being my grandpa), so we didn't get to visit very often.

But some of my best memories with my brother were during the rare visits I did have during that time.

He took me to my first concert. Before I fully developed into a metalhead, I was really into punk and pop-punk. When I was about 13, my favorite band was Good Charlotte. I'd never been to a concert before, and unfortunately at that age lived in a rural area; but when I heard that my favorite band was playing a concert in the city where my grandparents and brother now lived, I was determined to go. I'm pretty sure my mom asked my brother to take me because I wasn't really allowed to go anywhere alone. I stayed at my grandparents' house for about a week to visit them and to go to the concert.

Of course, at that age, I didn't have many ways of making my own money. I did have a little, but also didn't understand the concept of scalpers buying tickets to sell for profit. By the night of the concert, I still didn't have tickets and it was already sold out when we arrived. Brad, knowing how much it meant to me, helped me buy tickets from a dude in the parking lot who was selling them for about twice the actual cost. All of the money I had went toward my ticket, but wasn't enough for even one, much less two, at the cost the scalper wanted. If it hadn't been for Brad, I wouldn't have had that experience. I didn't get to have a lot of fun at that age, and this concert was probably the best night of my life at that point. These days, I've seen the majority of my favorite bands live -- at least the ones who've ventured into the United States -- and most of them from the front row. It's an experience I never get tired of, and I owe my first one to him.

A few years later, my favorite band had changed from Good Charlotte to Thrice. He was also the person who bought me my favorite album of theirs, Vheissu. I guess in a way he was an enabler of my obsession with music. I believe he also bought me Avril Lavigne's debut album after I said that I liked a couple of songs I'd heard. I remember him playing the song "Sk8er Boi" and turning the volume up really loud and rolling down the windows as we drove through the Walmart parking lot, which was an extremely 2002 thing to do. It's funny what little things stick in your memory. He also burned me a copy of Evanescence's Fallen album after he bought it. My musical tastes of today have changed a lot, but bands like Thrice I consider my "gateway" from punk to metal and are still very important to me. In fact, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, I had the privilege of seeing them perform Vheissu in its entirety for its 15th anniversary, and my inner teenager was happier than it had been since the night he took me to see Good Charlotte. Next month, I will be seeing them perform a similar 20th anniversary tour for my other favorite album of theirs, The Artist in the Ambulance. I'll be thinking about Brad then as I'm transported back to 2003.

We went to a few movies together during those years, as well. I remember going to see Bruce Almighty when it came out, and some weird movie with Eddie Murphy that didn't do very well called The Adventures of Pluto Nash. But I have a very strong memory of the day he took me to see Lilo and Stitch. We went to Arizona Mills mall, the two of us and this other kid named Andrew (I think) who lived across the street from him. I'm not sure why I have such a strong memory of that day, including him driving us around the circular driveway to the mall with music playing: "The Kids Aren't Alright" by The Offspring, which will always remind me of him not only because of this day, but sadly, because of the lyrics as well.

I also have a few other memories from Arizona Mills, but I can't remember for sure if they were the same day or a different one. I believe that was where he bought me Avril Lavigne's CD, as well as an adorable stuffed frog named Cha-Cha from the Rainforest Cafe. Brad was always buying me silly little presents, it seems in retrospect; or maybe I just remember those things so strongly because it makes me wish I still had all the things he'd given me over the years. The stuffed frog, the Star Wars VHS boxset, the porcelain cat statue he brought me as a souvenir from Mexico, even the CD's. They would all be sentimental things to remember him by at this point, but I don't know anymore where most of them ended up.

Because of this particular visit to the mall, Lilo and Stitch will always make me think about him and our relationship, and that's why it's become the movie I watch in his memory. It's the perfect movie to sum up my feelings, and not only because we saw it together 20 years ago. Although the circumstances of my life are very different from Lilo's and Nani's, the movie's overall themes of grief, "ohana," broken families and sibling love perfectly encapsulate all the emotions I feel when thinking about him. Additionally, my mom reminded me recently that he used to imitate Stitch's voice after the movie came out. It's a very emotional movie and a tear-jerker even under normal circumstances, but watching it since his death (which I've done once so far, on his birthday) makes me bawl my eyes out. And while this sounds like a bad time, it can definitely be cathartic and is needed every once in a while.

Over time, Brad's lifestyle became less and less conducive to us keeping in touch. We did spend a few more months living together in my grandparents' house when I was 17, after my mom decided to leave my dad. Brad was the one she called when she needed to get out of that situation, and he immediately came to the rescue. He met his eventual ex-wife and they tried living together, but things were never stable for them and they ended up having to rely on family (both his and hers) a couple of times. I believe she was a bad influence in his life, especially when it came to his drug use. And I don't feel bad at all in saying this considering she attempted to harass my mom and myself after his death in an attempt to get his belongings, which the police wouldn't let her have because they were divorced and she wasn't family anymore. I moved away when I turned 18, and although we emailed each other a couple of times, it was usually difficult to keep in touch with him due to the way he was living. He was frequently getting evicted, having his phone turned off, etc. so it was hard to know where he was or how to contact him. Eventually I felt it was best that we weren't in contact and I didn't even attempt anymore.

I want to point out something that is true not only in my personal situation, but in the lives of my clients at work, my coworkers who are in recovery, and many other people who've been affected by similar situations: I know that if you're struggling with things like addiction, and your loved ones have cut contact with you, it feels like they don't care about you anymore. In most cases, this is not true. The only reason they aren't in contact with you is for their own protection, because your lifestyle hurts them. It's a necessity, not something they want. It's almost impossible to have a good relationship with family when you are using drugs. All those years that I was estranged from my brother, I never stopped caring about him. I always loved him very much, and it made me sad that we couldn't have a close relationship anymore. I was always jealous of people who had siblings they were close to as adults, because I wanted that. But it didn't seem possible and I adapted in order to protect myself.

In 2021, I discovered that Brad had a Facebook account. It had been years since I'd talked to him at that point. I was shocked to see his picture -- he looked so much older than 38, and the drug use had obviously taken its toll on him. But it seemed like he was doing better now. It made me think long and hard about whether or not we could start talking again now that I knew where to contact him. I took my time, probably a couple of months, thinking it over, and decided it was definitely what I wanted. So on his birthday that year -- August 13 -- I sent him a message. He was overjoyed to hear from me, and I was also excited to talk to him again. I kept envisioning the relationship I wanted us to have. He lived about two hours away from me, so I hoped we could visit each other soon. I wanted to get a picture of the two of us together as adults and frame it as a gift for our mom. I ended up going to visit Mom for the first time in 15 years the following Mother's Day, and part of me hoped we could do that prior to my visit, but it wasn't feasible.

Unfortunately, he wasn't doing quite as well as I'd originally thought when I messaged him. I was still glad we were in touch again, but he was obviously still using, and having mental health crises on a somewhat regular basis. There were multiple times he messaged me during these crises, and thankfully I was always able to talk to him down. He told me I was the only person who seemed to understand and not make him feel like a moron. I guess I can thank my career in substance abuse for that -- another thing that makes me glad I accidentally fell into this line of work.

The last time we spoke was right before I left England during my visit with our mom. His very last message to me said that he hoped I could visit him soon as well, and I absolutely wanted to. We had a long conversation that night over Messenger, and he even expressed concern about his own lifestyle. He sounded closer to recovery than I'd heard him sound before, like he was really ready to change. He told me he wanted to stop using meth, and that he didn't want to die anymore but he was afraid his heart would stop if he kept using.

He was gone 17 days later.

And along with him, so was all of the hope I had for him, and for us. Hope that he would stop using and become a healthier person like I know is possible thanks to my many awesome coworkers who are in recovery from addiction. Hope that we could be close again and truly get to know each other as adults. I feel like I didn't even really know him, because everything I knew and all of my memories are from before the age of 18 for me and 25 for him.

I think that's one of the reasons his death has been so hard on me. I know it's devastating to lose somebody you're close to, someone you talk to every day. But in my case, I think it's made harder by the fact that I wanted to be close to him and never had the opportunity. Only eight months after we got back in touch, he was gone forever. I will always carry some level of guilt over the fact that we were estranged for so long. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I'll always wonder and think about all those years that maybe we could have spent getting to know each other better.

The only picture I even have of us together is the one at the top of this page, in which I was about 7 years old and he was around 14.

The other reason I think it's been so difficult for me to process this loss as opposed to others I've experienced is simply because this wasn't a much-older family member whose time had come; it was my sibling and we were of the same generation. I'm not trying to downplay anyone's grief who's lost a parent or grandparent and been devastated by it, but for me personally, I find it difficult to be sad over someone dying at an advanced age. But people aren't supposed to die in their 30's. We were supposed to grow old on roughly the same timeline, and now I'll be doing that -- God willing -- without him. He didn't even make it to his 40th birthday. I'm still years away from turning 40, but when I do, it's going to be a weird feeling for me, because he was the older sibling. I'm not supposed to be older than he is. Already I've gained a year since he left us. It's going to be so weird when I surpass him in age.

I'm sure it's even harder for our mom, because parents never expect their children to die before they do. Like mine, her relationship with Brad was also not perfect due to the circumstances, but he was her firstborn and I know she loved him dearly.

Though he died on the 17th of April, I didn't find out until about 1 a.m. on the 19th. Later that evening, I had to go to work for the first of three consecutive night shifts. I thought I was okay at first, but I think it just hadn't sunk in yet. On the way to work, it began to sink in, and I began tearing up. I did my best to hold it together after getting there, but it wasn't working. I remember a doctor I worked with at the time asking me to take a bag of ice in to one of our ER patients who had injured their knee. I did so with tears in my eyes, and then immediately went into the supply room and broke down sobbing. I went home and didn't come back for another week. For the entire week, I was constantly weepy at best, sobbing at worst. I didn't want to be at work, but I also didn't want to be at home. I didn't know what to do with myself. It was probably the hardest week of my life.

Four months later came what would have been his 40th birthday, which brought all of those feelings of immediate grief back to me again.

I still occasionally start randomly crying when I think about it. I wonder if that will ever go away.

Now that we've reached the first anniversary, I keep hoping that maybe things will get a little easier. There are no more milestones left. His first birthday since he left, my first birthday without him, first Mother's Day, first holiday season, etc... they've all come and gone. This is the final milestone in our grief, and I hope that healing might become a little easier now. But I know that it might never be entirely possible to heal completely.

Tonight, on the one-year anniversary of his death, I'll be ordering a pizza in his honor, watching Lilo and Stitch, and spending some quality time with the urn that holds his ashes, making believe that he's here with me.

Maybe I'll make a playlist of all the songs that remind me of him and the time we spent together. But the sad thing is that it won't include any songs from my adulthood, only songs that are at least 16 or 17 years old.

The night before he died, I was actually at a concert: Arch Enemy and Behemoth (mostly to see Arch Enemy, as Behemoth's goofy "Christians bad, worship Satan" shtick is a bit much for me).

The memory of this concert was weird for a while. It felt strange and sad and a bit guilt-worthy to know that I was at a concert enjoying myself the night before my brother's official time of death, which was listed by the medical examiner at about 10 a.m. Since his body wasn't found until he'd been gone a while, this is an estimated time of death that the coroner would have determined based on physical evidence. For all I know, he could have been dying while I was still at the concert, or at the very least, engaging in activities that would lead to such. That's a really weird thought to sit with.

But ultimately, I decided not to let it make me feel bad. I know that my brother would want me to enjoy my life. He would have wanted it a year ago, and he still would today. The best way to honor him is to do just that: live my life to the fullest and get as much out of it as I can.

Plus, Brad probably would have loved Arch Enemy. In fact, I think he would have loved most of the music that I listen to. He was into stuff like Slayer, which is not among my favorite bands, but clearly shows he had an interest in metal. I think the only reason he didn't listen to the same bands I do is because, like many Americans, he'd simply never heard of them. I have a feeling that if I'd been able to introduce him to my favorites and the overall genres I love, he'd have been a big fan too, and it would have been something that we could have bonded over. Another thing that I feel we had stolen from us.

I'm not mad at Brad for the way he died or for the fact that we were estranged for so long. I am mad at the drugs and the lifestyle for taking him from me, though. For robbing me of the opportunity to have a close relationship with him for all those years. For the fact that I'll never have the chance to show him my favorite bands now. We'll never go to another concert together, or to a movie, or any of the things that normal siblings get to do together. And while I don't blame him for it, it does make me mad. It isn't fair.

But I will continue living my life to the fullest whenever I can. I will, eventually, break out of the rut of depression and grief that I've been in for so long, and even before I can fully do that, I will take every opportunity to do things that are important to me when they arise.

There's a Misfits and AFI concert coming up in July that I really want to go to because they were two of my favorite bands when I was about 14, and I never got to see either of them despite wishing I could. I've been on the fence about going because it takes place on a work night, which means having to request PTO, and then getting affordable tickets, which are pretty much only lawn tickets because the good tickets are a few hundred dollars, and there are lots of reasons that I could skip out on going. But I think that if Brad were here today, he would tell me to go, that I shouldn't miss out on it for all those silly reasons. Just like he didn't let me miss out on seeing Good Charlotte when I was 13.

Perhaps I'll be there wearing a bit of his ashes in a pendant around my neck so it's like we're there together.

tags: grief, death, family, siblings, relationships, substance abuse