how to keep on living when your little brother dies
and why I can't stand the quote: 'what is grief if not love persevering'
This is an excerpt from our book Make It Make Sense, and also the most vulnerable thing I have ever written. Today would have been my little brother Jimmy’s 24th birthday, but I lost him just after his 19th. If you connect with this in any way, the grief chapter of our book is for you. I really hope you feel seen in it. But mostly I just want you all to know and love Jimmy like I do. Read with care. Luce x
Aftermath
By Lucy
October 1st, 2023. Four years after.
It’s 10am and I’m scrolling on Pinterest trying to find a quote I can post on Instagram about death that doesn’t feel grim or cringe or like it’s been said a million times before. I’m doing this because today is a Hard Day for me, and I don’t want people in my life to feel bad about forgetting to reach out. The only thing worse than feeling obliged to reply to someone who’s let you know they’re ‘thinking of you’ is feeling obliged to reply to someone who’s apologising that they weren’t. Thinking about Pinterest or DMs or Instagram feels like a fucking ridiculous thing to be doing on the anniversary of your little brother’s death, but no one tells you what you’re supposed to do. I close the apps, deciding that reading a bunch of comments about how ‘the good die young’ is probably not going to make this day any easier, and instead I think about the lake. At the lake we grew up at, Jimmy and I used to play a game where we’d each grab the heaviest rock we could find and walk along the floor for as long as we could hold our breath. Each time, in the moments between dropping the rock and reaching the surface, I’d have the terrifying thought that I would pop up, look around for him, and realise I was alone. Now I know what that’s like.
Don’t let your parents Google the Rickshaw Run. The website describes it as ‘easily the least sensible thing to do with two weeks. There’s no set route, no backup and no way of knowing if you’re going to make it. The only certainty is that you will get lost, you will get stuck and you will break down.’
I couldn’t tell you what about that description enticed me into the idea of racing across India. All I know is that back then, I didn’t have a reason to be scared. On the weekend of my 21st birthday, I made it my mission to recruit the only two people I wanted to do the Rickshaw Run with: my little brother, Jimmy, and one of my best friends, Josh. The boys took less convincing than our parents. After almost a year of planning, fundraising and reminding our- selves that life was here to be lived, we were on our way.
India, August, 2019
I’ll admit that maybe we were a bit naive going into this. After saying goodbye to Mum, Dad and my brothers Nick and Ben, the boys and I endured a gnarly few days of travel, only to arrive in Kochi, India and face some of the worst floods I’ve ever seen. After some drying out, we met our rickshaw: a bright yellow lemon with a smiley face on the front. Jimmy and Josh taught me how to drive it, we went and bought what we’d been told would be our essentials – things like jerry cans and zip-ties – and we boarded a boat to the opening night party. None of this was like anything we’d ever done before, and we were intoxicated by that. Jimmy was nervous, in the way anyone would be at 18, so I stayed sober to look out for him. When we got home to our hostel, he leant over the top bunk and repeatedly told me that he’d had the best night of his life, drunkenly sending our family a photo captioned ‘Lucy and I are best friends.’ This photo would become one of my most treasured possessions.
The race began, and we fell into our new roles. Jimmy was the best driver of the three of us, so he took the windy roads. Josh made the playlist and kept the morale high, and I, for the most part, was on map duty. We hit our stride a few days in. Unlike most of the other teams, we hadn’t had a single issue with our rickshaw and were quietly confident that luck was on our side. Jimmy discovered he loved chai and the smell of jasmine. We played cricket with a bunch of local kids, and he caught them out with his ‘soft hands’. Josh was warming up to his bucket showers and getting bolder with his food choices. I was just happy to be along for the ride with my brothers-in-arms.
Jimmy had always been fascinated by dams. The lake where we used to play the rock-game was bookended by two of the biggest dams in the country, so when we saw one coming up on the next day’s route, we diverted to it. We pulled up, and Jimmy carefully photographed it, the way he did with everything he loved, and we decided that if we wanted to keep stumbling upon things like this, we needed to be off the beaten track. And so it was settled: no more motorways from now on. It wasn’t long after we’d made that decision and Josh had taken over the driving that Jimmy got a headache I instantly knew wasn’t a headache.
It takes a lot for a dam to burst. A natural disaster, a freak accident, a build-up of pressure. What was happening in Jimmy’s head was all three.
Google Maps. Knowing there’s a hospital closer than this. Why did we leave the motorway? Holding onto Jimmy so he doesn’t fall out of the Rickshaw. Directing Josh. Convincing them both it’s a migraine. Knowing it wasn’t. Arriving. Screaming. Not being understood. Trying to lift him. Waiting. A brain aneurysm, they tell us. Surgery. Calling home. Not being able to talk. Hanging up in case we got a call from the hospital to go and buy equipment so the doctors could continue operating. Brain scans in the basement. Being shown them in tiny dark rooms. Not knowing how to make sense of them. ICU. His hands tied to the hospital bed. Days passing. Josh on the phone about travel insurance. Thank god for him. Getting worse. Mum arriving. Dad arriving. Getting better. Getting worse again. No one knowing what’s wrong this time. Evacuation number one. New hospital. New week. His voice for the first time in a while. Leg movement. Precious conversations written down in my notes app. More weeks. Another evacuation, this time to New Zealand. The doctor and nurse who flew in to help. An aggressive search of his wheelchair by security. Cuddles in a hotel bed in Singapore. Another plane. An emergency in mid-air. The ambulance meeting us on the runway. Vomiting in the airport. I thought things would be better in New Zealand? A hospital where they speak English. Fist bumps with his brothers. More weeks. Things getting worse again. Learning what antibiotic resistance means. Explaining it to my family. Last-ditch meds from Australia. Waiting. That room. That decision. Learning what palliative care means. Family visits. Friend visits. Crosswords. Laughter. Tears on his pillow. ‘Young hearts don’t want to stop.’ More waiting. Holding his hand. The scent of bacon-and-egg pie. Spending his 19th birthday dying. Snowing at the lake. A final breath. Kissing his cold forehead. Relief.
Home. October, 2019
After he died, we brought him home to spend a few nights in his old room. There he was, two doors down from me again, surrounded by his high school photography assignments and posters of his favourite cricketers. His Ferrari-red coffin sat on top of the duvet that I used to piss him off by climbing onto on Saturday mornings before he got up for the day. This annoyed him so much that in the end, we had to make an agreement: I was allowed to stay for the duration of one Family Guy compilation video, and then I had to get out. I wish I’d taken note of the last time I did that.
One thing the movies get right is that people will show up at your door with lasagne and sympathy. His friends came, and I took them through to see him. My friends came, and I did the same. Afterwards, we’d sit on the floor in circles and try to fill the silence of him in the next room. During this time, the most helpful thing someone could do was be there, with no expectation of being recognised for it. Sending texts that needed no reply. Showing up for a coffee that went cold without being touched. Hugging you, but letting your arms stay pressed to your sides because they know you don’t have the energy to lift them. These are the things you do when there is nothing else to do.
You don’t get long between losing and commemorating. There are funeral plans to be made, speeches to be written, photos to be compiled and discussions to be had about whether we should all post about it on Facebook or if we should just share Dad’s post.
The music was left solely for the kids to arrange, and there could only be one artist for the main event: Kanye West. Kanye was the star on top of our Christmas tree and the soundtrack to Jimmy’s life. His latest album was meant to come out on Jimmy’s 19th birthday, so each day during that final month, my brothers would tuck their phones under his hospital pillow and have it lightly playing ‘ye’ as we waited for the new album to drop, think- ing it might bring a miracle with it. He never did get to hear that album.
Does Kanye have a funeral-esque song? Who cares. Nick, Ben and I sat on Jimmy’s bed and started going through the discography to pick the perfect tune for the midsection of a funeral.
‘Runaway’
Pros: One of the classics with a strangely perfect outro for a funeral.
Cons: The boomers in attendance might not appreciate us toasting to the douchebags, assholes, scumbags and jerk-offs right now.
Can’t Tell Me Nothing
Honestly? It would have been iconic, but we couldn’t have people spending the entire duration of the photo compilation wondering where they’d heard it before, only to realise it was the song from The Hangover.
All of The Lights (Interlude)’
Close. Too haunting.
‘Only One’
I’d known from the moment we found out he was dying that I would sing this one for him earlier in the service. Off the table.
’Ghost Town’
A song about how nothing hurts anymore and how we’ll always be the kids we used to be? Perfect.
Losing means holding on. To old messages. To the sports they loved. To the music you once begged them to swap for your music on long car journeys. Jimmy died before Kanye announced his bid for President or divorced Kim Kardashian. Before, things got really complicated with him. Jimmy never had to consider whether to separate the art from the artist or if he’d be cancelled for still liking him today. I hate that I feel obliged to tell the story of my dead brother every time a Kanye song comes on one of my playlists, to caveat why I can’t let his music go either. The things we hold on to become part of the treasure box we build for our loved ones, and no one is allowed to dictate what goes in or comes out.
At his funeral, I talked about how he was the best of us all. He was the one to pick me up from the airport at every uni break, the one who took our little brother to his first party. He kept me company on the phone three nights a week as I walked home in the dark from my babysitting job. He talked to my older brother about rocket ships and how to renovate a van. He took drone photos of farms Dad was trying to sell. He helped Mum find a house when she and Dad separated. He pulled his friends’ cars out of rivers or delivered them petrol when they ran out in the middle of nowhere. He rarely asked for anything, buying and wrapping his own Christmas presents and pretending to be surprised when he opened them on Christmas Day. People love to say that the best is still yet to come. How could that be true when I’ve just told everyone that the best of us is gone?
After making that speech, someone told me that they thought I should run for Prime Minister one day because of how I ‘held it together’. I couldn’t believe that was their takeaway from all of this. If I wasn’t at my little brother’s funeral, this comment would have made a really good tweet, I thought, and sensed that I’m the worst person alive for thinking that.
The months after
After the funeral, you’ll have about four months of people checking in on you before they go back to their own lives, and you’ll find that it’s actually a relief when they do. You’ll spend a lot of time trying to make other people feel comfortable about what happened and hear yourself saying things like ‘they had a great life!’ or ‘I’m okay, really!’ more than you feel you should. Your friends will tell you that you don’t have to do that, but you don’t know what else you’re meant to say.
You’ll think a lot about what they won’t get to see. Like their favourite celebrity going off the rails or how that business you started with your best friends is going. You’ll decide to delete your Instagram because you don’t want people to be able to reach out to you anymore or see the photos of them that existed when they were here and you were happy. You’ll live through a global pandemic and wonder what they would think of the world these days. You’ll realise that they’ll never have a 21st birthday or meet the love of their life or your brothers’ girlfriends. You’ll wonder if they’d have ever grown into liking olives or brussel sprouts or wine or any of those things that come with age. Every day, you will have a new revelation, and it will turn you inside out.
The years after
In the years after, other people’s memories become your greatest gift. A friend of theirs might message you with a photo they found in their camera roll that you’d never seen, and you’ll stick it on your fridge. An old teacher might send you something they wrote when they were younger, and your mum will cry. Their old employer might give you a drawing they’d done on a Post-It note on a slow day, signed with their name and the date, and you’ll turn it into a keychain. Let these stories find you, and let the hope that more of them exist get you through the years.
In the years after, you will be told, time and time again, that you’ve gained a kind of perspective on the world that not many other people have. You know that missing them means they had a life worth living, that their absence is great because they were. But these romantic ways of putting it will piss you off before they bring you peace, because losing them was not worth gaining this perspective. Nothing is.
In the years after, death will make you narcissistic. Some nights, you’ll be kept awake wondering why this had to happen to you. To them. Why not someone else? This doesn’t make you a bad person. It also doesn’t last forever.
In the years after, you will feel like you’re grieving wrong because it didn’t come in stages for you like the internet said it would. In fact, you’re not sure if grief ‘comes’ at all or if it’s just in you now, like lead in your bones, making sure you never feel light on your feet again.
Your life after
You’ll wonder what used to occupy your brain before you knew death, and what other people spend their time thinking about. You’ll sit down to watch a TV show with friends, and someone will die in it. They’ll turn to you and say that they’re sorry, they didn’t realise, and you’ll feel awkward. You’ll only know 90 per cent of the Hamilton soundtrack because you skip all the songs about his son dying every time. You’ll meet someone new and pray they don’t ask you about your siblings.
People will complain about frivolous things, and you’ll get irrationally angry. How can they complain about their favourite wine being out of stock when you’ve had someone ripped away from you forever? This anger will soften. So will you.
You will be changed in ways you won’t expect, like having to Google how far away you are from a hospital everywhere you go. You’ll accept that this is just something about you now. You’ll meet a nurse on a night out and thank them profusely for their work, wondering why the hell they aren’t paid more. You’ll think about how you’d become one if you weren’t so freaked out by needles.
None of it is ever going to make sense. People will talk about things they’ve read or heard or seen, and you’ll want to tell them that grief is nothing like that. Grief is walking down the street and having to slide your sunglasses on over your tears because the way the sun feels today reminds you of when you were kids together. Death will continue to show you that life is fragile but that you are strong. Strength is having to look at your phone when it serves you a memory of them on a random Tuesday. Strength is when your family makes a new group chat without them. Strength is seeing their social media accounts become tributes. Strength is having a graduation party that they were supposed to be at. Strength is feeling their absence at every occasion, forever. Strength is knowing that you’re never going to feel as happy as you were when they were here, but trying anyway. Strength is continuing to run your business because they’d want you to. Strength is stepping away when the misery vortex sucks you in and coming back when it spits you out. Strength is letting grief become your heart’s compass to help you make sense of the world. How you move through it. How you navigate it. Who you are within it. Strength is being at the centre of it all, with everyone watching, especially them.
Order our book ‘Make It Make Sense’ here xxx
I have sobbed my way through this. Thank you for being so vulnerable and honest. Happy birthday Jimmy. Sending you lots of love xx
Wow this is incredible, thank you for sharing! Both of my older brothers passed unexpectedly shortly after Jimmy did, and I feel this deep in my bones. I was laughing, tearing up then sobbing by the end of it. Beautifully written with so much love. Happy birthday Jimmy ❤️