“I don’t know how to tell you this,” my oldest brother says, ” but JE died.”

“How?” I whisper into the phone.

“He choked on his vomit,” he says and I know at once. Heroin overdose.

I don’t cry. I get right to work. I take charge. Where is everyone right now? Where should I meet you? Should I stop at the store for anything? Got enough cigarettes? How’s Ma? JE’s wife? His three-year-old daughter? His three-month-old-son?

I break the news to my husband but I don’t cry. We gather with the rest of the family as mourners do, to drink coffee and smoke. My clear-headed husband makes funeral arrangements while the rest of us concoct the story. Heart attack? Aneurysm? What is an appropriate way for a thirty-eight-year-old man to die? We agree on heart attack. My husband doesn’t understand why the truth is not an option.

Standing at my brother’s grave I have my very first flashback although I do not know at the time what it is. I am slammed back in time. Ten years old, I stand at my father’s grave, watching the soldiers fold the flag. Then bam, I am back. And shaken. Afraid I’m losing my mind. I don’t know how long I was gone or if anyone noticed. I look up and make eye contact with JD. It is at that very moment the grim reality sinks in. We will do this very same thing for him. The pain in both our eyes cannot be described.

Back at work my veneer starts to crack, but I am still strong enough to hold myself together. The grief has yet to come because I don’t know which brother to grieve. For a solid year I focus on JE’s wife and kids. I try to hold them up. We try to make sense of it. I sneak moments of grief in for myself, but they are only that. Moments.

I manage to glue my veneer back into place and carry on like a trooper. I wear my courage on my sleeve like a medal of valor. I learn to excel in diversion and could deflect any questions that might uncover the truth of who I truly was, a wounded little girl pretending to be an adult. If I stopped thinking, breathing, working, I would fall on my knees. If I allowed myself to feel the loss from the past, the present, and the future, I would surely die.

******

Five years after the death of my clean and sober brother, JD lost his battle with AIDS. It was excruciatingly painful to watch this horrific disease whittle him away right down to his marrow. The unresolved grief, stemming back to the death of my father, rose up from the depths of my soul and I finally fell. Every single time I tried to stand up, I fell. Hard. I knew if I didn’t seek help, my life, as I knew it, would end.

Picking up the phone and making the call to a therapist saved my life. Opening up the heavy, well-worn baggage and showing the contents to another human being was terrifying. There were times I’d sit there silent, saturated with tears. For the first time in my life I acknowledged I had been abused. The grief and anger were bitter lumps in my throat and rendered me speechless.

“If the words are too painful, write them down,” my therapist suggested.

I wrote. I typed. I cried. Then I typed some more. I hated those words. I ripped the pages up, lit them on fire, stomped on them, but still I wrote. Then one day those words became my voice and my voice became strong. And now I share my story, writing those words and shedding tears for those who’ve not yet found their voices.

–Petunia

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 25 May 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.