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suicide grief

The subject tonight is love

My brother, Mark Manning

The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well,
As a matter of fact,
I know of no better topic
For us to discuss
Until we all Die!

Hafiz

It’s been my brother Mark’s birthday today. He would have been 56. (1970-2015)
I was thinking about love and letting go. I actually don’t like the phrase “letting go.” To me it sounds like sending someone away, like forgetting them. I hate that.


However somebody pointed out to me this morning that loosening my grip this Christmas on our family traditions, my ability to be more open to doing something new and allowing our Christmas to unfold in the new family we are, was a letting go. The fact that I was OK today on my brother’s birthday though a little sad at times, and that I was OK not doing anything in particular in his honor necessarily, was letting go.

That sounds a little scary for me but it’s alright. I am always afraid if I don’t try hard to remember and keep everything I know about them, I will forget the people I have lost. I really fear that. I don’t want them to be far away from me- like childhood friends whose names I can’t really remember anymore. I don’t want to let them go.

Then I thought about how love is a living thing. Love changes and grows as the people in the relationship do. Love is not static. It isn’t only in the past. Love isn’t diminished by change In fact love deepens as people adjust and sacrifice in the midst of and because of it they grow together and for one another.

The love between my brother and me is a living thing. Death has changed our situation drastically. Love has had to adjust and change and grow with that. But death can’t take away love. And maybe that is what it means to let go; when I don’t need to force anything to feel connected, or struggle to wrest back any little scrap death has left behind when it raided my family and took so many people away. Maybe letting go is to be able to trust that love just is and I can let it be itself.

My dad used to say that my brother probably loved me more than anyone on the planet loved anyone. What if I can trust that he still does? He always loved me just as I was. I loved him like that too.

I love my brother as he is right now, even not quite knowing what that is like to be him right now. When I get there with him I expect to love him even more. Death can’t do anything about that.

.So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13: 13

*My brother Mark Manning at 7 years old.

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O Brother where art thou

I did not cry for nine years after you self destructed like a kamikaze in our midst. There are not even any pieces left to sort through. Where did you go and why couldn’t I stop you. We were closer than close and I should have known when you locked me out what was coming. We always said when we didn’t spend time together neither of us was right in ourselves so we should always make sure to connect no matter what was going on. You kept trying to apologize, trying to come back into our front porch days. You said “When I hurt you I hurt me and I can’t stand that I hurt your feelings. I hate that.” And I always said it was ok. I said we can work through anything just like we always have. I had faith in that. Absolute faith. How crazy did you have to be for me to not be surprised. Denial is more powerful than I ever thought. When you said “I’m scared I might be mentally ill,” I should not have reassured you that you weren’t. The last time I saw you I hugged you brother and I rubbed your little head. You looked like a small boy that day who had been sick, safe at his parents’ dinner table. Your letter to Dad said I would be OK. Well I’m not. None of us are. You must have hurt so badly to do something like that. You just needed it to stop. I thought oh he will be back like always. He just needs to think. I was so close. But I think you thought we were far away and you had no idea how to get back. You couldn’t find us. And you thought we couldn’t help. I finally cried the other night and it was about something else. It felt weird. It didn’t last long. I wish I could miss you the way I miss everyone else. But there is just a void where you used to be. Like the Mariana Trench. No one knows what’s down there, only how unfathomably deep it must be. I’ve been there. But I couldn’t understand anything.





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