I Swear You Will Be Fine

Josh and I were very different, but we always wanted to make our family proud. We never wavered with this. We were so careful with how we spoke to people and looked during parties with family friends. We babysat the kids and were polite to the older people. We made sure we did well academically so our family would know they had set us up for bright futures. We wanted to be grandchildren and children that our grandparents and mum could be proud of.

I think this was especially after our parents got divorced. We came from a relatively traditional Sri Lankan and Singaporean background, and even though Josh and I were outspoken about our liberal values, we knew how conservative societies worked. We hated the idea that people would look down on my mum and grandparents because my parents weren’t together. I’m not sure how many children are in full support of wives leaving their husbands, but Josh and I definitely were. Our mum has given us more than you could even dream of. We wanted to be proof that she made the right decision – an impossible decision to keep us safe.

So we tried to make sure we did everything the ‘right’ way. We weren’t always fussed about appearing a certain way to the rest of the world, but we made sure we were good children and grandchildren. Our grandmother has always been quite strict on manners, and Josh upheld this till he passed away. As our grandad became more fragile, I stopped telling Joshua to go help him because he did it without needing to be asked. We did our best to be proof that we were raised right – difficult childhood be damned.

A lot of the time, it wasn’t even about being proof. It was about trying to return the love and affection we had been showered with throughout our lives. We both often said that we were closer to our grandparents than our friends were to their own parents. When things like exams went wrong, our friends would hide their results from their parents. Josh and I would immediately call our family – because we knew we would receive encouragement instead of a scolding. We both could have spent our entire lives trying to repay our grandparents and mum for everything they’ve given us, and we still wouldn’t be able to.

Josh did spend his whole life trying to give my family what they gave him. He would hate for him passing away to be something people blamed my family for. In reality, they gave him so much love and strength to get through the last 10 years. Without them, I would have lost my brother a long time ago.

Ironically, the night before he passed away, I was wondering how likely it was for Josh to take his own life. I could only shake the thought after realising it would destroy my grandparents, which rational Josh would have known. But it wasn’t rational Josh who made the decision to pass away. It was Josh with the illness. The awful, evil illness that took my brother away. My brother was a lot of things, but he never intentionally tried to hurt our family. Seeing us in this much pain would hurt him so much.

Josh and I were very different. But when it came to our family, we were the same. They were our first priority in every decision we made. Josh would never have wanted to see us dread birthdays, a celebration that had been sacred in our family. He would hate to see us sink into the grief, which often feels like it’s going to consume us whole. So we force ourselves to get through the birthdays and try to celebrate the achievements, because it’s what he would have wanted.

Of course, easier said than done. I went out with friends a few days ago and found myself crying incessantly in central London. I can almost imagine Josh saying, ‘Jess. Come on’. So now I try to study. I try to go to the gym. I try to stay close to our family, because that’s what would have made Josh proud. When I see him again, I need to know I made him proud. So maybe I’ll still cry sporadically in public but on the whole, I hope we’re making him proud. He gave us so much to be proud of.