Missing my brother and grieving for him is still a never-ending cycle.
The drinking has lessened and walking the dogs and writing has helped.
The crying and anger, bargaining and guilt continue, forgiving myself swings between being impossible or unnecessary, unattainable extremes that further damn me.
To begin with, I visit my brother's grave every morning after dropping my sons off at school and kindergarten.
I take a cappucino and drink it with him, smoking ciggies, waving to people that I know as they drive past the cemetry on their way to their lives.
Me, I am stuck to this site, arm around the cross as I leave half drunk cappucinos and ciggies by the grave and sometimes I tease him about not being there to share the froth on my cappucino.
After a while the weather becomes so bad (it's winter) that I stop going everyday. Sometimes I sit outside the cemetry gates in my car and stare at his grave, apologising for not coming in to see him.
A couple of times I take his dogs, now my dogs, (our dogs?) up to see him but they are a bit rambunctous and I fear them breaking ornaments on other graves or maybe chasing rabbits and disappearing forever. Further loss is non-negotiable.
One day I drive out to the beach where he took his life and I park my car in the very spot that he died and I look out to sea. I try to get a sense of what he may have been thinking or seeing around him.
But of course, I can't possibly grasp his thoughts in those last moments before he left us.
I notice that you can see across the water to Taipa and I wonder if he looked over towards us and said goodbyes or sorry or something, sent invisible rays of love to us while we lay sleeping in our beds, completely unaware that our darling was getting ready to depart these shores, leave our lives and end his own.
The holes in our lives remain. They don't close over and heal like a deep cut on a wounded knee.
The broken pieces that lie around in our days are so broken and painful to handle that we just leave them lying there. We are refugess from a hurricane, sifting through debris and finding nothing of value, everything we loved has been swept away and are as untraceable as my brothers footprints.
Any memory carries a sharp ache with it now as we know that our good times with George have ended. There will be no more songs played on Dad's guitar tonight, generous christmas gifts, lavish dinners filled with stomach heaving laughter, the boys no longer have their big, loving Uncle to go and stay with so that they can have all night video games sessions whilst eating expensive junk food.
My big brother, my protector has gone. He is never coming back - big hole.
A few months after his death, my mother and I attend his inquest. It is almost scary in it's severe formality. We are the only two people there.
It gives us no closure, answers no questions and still does not bring my brother back.
Some months later my mother and I set about chosing a head stone for his grave. It is traditional to have an unveiling one year after the death of a loved one.
We spend alot of time chosing the right stone, with a nice photo and a gold embossed picture of a guitar and a boxer dog. We carefully word the inscription and I add the words, "All is well with my soul".
This short line is from the Old Testament in the Bible. They are the words that the widow says to passerbys when she has discovered her dead son and she is rushing to find the prophet, Elisha as she believes he can help her. He comes to her house and her son is indeed raised from the dead.
Fantastic story. For us, however, there was not an earthly resurrection o fGeorge but only a heavenly one for him.
He didn't want to stay on Earth because it had become far too harsh for him. There were broken pieces he couldn't put back together again with continuous storms eroding the fences in his mind, breaking down the soft walls of his heart and drowing his gentle soul.
He wanted to go "home" - he missed Dad and the thought of seeing him again in a safe and gentle place was a far better choice that tiptoing through his disintegrating life.
But that is only what I imagine. The coroner quietly tried to reassure us that he hadn't wanted to die, he just didn't want to live any more..the most peculiar oxymoron I have ever heard and yet, at the same time, I understood it.
Eventually the headstone was ready and Mum and I went with the nice lady from the funeral home to erect it on his grave. I helped her lift it out of the back of her ute and together we stood it up in the wet cement and centred it.` Mum stood by and watched and she didn't cry, I was really proud of her.
I didn't cry either.
We removed the linen covering from the headstone, as if it were the swaddling of a baby and there it was. His shining, new, black headstone complete with pictures, photo and beautiful gold lettering.
It really did look fantastic.
We hung around for a while, adjusting the headstone and I think Mum had flowers. I took a couple of photos and the funeral home lady took a photo of me and Mum with Hori's (George's) headstone.
The unveiling was complete and after a while we went home.
If some healing took place, I couldn't feel it and there was no noticeable closure.
That evening my husband and I returned to the gravesite to see the new headstone. We had a beer with Hori but I had no ciggies so didn't want to stay long plus it was very cold.
It was winter again, almost a year since he died, almost his first anniversay.
Nothing much had changed, the days ahead loomed like menacing trees in a spiteful, dark forest.
There were bound to be more holes as the weak and sagging ground of my life caved in a little bit more from the heavy sorrow of his loss.
As I left my brother's grave with it's shiny new headstone, it seemed the only hole we had been able to close was the very grave in which he now lay. The hole that we had covered over with unforgiving earth, not so long ago, on a cold and damming day in June.
to be continued .....
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