loss.

Content Warnings: death, suicide.

My brother Tim committed suicide in January, after a lifetime of difficulties. Here is what I said at the memorial; I did change a couple things to suit the moment, but I had a hard enough time reading what I wrote.

We’re here to talk about Tim. I think if there is ever a moment to appreciate each other in full; with our skills and stumbles, our powers and frailties, this might be it. Tim decided to depart this world ahead of schedule, throwing into sharp relief all of our relationships with him. We can think back over our time with him, and see everything with a different lens, knowing the pain he carried inside.

I’m not going to lie, here. Our life as brothers was difficult in childhood, then varying flavors of loving, or awkward, or distant. It was, always, complicated.

Until he passed away, I would not have said we knew each other very well; but in the stories and support of everyone here and absent, I think that maybe we knew each other after all.

Before his teaching career, we got many gifts from Eastern Mountain Sports, courtesy of their generous employee discounts. One Christmas, earlier in his and A’s relationship, I opened a gift from them, as we sat in the living room where we grew up.

It was a smallish EMS duffel bag, which came with its own little stuff sack. I said “Oh, cool!” And immediately started messing with it.

Tim looked over at A and said “See? I told you.” As much as we didn’t have in common, he knew me well enough to know that the only thing better than a bag to hold stuff would be a bag to hold stuff which comes with its own bag to hold it.

Thanks to the sharing of Tim’s school community, I have a better sense of the life he wove—maybe for himself, but definitely for his daughters, and the many students who passed through his care. He was so successful in creating love and safety for those around him, but his wounded heart limited how far down he could feel those connections.

Off in the wilds of adulthood, not talking much, I hoped that my feeling of not knowing him was because I wanted him to have found his way to being a person at peace, someone I didn’t recognize so readily. He didn’t, and couldn’t find a way through any more.

And that sucks, because whatever relationship any of us had with him, I think the universal constant is that the world was better with him in it, and we will always miss him.