I Swear You Will Be Fine

I like to think Josh would be proud of how we’ve handled our grief—especially Mum and Shalini, but also my grandparents and me. I think this kind of unbridled, horrifying grief can turn people into quite nasty human beings. Villains often have a loss this massive in their character arc. But Josh had a massive amount of pain in his life. Largely because of his illness, but also contributed to by our dad. Despite this, he never let it make him a bad person. He was never rude or unkind to strangers. When he was younger, more of that pain would come out at those closest to him, but as he got older, he held it in. He didn’t want to push that onto us. You can’t help but wonder—if he had let it out, would he still be here? But he consciously chose to spare us that pain and took it on himself.

So we’re trying to model ourselves after him. No one has yelled at a stranger or been horrible to people who’ve said rude things unintentionally. There’s a certain pride in thinking, “No one would guess what we’ve just gone through.” We’re empathetic to our patients. We give our seats to elders. We smile sympathetically at parents with naughty children (Josh prepared us for that). But I’ve had a few blips where it may as well have been tattooed on my forehead: she lost her little brother, and she is not coping.

The first was the week after I went back to uni. I met the doctors in charge of me for a private meeting and burst into tears within five minutes. I didn’t pull myself together for a while, but I was so blessed that they were some of the loveliest people I’ve met. Admittedly, this was only days after we lost Josh, so perhaps more excusable than others.

The first time I went dancing after Josh passed, I cried for a solid fifteen minutes. It started when Where Is the Love by the Black Eyed Peas began playing and continued into the bathroom. The poor woman in charge of drunk people kept consoling me and handing me tissues. Even she seemed to know this wasn’t a drunk 24-year-old crying over something trivial. I was the girl who needed her flatmates to follow her and hold her until she stopped crying. Frankly, I was so embarrassed I couldn’t even address it with my flatmates for days afterwards.

Being in the UK has blessed me with support groups—both for sibling loss and for losing Josh to suicide. I’ve attended several now. They remind me that we’re not the only ones who’ve suffered such a massive loss. I know what to expect, and yet, when I attended one online two days ago, I cried so hard I couldn’t even get through the introduction. Many people had lost siblings more recently, more unexpectedly, more traumatically. And yet I was the one who couldn’t manage more than four lines about Josh. I almost felt like I had to redeem myself—to show them I’m not normally like this.

And yet, I don’t know if I am. The grief is still so raw. I assumed it was getting buried deeper and further down. I’m in Edinburgh for placement, and every morning I need to remind myself what happened. It’s hard to enjoy and be content with life when you know what you’ve lost. But maybe these moments need to happen. The loss of Josh is so massive that some part of me finds peace in them—they’re proof that things aren’t “normal” anymore.

Apart from these more severe moments, I embarrass myself constantly. I trip on flat ground and make rude comments about people louder than I should. I like to think these moments make Josh laugh in heaven. He would hate me being embarrassed about my grief—especially if he felt responsible for it. So it only makes sense that some of this embarrassment is directly tied to our loss. Here’s to hoping more of it is the kind of embarrassment that makes Josh laugh in heaven. Or at least second-hand embarrassment—that would make me laugh too.

Love,
Jess