If you follow my social media, you may have noticed that my recent absence is due to the sudden and unexpected death of my brother. A sentence I could never have imagined ever needing to write. A sentence that I have put off writing since it happened.

I’ve struggled to know what to do with LMP in the last nine weeks as it could have been all too easy to blurt out emotions that needed time to think about and there is a question of respect with these things that I’ve found difficult to reconcile. But a good friend of mine pointed out that maybe my experience might help others and might bring comfort to those experiencing something similar. So here I am. I’ll keep it respectful but as is the purpose of this site, it will be raw and it will be honest.

One of my challenges over the last nine weeks has been the new language I’ve had to learn. Like how we refer to the ‘deceased’, his ‘passing’ and the most ironic of all “my late brother”. I’ve always been the late one, not him! What does that even mean? If anyone’s expecting him to turn up again then they’ll get a bigger surprise than a lack of punctuality. It seems impolite or un-civilised to say “my brother’s dead” – but that’s the truth and when you spend the summer with three little people, that’s the language they use, so why can’t we adults?! Instead we try to be respectful and polite, like the first social media post I put up after he died – looking back at it, it was respectful, yes, but it was vague and moody and didn’t actually tell anyone what had happened!

Anyway, the one that’s got me most recently is the talk about loss. ‘How do you feel about the loss of your brother?’ ‘When did you lose your brother?’ ‘I was so sorry to hear you lost your brother?’ DID I? Did I misplace him somewhere? Was it my fault?

I recently experienced the loss of a silver charm. Frustratingly, it was one related to my brother so I am very upset but I have no idea where it is. That’s how I know I’ve lost it. And that’s why I’ve spent days phoning around all the places it could have been lost to try and find it again. That is definitely not what’s happened with my brother. I didn’t lose him, I’m not trying to find him, I know exactly what happened to him and I believe I know a little of where he’s gone but I certainly didn’t just misplace him.

I think a more accurate description of what’s happened in the last eight weeks is that I was the one that got lost. I seem to have wandered in to a world that is crowded with familiarities and yet feels so unknown to me and knowing where to go and how to get there feels like an impossibility right now. I’m still me and I can still smile and laugh as much as I can inconsolably cry but I’m not in the same place I was just nine weeks ago. I’m lost. Everything has changed and yet many things haven’t. I still got up this morning and took the girls to school. I still brushed my teeth. But It’s just not the same. I’m lost. I look in the mirror and I see the same face staring back (though admittedly it looks more tired and aged!) but there is a pain and a sadness that clouds my ability to find my way through this. You can’t go under it, you can’t go over it, you can’t go round it, they said… you have to go through it. But how do I make it through the maze, when I’m lost? Take each turn and each minute, one at a time, I guess.

So did I lose my brother? No. He may have lost me… and everything else in this life. He’s lost seeing his son start school this year. I haven’t. He’s lost seeing his son turn 7 and seeing his nieces show off their new earrings. I haven’t. I still have to live this life with all the twists and turns that it presents. I just have to do it knowing he’s never going to be in it again. So I didn’t lose him but I do lose out because there is a piece of me missing now. It’s not lost though, because my faith gives me hope that I know where he is and that I’ll see him again. I can only hope that I’ll soon find my way around this strange new world of grief. A world I don’t think I can ever leave now but one that will become known and one that I can call home and not feel so lost any more.

Maybe I’ll even learn the language…