grief

A House Upon the Sand

The moment my brother ended his life, the foundational level of safety and security I lived with for 36 years crumbled beneath my very feet.

I felt the innate protection of my big brother growing up. When I started elementary school, I was never picked on on the playground because everyone knew he was also there. In middle school, if a boy broke my heart or wouldn’t take no for an answer, I only had to mention a name in front of my brother and the problem would be mitigated. But even as an adult, that layer of security was steady and sure.

At 25, my first husband secretively walked out on me on a Tuesday afternoon. The first call I made after dialing my boss to let him know I wouldn’t be at work the next day, was to my Dad. I asked that he and my brother be there the next day with his truck and trailer to help me pack up and move my life out of my apartment. They came, no questions asked. My brother, with levity to lighten the shock and sorrow.

When entering my second marriage, I realize now I had a deeply-embedded and confident assurance that if anything ever happened like before, my brother would always be there to help me pack up my furnishings and pick up the pieces.

Us against the world type of thing.

Even after my brother and I’s relationship fell apart and I was forced to put strong boundaries in place with him, I still knew if/when anyone else failed me, if I was ever in a bind and really needed help, my brother’s rescue was only one text message away. No matter what. Even if we hadn’t talked in months. Even if he was on the other side of the country, he would board a plane to come to me within hours.

If something needed fixing, he would do it. He was the master of figuring things out. If I needed help hunting down a particular item, he would find it and ship it to me. For as many problems as my brother caused in my life over the years, he was able to solve just as many. There was comfort in that. Peace. Protection. Stability.

None of this was even a conscious or spoken thought for me. It was just a knowing. Deep and immovable. I didn’t even realize it was there until after he was gone and the very fabric of my confidence started to unravel. It took me a long time, and many soul-searching journal entries, to pinpoint that it was his absence driving those feelings.

I felt untethered.

Like I was free-falling through life with no safety net.

My safety net had been funneled into an urn and buried underneath the earth in southern Kentucky.

And now I felt alone and orphaned in a world where my Dad could no longer come and save me either. His help was lost to me in the tangles of his cerebral cortex, a condition they call Dementia.

 Kids Church Songs and Deep Spiritual Truths

It is a strange unfolding to realize how much of your strength and stability is built on the shoulders of another person. How crushing it is to lose those things when they are gone. To realize how misplaced this vital thing had been.

How shaky a process it is to find all new footing, a new place to build upon. And how long and arduous the labor of stacking brick upon brick rebuilding your life once more. I still feel the tremors of aftershock today, threatening to tumble what height I’ve regained. Insecure of my work and the new site for my construction.

There is a song I sing to my son that I used to sing in Children’s Church growing up. It’s based on a story in the book of Matthew, chapter seven, a parable titled The Wise and Foolish Builders. The song comes with fun hand-motions that make it a real crowd-pleaser for toddlers.

The wise man built his house upon a rock
house upon a rock
house upon a rock

The wise man built his house upon a rock
And the rains came tumbling down.

The rains came down and the floods came up
[repeat 2x]
And the house on the rock stood firm.

The second verse is a contrast to the first. It sings of the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand, and at the end, “the house on the sand goes SPLAT!” (Insert riotous laughter and squeals of delight from three year olds.)

The point of the song – and the parable – is that God is The Solid Rock foundation upon which we can build our lives, so that no matter what storm comes, we stand firm.

How did I get this so wrong? I berate myself now, standing in the rubble of The After.

But I don’t know if that’s the right question – or accusation, as it is.

I think mostly, I have spent my life expecting if I was a good Christian girl, who followed the rules, and paid my tithes, and spoke the right confessions in the mirror every morning, I would be spared any “splatting” experiences in life.

But I think what I’m finding is the splatting still comes.

And, even without a brother, I’m never truly left alone to pick up the pieces and rebuild. Though my soul feels this way at times and my enemy wants to tell me it’s the truth. It’s not.

 A Hurricane Flattened My House, Now What?

“We say, after we’ve experienced something, ‘Well, it all turned out for the good,” but you weren’t so sure about that while it was happening. When you’re going through it, it feels like death, and you can’t even see any life after this.’” – Steven Furtick

In my first book, Now What? A Story of Broken Dreams and the God Who Restores Them, I tell the story of my divorce and how I was so angry at God for letting it happen. Letting my life and dreams fall apart when I had followed all His rules. But as it turned out, I didn’t even know who God was at that time. And even as I ran fast and far and hard away from Him, He chased me down, to make my acquaintance.

This time, when the Hurricane of Grief following my brother’s suicide came blowing in and flattened the house of my life, I didn’t blame God. I didn’t spend a long time writhing in anger at God. Only because I’d been there and done that and know how futile an exercise this is. He’s not really the one to blame. No, this time, I felt His calm, loving, steady presence next to me. Sitting with me. Crying with me. Aching with me. Never leaving my side.

This was not the life or the outcome he wanted for me, or my brother. He was just as hurt by my brother’s pain, and the pain that my brother’s choice is now bleeding onto my family and I.

He didn’t shy away from my rage or my cursing at my brother. He wasn’t disappointed or appalled at my reaction. He was there. Willing to sit and weep with me for as long as I needed, and ready to take each shaky step after the other, once I got back up again. He isn’t bothered by my lengthy timeline of grieving.

He is there, to show me each thing I need to see as I moved forward in healing – like how I had built a false sense of security on my brother’s protection and presence for starters. My house upon sand. But not one time do these revelations come with condemnation or rebuke. They come with grace and patience. He was, and is, always, only a kind and loving companion. Solid. Firm. Unwavering in his commitment.

Kind of like a rock, I guess.

And a little song I know tells me rock is a good foundation to pick for building your life-house upon.

Never Enough

Play to Win

In the Summer of 2020, my brother was on an internet reality show called Play to Win.

The show, produced by a husband-and-wife entrepreneur team, is a spinoff-of-sorts of NBC’s primetime hit The Apprentice. A group of contestants compete for a “life-changing job” or a “six-figure coaching opportunity”. [1].

During one interview with the hosts, the wife called my brother out for being fake, wearing a mask. She said, “I feel like there’s something you’re hiding. …Maybe it’s because you always have a smile on your face. …You hide your true self behind the smiles and the positivity all the time.”

With teary eyes and trembling voice my brother described how, for most his life, he felt like a failure. He dropped out of college, he had a string of failed business ventures, mentors he let down… His divorce only added to his sense of personal failure. Overall, he just felt he was a disappointment to his family and his parents. All he wanted in life was to make that up. To make his parents proud. To prove he was a success.

My heart reeled as I watched the footage that Fall.

Over the next several weeks, I found myself filling up page after page in my prayer journal asking God to help my brother know he was not a failure. That he was loved.

I wanted him to know my mom and dad absolutely did not care about his success. They didn’t care about how much money was in his bank account, or his status in business, or the emblem on the front of his car, or the size of his house, or where and how often he vacationed.

I could see all of these things so clearly because God, my Heavenly Daddy, had whispered the same Truths to me over the last two years. It was revolutionary. A complete 180° to everything I had believed up till then.

God showed me He is not at all concerned with the number of books I sell, or the number of attendees at the conferences I speak, or how many followers I have on social media, or the size of my mailing list.

He wants, more than anything, to spend time with me. To be in relationship with me. He wants me contentedly at rest in him. And He wants that to be enough, without any of those other things.

I prayed so fervently. I could see how blindly my brother was deceived. I envisioned him in the midst of a dense fog, or with a shroud pulled over his head.

I wanted my brother to feel peace. To enjoy his life – really – not just pretend to enjoy it on Facebook Live. I wanted him to be able to rest. To stop all the striving for his worth, his significance, for love and acceptance, for validation. To just be with us, and to know that was enough.

I prayed against spiritual strongholds. Demonic deception. I prayed in the name of Jesus. For him to be set free. His eyes opened. Revelation to come.

I prayed it. But I never said any of these things out loud to my brother.

The regret of that stings more deeply than I can describe.

*

My husband and I have confessed to one another several things we regret not saying to my brother while he was still alive.

On a walk in the days after they found my brother’s body, we were talking about the show and this particular topic.

My husband wondered aloud, “Even if we had said all the things, even if we had held a family intervention to try to shake him awake, to tell him we could see through all the bullshit and to stop faking it, would he even have been able to hear it?”

We both knew the answer was ‘no’.

He would have laughed it off. Diminished or dismissed it. Possibly even turned it around on us to make us the bad guys for calling him out with the truth.

My brother had spent the previous twenty years of his life programming himself every single day, in every single way, with every piece of input he took, that a man’s worth was only as great as his financial “success”.

He could not see, what literally hundreds of people have reiterated now after he is gone, that his success was within the impact he made in others. In the fact that he showed up every single day and made a point to reach out to someone, to send an encouraging note, to send a funny text, to send a voice clip with encouragement.

That was his legacy. Those things were more than enough. But he couldn’t see that.

Stronghold, indeed.

*

This is one of the hardest and most exhausting parts of losing a loved one to suicide – all the wondering. The questions. The trying to get inside their head after-the-fact.

The “Why?” and “Why now?”
and “How did I not see it coming?”
and “Was it my fault somehow?”
or “What could I have done differently?”
“Was it impulsive or premeditated?”
“What pushed him over the edge?”
“What if I had done this or said that, would it have made a difference?”
“What if….what if… what if…?”

The mental merry-go-round is debilitating. Endless. And the regret that comes with all the questions is absolutely haunting.

The day after they found my brother’s body I was taking a shower and suddenly became gripped with the thought of what more I could have given my brother that would have made him stay? That would have made him feel differently?

And I realized, no matter how much more I gave, nothing would have ever been enough.

The Grand-Canyon-sized expanse of emptiness inside of him could never be filled by another human. Or by any external factor in this life.

The lyrics to The Greatest Show’s “Never Enough” lilted through my head as the water ran down my face that morning:

All the shine of a thousand spotlights
All the stars we steal from the night sky
Will never be enough
Never be enough
Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it’ll
Never be enough
Never be enough
For me
Never enough
Never, never
Never enough
for me
For me

*

Just a couple weeks after my brother’s death, I sat in my OBGYN’s office for my six-week postpartum check-up. My OB asked me if I was experiencing any PPD symptoms.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t know the difference between postpartum depression and regular old, my-brother-just-killed-himself depression.”

I told him the hardest part was all the mental ping-pong, all the questions. And the hardest question of all to answer was why he did what he did.

My doctor said the most helpful – and true – thing to me. He said, “There’s no use trying to make sense of what he was thinking it what he did. There is no understanding it from a rational perspective…. because rational thinking people don’t kill themselves. His brain wasn’t functioning ‘normally’ at the time.”

I found out he was speaking from experience. His own brother took his life 18 months prior to mine.

Harsh delivery aside, it gave my mind a great degree of peace and rest.

But the “what if’s?” still plagued me in time.

*

In October of 2022, I answered this prompt in my guided grief journal:

If I could talk to you one more time, I’d tell you…

…What’s hardest about watching this [Play to Win] video is the knowledge that I didn’t follow through on the nudge to talk to you after [the first time].

I want you to know:
It breaks our hearts to see you restlessly striving, working, producing, posturing and pretending.
We just want the real, authentic you.
We want your time & attention.
We want to laugh with you over funny movies and card games.
We want you to be present with us when we are together, not multitasking a thousand different ways.

Brother, I want nothing more than for you to wake up. To hear the voice of Your Heavenly Father say, “Look up Child.

Look up from your toiling and searching and striving and see that I love you just for who you are and where you are. No matter how many times you’ve failed. Your failures were a result of you trying to do things on your own, seeking things I don’t even want for you.

Learn to live and walk with Me. And I will give you Peace and Rest and Satisfaction. Deep and Abiding. I will show you the work I want you to do. It will be rewarding and it will make an impact. But that’s not even what matters most.

Come sit with Me for a while and I will give you a new perspective.

I made you the way you are, now let Me show you how I want you to use everything I put inside you.

Let Me reframe and redefine for you what success looks like.

I love you.”

These are the things I regret not saying to my brother four years ago.
And maybe if I had, it would have made all the difference.
Or maybe, it would have never been enough.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/rayhigdonpage/videos/883545428687674/

***

This post is part 6 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

Inventory Your Losses

The Shot Heart Round the County

When my brother was 17, he made a half-court basketball shot that changed his life.

He was not a basketball player, save for the one year he joined the team in elementary school, when he learned it was not his passion. But like a lot of kids, we had a hoop in our driveway and grew up shooting H.O.R.S.E. and P.I.G. on the makeshift blacktop court with cousins and friends.

In our small, sleepy Kentucky town, high school basketball games were practically a social engagement. Everyone goes. Same with football.

Local businesses sponsor the team and host special events at the games to boost attendance (and for advertising, of course.) One of those events was the half-time, half-court shot sponsored by the local Chevrolet dealership. Every Friday night, one or two lucky crowd-members would be called by their ticket number to come down to the court and attempt the shot. A successful shooter would be rewarded with $10,000. It had been attempted a hundred times or more – even by former decorated athletes. No one ever came close to making it.

The night my brother’s name was called, he unassumingly stepped up to the line in his wrangler jeans and cowboy boots. He took a couple steps and thrust the ball straight out from his chest as hard as he could. The ball made a beeline for the backboard and, just above the hoop, it suddenly dropped through the net.

It was so absurd and unexpected my brother stood dumbfounded as every single body in the bleachers erupted to their feet in a rowdy cheer. Hundreds raced down to the court floor to slap his back and congratulate the dazed teenager. Shake his hand. And dozens of people joked about asking for a loan from the winnings check. (Apparently, I also asked for a year’s supply of gum, per the write up in the local paper! HA!)

The dealership owner probably pooped himself. But, he made good on his word and delivered the check a couple weeks later.

The tab was on my brother that night when he went out to celebrate with his friends, and a couple dozen of his newest acquaintances. And the next night. And the next night. It took less than six months for him to spend the entirety of the reward and rack up debt trying to keep the charade going.

I often think about how that financial windfall changed the trajectory of his life. The story is common enough – many lottery winners end up deeply in debt or destitute.

My brother never stopped pretending to be rich after that night. And it cost him a lot more than his eventually-wrecked credit score.

Journal Entry from March 5th, 2021

It’s a pretty well-known fact that grief comes in waves.

I guess that’s because you don’t grieve losing a person, like they were a one-time singular event or thing. You grieve every single loss you would have had with that person. Every piece of them you lose gradually in your life.

Yesterday, I heard a basketball bouncing on the street in front of our house.

I started crying as mental movies of my brother and I shooting H.O.R.S.E. in the driveway of our childhood home played in my mind.

But mostly, I was crying for my son’s loss.

Uncle John likely would have been the one to teach him to play basketball. And I imagine they would have spent countless hours shooting H.O.R.S.E. together as he grew up. My heart aches for the loss of that experience.

I’m starting to recognize other individual losses:

Last night, I grieved that I’ll never hear his voice again, as I listened to the voicemail clips people were sweetly sending me and that I had in my own messenger.

I’ll never get to hear him say “later dude” or “hey maaan” or recite any of the million movie quotes we would quip back and forth.

*

It hurts to question why John would not want to get to know his Baby nephew. Why he wouldn’t want to spend his life with him.

My Grandfather ran away from home when I was about 12. I remember thinking, sure, I understand why you would want to leave your wife, but why did you never want to see or spend time with me – your only granddaughter – again for the rest of your life? Or your only daughter?

I didn’t know then that my Grandfather was a haunted man. Haunted by the war, and POW camps, and alcohol. He told himself we were better off without him.

I’m sure that’s what my brother thought as well.

I’ve battled that same thought before, so I am familiar with how easy a lie it is to believe. But it’s still a lie.

*

What you just read were all the thoughts I had bouncing around my head on March 5th, 2021. Two days after my brother’s remains were found at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

I would journal over the next weeks and months about each part of that loss I grieved. It would be two years before I made a full inventory list of my losses. Making that list was one of the most cathartic journaling exercises I’ve done.

When my brother decided to end his life, I didn’t just lose my brother, I lost:

  • My protector, my safe place
  • My friend
  • Samson’s Uncle
  • The me that existed before
  • My mom that existed before
  • My dad that existed before
  • My husband that existed before
  • My car detailer
  • My errand runner
  • My gift buyer
  • Big Brother Hugs
  • Our family unit/dynamic
  • Sweet Summertime family gatherings
  • “Normal” holidays
  • My movie quote partner
  • Family game/card nights
  • Our foursome for golf
  • My electronics expert
  • My automotive expert
  • My identity in our family – little sister to only child
  • Help/support with my aging parents
  • My biggest laughs
  • Most of my memories from childhood/my early 20’s
  • The person who believed in me/cheered for me most
  • Clarity of thought
  • My capacity for what I can/can’t handle
  • My husband’s brother-in-law
  • My picture-taker
  • My problem-solver
  • My figure-it-outer
  • My husband’s helper
  • My mom & dad’s helper
  • My ability to experience a “normal” maternity leave, postpartum experience, first year with my son

And on and on for two more pages. Some of the things felt so shallow and selfish to write down. But they were real losses to me, despite how trivial. And I needed to say them out loud and make space to grieve each one of them. My subconscious mind felt each of these pains immediately upon receiving that late-night phone call. But it would be a long and gradual process to identify and name them.

Grief is a lot of work. And it’s hard. Writing helps.

***

This post is part 5 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

A Grief Observed

“Losing a beloved is an amputation.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I once listened to a podcast in which a psychiatrist was talking about why it feels like we lose a part of ourselves when we lose a loved one.

He said that, unwittingly, we store information, memories and experiences in the brains of other people we are close to; like an external hard drive. Our own minds have limited capacity to keep all the data we need, so we share mental and emotional data resources with others.

We see this phenomenon to be particularly true when someone loses a spouse and has no idea what the bank password is, or what type of oil the car takes, or where the Tupperware is located in the cupboard… Those pieces of information were stored in the other person for easy access. Just as we store information for them as well.

We never expect to need to know those things ourselves because we expect the other person to always be there.

There was a specific piece, or version, of me that was reserved just for when my brother and I were together. We had a special bond our whole lives.

In his data bank I stored all our inside jokes, movie quotes, random road trips, family history, all the techie/internet answers I needed, car maintenance advice, and much more. He was a fixer, a finder, ever-resourceful. I knew certain things were only one text away if I needed them.

When I got the call that his body was found at the bottom of the canyon, it felt like a very tangible part was cut out of me. Like there’s an empty/missing place inside now.

Pictures and memories and stories will soften the sting I know, but that void will always be there, this side of Heaven.

And that’s just the way it is when we live in close relationship with others. When we love. It’s hard and it hurts, but it’s the cost of this benefit of the human existence.

***

In the weeks following my brother’s death, I listened to C.S. Lewis’ book, A Grief Observed. It was the first book of Lewis’ I ever read, actually. So different than what I imagined from the famed theologian, the book is a collection of his journals following the death of his beloved wife, Joy, opened wide for the world to see.

His pain is visceral. The deepest, rawest places of his soul on display. There are times he questions his faith and shouts at God. C.S. Lewis! It was the most relatable thing I’ve ever read.

By that point, I already had a running notepad in my phone, to which I added bits and pieces every day about all I was thinking and feeling. My own version of a grief journal. It was the only thing I could do at the time, while being physically attached to a newborn breastfeeding for eight hours a day.

The only thing that kept me from going lit-rally insane in that season was the fact I could get words and sentences out of my own soul and onto “paper”. In his book, Lewis stated, “What we work out in our journals, we don’t take out on our loved ones.” I think I was doing both, but I imagine it could have been a lot worse if I’d kept everything inside!

The excerpt at the beginning of this post is from this journal of mine on March 10th, 2021.

Some things I wrote and shared in real time on social media, but most of it, I kept tucked away. Some of it will only ever be for my own eyes, but some of it, I just wasn’t ready to share yet. I have been waiting for the right time and place – and headspace – to bring these words to light.

Mostly I think I had to wait to tell the story without being angry. Well, only angry. Which I was, for the longest time.

White-hot rage was the prominent emotion I could pinpoint after my brother decided to ride his motorcycle off the Grand Canyon. It took me a solid 12 months – and therapy – before I ever got to sad.

I was:
Angry that he made another selfish decision, in a long list of them.
Enraged by the timing – three weeks after I gave birth to my first son, when I needed my parents the most, when I needed it to be all about me.
Incensed he tainted this time that is supposed to be sweet and pure and full of joy.
Irate he would put my parents through that.
Livid he stole years of cognition with my father from me, from us, from my son. I knew the mental toll it would take on both of my parents – particularly my father, who was already diagnosed with Alzheimers, but whose symptoms were mild.
Furious about the fact that I would never get to be the same again – I would be forever altered by his choice.
Seething over the mess he left behind I had to clean up. That he made me an only child. That he abandoned me to struggle with aging parents and Dad’s diagnosis alone.
And on and on.

Even when I did experience moments or days of sadness, it would be overshadowed by my anger that his choice was the reason I had to feel that way.

The rage became its own entity within me. I finally made space for therapy when I was afraid of that rage, of who I was with it churning inside me.

People thought they knew my brother, thought they knew the story. They did not. The “public” didn’t even know it was suicide. My family and I told people we knew, who we’re close with, in one-on-one conversations, but that was it. And I wanted to tell the whole, stark-naked truth of what he had done to us over a loudspeaker.

But about 18 months after John’s death, God whispered a Truth to my heart. It was after I had told one more person the whole story. The one that I’m beginning to unfold here. Her reaction was exactly what I wanted: shock, solidarity, anger alongside me. But the bitterness and burning rage in me didn’t regress for even a minute. If anything, it was prodded and stoked hotter.

And God gently said to me, “You can tell as many people as you want, but it’s not going to make you feel better. Or more free. Relieved from the pain or frustration. It’s not going to make you feel justified.” It was like a veil was removed in my mind and my emotions.

My therapist once asked me what it would take for me to stop being angry at my brother. I listed: “An apology, reconciliation, changed behavior…” She pointed out that even if my brother was alive, I may never have gotten those things. But, since he’s dead, I sure as shit wasn’t getting them now. So I had to figure something else out.

God reminded me of this prior conversation while He was speaking to me then.

That very same weekend in the Fall of 2022, I was sitting in a conference when the speaker stopped the event to pray over a person/persons in the crowd who needed to “let go of something”. Her prayer was vivid, visual: She said [once you decided to let go], it would feel like fresh Spring air. Like when you open the windows of your house on the first warm, Spring day and let the fresh air blow the stale scent of Winter away.

I had been sitting in my stale house of rage for 18 months, but that day I opened the windows and let God breathe something new inside me. I felt a shift. The anger didn’t magically get better or go away overnight, but I felt lighter. Freer. More hopeful. That I could and would feel different moving forward.

It’s been another 18 months. The anger still comes in waves at times. But the waves are few and far between, they aren’t as high or as violent, and they pass back out to sea quickly. Mostly, I just feel an aching longing when I think of my brother now. I wish he weren’t gone. And at last, I feel a release in being able to tell his story. Our story.

It’s true, I don’t ever get to be the same person I was before he chose to end his life, but the person I am now has a depth of knowledge, experience, compassion, and empathy that I can use for myself and others.

I have found immeasurable comfort in being able to write all of this down over the last three years, but my prayer is that I can share it without triggering any of that old bitterness and rage. And that I can tell it in a way that is helpful to others who are also walking through an earth-shattering encounter with grief, and not just as a continued therapeutic exercise for myself.

*

I hope you stick with me on this journey. But I understand if this content isn’t for you right now. You are loved, and I will still be here sharing all of the #RealTalk if you need me in the future.

***

This post is part 4 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

It’s Got to Be Like Planning a Party, Right?

Confetti, Hope and 3/16

My mom plopped down across from me in the nursery looking hurried and determined as she readied to leave my house. She and my Dad had stayed with us three of the four weeks since my son was born, but today they were rushing back home. It had been less than 12 hours since the phone call that changed our lives. They were trying to beat the news back to my Grandmother – my Memaw – so she could hear about the death of her only grandson from them instead of Channel 12.

They didn’t make it, by the way. The story broke before they could drive the three hours to their house in Southern Kentucky.

“I don’t want a funeral, I want a celebration of life,” She said, “And I want you to do it.”

“Oh! Ok.” I responded, not knowing what else to say, but certain I would do whatever she needed of me in that moment. I had never planned or preached a funeral before, but I had done plenty of public speaking and I reasoned, it’s got to be like planning a party, right? “I’ll figure it out.”

My sister-in-law, Susie, said I was in survival mode. The way I didn’t react at all and could just go about normal duties like my entire world hadn’t just been flipped upside down.

Turns out, it happens often after the loss of a loved one. A normal part of grief. Your mind isn’t able to process the traumatic event, so it shifts into hyper-efficiency as you plan details and arrangements, share the news with relatives, and go about your day-to-day. Once the flourish of activity ends, the numbing and coping mechanism stops and reality sets in. Most of the time.

“And, I want you to read his letter.” she added.

“Oh.” I looked pointedly at my mom, “Are we…….saying it out loud? His letter doesn’t leave much to the imagination, so we are telling everyone he did it on purpose?”

“I don’t have anything to hide.” Her clipped reply caught me off-guard, but filled me with a strange pride. This was not a normal response in my family. We have been hiding things on behalf of my brother for most of my life.

Her final request was that we play the hymn, I’ll Fly Away.

In the following days as I prepared, I prayed God would give me the right words to say and that I would be able to deliver them without my voice shaking on that day.

3.16.21

It would be two weeks before we received my brother’s ashes – there was some back and forth with evidence and autopsies and processing time, etc. Once they were ready, the crematorium in Arizona shipped them – like, FedEx, I’m not kidding – and they ended up getting delayed at a depot, missing the delivery window for the service.

My brother was literally late to his own funeral, which was on par for him. We made a joke of it that day.

His remains would be buried in a second-hand gravesite that had belonged to my Memaw’s family. The cemetery is only one lot over from her house. We walk over there once a year on Memorial Day to put flowers on my Great-Grandparents grave. (They didn’t serve in the military, it’s just tradition in those parts.) I grew up playing in that cemetery anytime we would visit my Memaw and Grandad, riding my bike or running laps around the circular drive. My Memaw already has her headstone fixed on her plot – even though she’s very much alive – and now my brother’s body would be tucked in the earth right beside hers.

My mom requested the event be small – immediate family, and John’s girlfriend, only. There was confetti and balloons, music and singing (I found the Etta James version of I’ll Fly Away), a little crying, and fake, press-on mustaches. (That’s a story for another day.)

The pastor from my parents’ church and I co-led the service. This was my message:

“My brother committed suicide” is not something I ever wanted to be a part of my story. Neither was getting divorced.

But what I’ve learned in the last decade and a half is that God can take the broken, unwanted parts of our story and use them anyway, if we let Him. For our good and His glory.

He even promised it right in His Word through the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: He causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

I’ve learned if we share the vulnerable parts of our story out loud, we give other people who are hurting and broken permission to share theirs as well.

It makes them feel less alone.

So that’s what we’re doing today. We are saying the TRUTH out loud so that we can begin to process and heal together. And bringing the truth to light so it cannot stay hidden to fester in the dark.

It’s our secrets that keep us sick. And we want to be healthy and whole and free from the bondage of secrecy.

….

My husband recently pointed out that in just a couple weeks, it will be Sammy’s first Easter. But it will also be our first Easter without John.

I cried when he said that. I hadn’t thought of it yet. I am heartbroken and even angry that now these special moments of joy will be forever entwined with sorrow. Marred. Tainted.

Easter, or, “Resurrection Sunday”, as my brother would call it, has always been a big holiday for my family. We celebrate right here in Somerset every year.

It’s dripping in tradition for us.

We always buy new Easter outfits – most often complete with hats – and wear them to church. We sing hymns about the cross and the blood and Jesus’s triumphant resurrection. We take communion. We hunt eggs in the church yard afterward. We take pictures on Memaw’s back deck. We eat a big lunch and spend the day together, if not the whole weekend.

In recent years, we have played cards for hours, as that’s become our family’s most beloved pastime.

For half of my life, that’s all Easter was for me. A day of religious and familial tradition.

But the last decade or so, I have started studying and meditating on the meaning and significance of Easter and Holy Week.

Easter is earmarked by many themes and symbols: Love, Sacrifice, Blood, Redemption, Forgiveness, Grace, Victory, Freedom, Covenants, the Cross and the Crown, the Lamb and the Lion….

But for me, the strongest resounding theme of the whole holiday (at least this year) is: Hope.

Easter represents the Hope of the Promise for reunion.

After the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God vowed to make a Way to be reunited with His beloved creation, humans. He set a Plan in motion, a Plan that culminated thousands of years later with the Roman crucifixion of His Son on that old rugged cross.

That Friday, as the sun went dark, all of Israel, all of Jesus’s followers, and all of Heaven (except the Father himself) were hopeless.

If that’s where the story had ended, we too, would be hopeless. Our bodies would die and that would also be our end.

But we all know that three days later, Jesus walked out of Hell and out of His grave, and God’s Plan was completed. His Promise was fulfilled.

And because we have accepted that promise as our own, we now live with the Hope of life after death. And an eternity of union and fellowship with our Father.

And because we know John was also in on that Promise, we get to live with the Hope of being reunited with him again one day as well.

So today, we are celebrating the time we had with him here and the Promise of an eternity of laughter and joy and adventure with him there.

We can rejoice, like John’s letter asked us to.

*

Miraculously, my voice didn’t quiver one time.

Afterward, we walked back to my Memaw’s house and had lunch on the back deck. We ate fried chicken and lingered in the warmth of the sun and family.

The next week I journaled,

On March 16th, 2021, we celebrated my brother’s life. The 40 years, 6 months, and 10 days we had with him here on earth.

We celebrated the fact that we know where he is, and that we will get to see him again one day.

The day was perfect and beautiful and Holy in a way that only God could orchestrate. (71 and sunny in mid-March!)

Only after-the-fact did my cousin Kara point out that the celebration was on 3.16.

The 16th verse in the third chapter of the book of {JOHN} is one of the most well-known and well-quoted Bible verses in history. It is the first that most children are taught to memorize in Sunday School. You can probably call it to mind and rattle it off right now without much thought.

It’s the core of the Christian belief system and THE reason we will be reunited with my brother in Heaven.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Amen. Selah.

See you when we get there, brother.

***

This post is part 3 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

The Call

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021

It was just after 9pm when the call came. I was in the rocking chair in the nursery, breastfeeding my son. My husband, who had been fielding all of the phone calls for the last week – from investigators, and search parties, and the news reporters – was presently on a flight to Arizona, to join the search for my missing brother.

“Mrs. Neuberger?”

“Yes, this is her,” I answered in a low voice, not wanting to involve my newborn in what was likely to be a life-altering conversation.

She chose her next words carefully and delivered them with a clinical degree of care, “We located John below the rim. He was deceased.” I didn’t respond right away. “I’m sorry.” She added.

“Thank you,” I replied, and then, “I’m sorry you have to make these phone calls.”

“Thank you.” She said with an exhale that demonstrated the exhaustion of it in her bones.

She described the location. Exactly where my husband had predicted, and where he was planning to search first. She told me he fell 464 feet.

“His death would have been instant.”

I asked the only question that mattered to me at the time, “Can I ask, did it look…intentional?”

“Without video footage, there’s no way to know for certain. But,” She continued tentatively, “Based on the location of his body and bike in the canyon, that’s the way it appears.”

We were both silent for a while.

“What happens now?” I asked.

She explained all the next steps for his “remains”. It was jarring to hear my brother being referred to by that word, but that’s all that was left of him, I supposed.

In a haze, I ended the call, placed my baby back in his crib and robotically made my way downstairs. I called my sister (my brother’s ex-wife) and told her I needed her to come over.

I was numb.

It was nearly 10pm. I needed to eat dinner so I would have enough nourishment to pump five more ounces of milk to give my baby in another hour. And, sometime before that, I had to wake my parents and tell them their son was dead.

*

My brother was missing for one week – from the time of his last social media post to the time the Park Rangers recovered his body – it was a week like no other in my life.

I can’t begin to explain what life is like when a loved one is missing. Everything is suspended in mid-air, but reality goes on around you. You hold your breath. Every text, every message, every phone call could be the one.

Every opening door you expect them to walk through. You can think of virtually nothing else. Your mind reels with what if’s and possibilities. You become a real-life private investigator, trying to piece together clues and information. You go crazy looking for them, for answers, anywhere, everywhere.

It’s still surreal even now.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to go months or years or forever with a loved one still unaccounted for.

Toward the end of that week, my mother was sick with the thoughts of my brother’s body being out there somewhere alone. Broken. Abandoned Among the wild animals. She broke down in tears and in a desperate, guttural plea cried out to my husband, “Just go get him…Please!”

Seeing her so utterly fragmented was harder than my own grief.

The hardest part for me of that week is the fact he was dead for four days before I even knew he was missing. My heart aches at that detail. Somehow it feels like my fault.

*

Two days before the call, the first thought I had upon waking was, My brother is not alive anymore. I just knew it, in my bones. As plainly as I knew my own name.

Hours later, I’ll never see my brother again, rolled through my head with a fresh, and different, layer of grief. The two sentences carry the same truth but are two distinct losses.

It would be a full year before I would write out a full inventory of my losses from his death.

On the day of the call, I wrote in my journal:

This phone call was just a confirmation of what I already knew. I know more layers of grief will come. In waves over the next few days, months, years…For the rest of life on this side of Heaven.

When you experience such a profound loss, every part of you just wants to shut down. Stop eating, stop getting out of bed, stop caring. But, having a newborn at the time, none of that was an option for me.

I ended that journal entry:

But for now, life goes on. My baby still has to eat. I still have to feed by body for him.

And I’ve been putting one foot in front of the other ever since.

***

This post is part 2 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

Reads Like Fiction

February 27th, 2021

It was an unseasonably warm Saturday for late February in Ohio. So warm, in fact, that we opened the windows, letting the fresh air blow through my house. An oasis in the dead of winter.

My husband and I were sitting at our kitchen table playing cards with my parents, feeling like actual human beings considering it was the first time we’d been able to do anything besides eat or sleep since the day my water burst and a newborn was thrust into our world. We were new parents drowning in all the wonderful, exhausting chaos that comes with the role. Our son was napping in the living room just behind me. Finally sleeping peacefully enough we could resurface and see a glimpse of our “normal” life again.

I checked my phone between hands of Canasta to see if I had a response from my brother. I had forgotten about the strange email I received from him that morning until that instant. No reply.

Hours earlier, while bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, I stumbled into my home office and sat at my desk. I attached the pump parts to my body that would prepare my son’s mid-morning bottle of breastmilk and opened the lid of my laptop. The most recent email in my inbox was from my brother.

“Good Morning!” Chirped the subject line cheerily. I briefly wondered why he was emailing instead of texting.

I started reading but I couldn’t make sense of it.

Well hey there my precious people!! 👪👵👨 👩
Random right!?! 
This can't be real!! 😲
-Oh, it's as real as you and me my friend. 😉
Please don't cry 😭. REJOICE, REJOICE and I again I say REJOICE!! 
🎉 🎊

Now, just so you're not Totally confused...Noo, no ... you're not 
receiving an email from heaven ... although that's where I now call 
home 👑

Heaven? What?! My brother had been traveling out west earlier in the week, but was back home and in bed at his girlfriend’s house ten minutes from mine, as far as I knew.

The note continued and only got more bizarre:

How could I message you after I'm gone? Ya know, that whole Back to 
the Future thing where the postman found Doc in 1955 and gave him a 
letter from 1985? Unfortunately we can't rely on USPS 📭 like that 
these days, so thanks to email "timed delivery" 📧⏰ I've been 
working on this for years.

Any time I was flying on a plane, or some other "risky" adventure 
I would set this email to be delivered a few days later. Of course 
I have to account for the time it takes for you to be notified of 
my home-going to begin with... before receiving this email.

Of course he did, I thought.

The next paragraph mentioned going skydiving in Phoenix – which I knew about, he had posted the video on social media a few days earlier – and explained that he planned to skydive again the following day at the Grand Canyon.

Wait…Was this email saying that my brother died while skydiving? No, that can’t be right… that would have been three days ago, we hadn’t been notified of any accident.

I jumped to the most logical conclusion: he had forgotten to rescind the ridiculously grandiose contingency plan after his trip. I shot him a quick text, “Hey jackass, recall that email you sent before my parents see it and freak out.”

Now it was four hours later and I still had no reply. Which was odd for my constantly-attached-to-his-cell-phone brother.

Before picking my cards back up, I messaged his girlfriend, “Hey! I got a weird email from John…. Are you with him?”

Within a few minutes, my phone rang. Her name was on the caller ID. Oh boy, I thought, What has he gotten himself into now? I slipped out of the room to take the call. My parents didn’t need to know the drama if they didn’t have to.

I assumed my brother was in jail – again – or some other ridiculous predicament. And that’s why his bizarre auto-timed email had been delivered to my inbox.

“I’m not with John. I’m actually out of town and I also got a strange email from him this morning,” She said, “I haven’t heard from him since Tuesday.”

My stomach sank. My mind jumped to the worst case, but there were so many other possible scenarios, I pushed it aside.

Either way, my brother was missing, and had been for four days.

The next details unfolded rapidly.

His girlfriend told me that after receiving his email that morning and not being able to reach him, she had already contacted the Skydiving company at the Grand Canyon. He never even had a reservation, much less a fatal accident.

Next, she contacted the Grand Canyon Park Rangers and the Phoenix Police Department. They were reaching out to other local authorities, hospitals, morgues, police stations, etc. and would keep her updated.

It was like listening to a TV drama script, except these were words in my actual life.

We compared notes from our emails and dissected each sentence. “My guess would be jail over death,” I told his girlfriend, “He probably got pulled over somewhere between Phoenix and the canyon driving without a valid driver’s license. It wouldn’t be the first time. His phone is probably sealed in a personal effects bag and that’s why he didn’t cancel the email.”

I couldn’t stop the next stream of words that passed through my lips, “I’m usually the one he calls to get bailed out though, so I’m surprised I haven’t heard from him…

…He could have been in a car accident and is unconscious in some random hospital in the middle of no where. There are so many possibilities… You let me know if you hear from him, or the authorities and I will do the same.”

I walked back in my kitchen and resumed the card game, feigning nonchalance.

“What did John do now?” My mom asked. Ain’t nothing gets past that lady.

*

Within 24 hours of contacting the authorities, it was confirmed that my brother had arrived at the Grand Canyon but no one knew if he was still inside the National Park or not. There were cameras at the entrance showing that he pulled in with his motorcycle strapped to the back of his SUV, and they found his SUV in a parking lot, but the bike was missing.

Unfortunately, there are no cameras on the exit, so, for all we knew he was presently riding cross-country on his motorcycle, just to say he had, and would pull in our driveway any minute with a crazy story and a busted phone. Every time I heard a motorcycle engine growling thru our neighborhood my heart would leap with expectancy.

Or, maybe he had tried trail riding in the canyon and wrecked or had gotten stuck somewhere. It was Winter there too, after all. They could have had snow that week. Both cases plausible.

By the end of that day, my brother was a National Missing Person.

*

My husband and I were pulling into one of our favorite dinner spots on Sunday when my phone started blowing up. It was our first night out since the birth of our son. My mom had insisted we go on a date and took over at home. Even though we still didn’t know the whereabouts of my brother, we went out anyway. I felt a little guilty, but we needed it so badly.

The news had gone live. Dozens of people were messaging me with links to news articles about the missing person. “Is this our John Pennington?” “This has to be a mistake.” “What’s going on?” “Is he ok?” “Is this your brother?” It was so overwhelming I couldn’t even respond. We didn’t have all the details ourselves, what was I supposed to say? And this surely would turn out to be some idiotic mistake or scandal my brother got himself into.

*

John’s Girlfriend and I talked on the phone a few times each day trading information back and forth. My husband took over communication with the various law forces.

The Grand Canyon National Park Rangers were out searching the canyon on foot and would be sending out the helicopter on Monday.

But for now, all we could do was wait.

On Death, Loss and Resurrection

Easter looked different for us this year.

I hesitated to even post this picture because it is so shockingly deceiving.

What you see is the smiling faces that have posed on this same back deck for the last 20+ years.

What you don’t see is the pain, the heaviness, and the deep, deep grief that is carried behind each of those smiles.

At first glance, you might notice my brother is missing. Not uncommon, as there were years in the past he was “too busy” to come to Easter. But, my brother died two years ago, so, of course, he will never be in another Easter photo again. That’s an image I’ve already come to grips with.

What you can’t see through the pixels on this screen is that my Father is also missing.

He is there – physically present – with the same, iconic smile he’s worn his entire life, but my Daddy – his unique personality and identity – left us, realistically, last Fall.

Six, or so, years ago he was diagnosed with some form of Dementia. His mother died from Alzheimers in her 80’s, and his older brother is nearing the end of his battle with the horrid disease presently.

My dad’s progression has been slow. So slow that if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t even have known anything was off. A missed word here or there, a little fogginess on details… Until last Summer.

Within weeks of one another, two events back-to-back effectively stole my father from us.

First, he fell at our house and broke his foot. A minor break that only required wearing a boot for six weeks. And, simultaneously, his doctor told my mother that he could stop taking one of his memory medications as it had “been as effective as it could” to that point.

Within two weeks of those two events, it was like a light switch was turned off in my Father’s brain.

Daylight and dark.

One day he was there and the next he was not.

He went from being able to keep up well enough in a game of Canasta (a strategy-based card game we played as a family) to not being able to dress or groom himself in the correct manner.

He hasn’t shaved in months. And his body looks weak and emaciated. He is unsteady when he walks or sits and rises.

It happens all the time. A common earmark of dementia is fall-injury-decline. The way I understand it, the person’s body diverts all of its energy and resources to the site of the new injury/trauma that it has nothing left to support the preexisting, chronic cognitive trauma. So a significant regression occurs.

I haven’t posted anything on social media about my Father’s diagnosis because, until this Fall, he was still; regularly checking his own Facebook account. And, we are none of us, certain how aware or unaware my father is about his disease and progression. I didn’t want him reading something about himself he may not have even realized yet.

In October, my mom told me my dad was talking in his sleep. She heard him say, “I wonder what I’ll be like six months from now.” It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard. But, it let’s me know that he’s aware on some level, some of the time.

And also, I have felt almost like not saying it out loud might keep it from being real. Or permanent.

But at this point, my father can’t even use a TV remote without my mother’s assistance.

And as much as I want to pretend this image is the same as all the others we’ve snapped, I also don’t want to be living in – or portraying – a false reality.

Following the second anniversary of my brother’s death in February. I called my mom and told her I was having a strong need for familial/holiday traditions. Things will never look the same again, because a literal quarter of our family is missing, but I am needing to establish new rhythms and traditions for my son and my own healing.

Because of that, on Easter morning, we got up and went to my parents’ small country church – alone. I have never once in my life attended church on Easter without my parents.

They haven’t been able to attend for months due to my father’s physical limitations. My heart breaks over this, as their church was always their strongest form of community and identity.

I read their names in the bulletin on the prayer list under “shut ins”, and felt like I was being punched in the gut. Men “Amen’d” when the Hymns ended, and my eyes stung with tears at the absence of my father’s voice in that chorus.

Samson got to hunt eggs after the service, and we took some sweet family photos in our color-coordinated outfits. Which was one of the parts I needed most, as trivial as that is.

And when we got home, my mom had my dad all dressed up and groomed. The first time I’d seen him that way in months. All so we could snap this photograph. And because that’s what I needed.

Because grief is hard. And we are all drowning in it together. And just trying to hold on to each other in the waves as best we can.

We visited my brother’s grave Sunday afternoon and planted some Easter lilies there. It was the flower my brother brought to my mother every year on the holiday.

My brother’s funeral was two weeks before Easter in 2021. At it, I preached a message on Resurrection and the promise we have to be reunited with my brother again one day. It seems bitterly unfair that just two years later we are grappling with another loss as monumental to our family, but the promise is still the same.

The hard part, of course, is the living without them between now and then.

******

Footnote: I know this blog post is so very different than what you are used to reading here. And maybe not what you signed up for. Me either. Be aware, as I move forward through my grief journey, I will be posting more about it here. If that’s not what you want or need in your inbox right now, I totally understand, and will not be offended if we break up.

I want you to know you are still loved, you are never alone, and your – and my – story is so far from over. You keep telling yours and I’ll be here telling mine.