Mourning the living
The only thing worse than mourning the dead, is mourning the living. It’s a strange concept, but it’s something I’ve been living with for several years now. Let’s just say you don’t truly think about something like this until you experience it.
To try to explain what I mean, I’d say mourning the living can have many causes: illnesses, addictions, mental health struggles, or life choices that put the safety of those we love most at risk. That person hasn’t left the world we inhabit, but we see them fade away, little by little, while still alive.
Often, we don’t know if this person’s life will end, much less whether it will be sooner or later. All we know is that the possibility exists, always present in the background. And that knowledge erodes the time we have with them.
The hardest part is accepting this kind of mourning, one that stretches on for months, years, or even decades. It’s mourning without a death to grieve. There’s no wake, no burial or cremation; no ritual of mourning, no closure; because the person is still here, like a bomb of sadness hidden under the table of life for everyone around them. An explosive that detonates each time something reminds us that the person we love could be gone.
I’ve been mourning my brother’s life for six years now. Throughout all this time, the emotions I’ve felt toward him have constantly shifted, cycling through nearly every stage of grief, not just during the moment when he almost lost his life, but also throughout these years in which, thankfully, he has survived and fought to live as normal a life as possible.
This year in particular, his health deteriorated a lot. And even though I’ve come to terms with the idea that the chances of losing him are high, it still hurts — because I love him, and I don’t want to witness his departure. And seeing him suffer breaks me emotionally in countless ways.
Every time his condition worsens, my own mood sinks. But I avoid showing it to him or my family, because it wouldn’t help anyone. The last thing I want is for him to feel like a burden. That’s why I write these words: to ease the weight I sometimes feel in my soul.
It’s one of those painful truths of life that I wish I could fix by making a wish to some higher power.
But unfortunately, I am only human, and sometimes the pain is so unbearable that I find myself wishing his moment of rest would simply come. That thought, that wish, fills me with a shame so deep I can hardly put it into words. But I also don’t want to deny it, because the grief is so overwhelming that the mind just derails.
I think it’s human to feel it, or to think it, while also recognizing it’s not what we truly want.
At the end of the day, I’ll keep being there for him. Despite the constant pain, the endless struggle, the unpleasant emotions. Every second I spend by his side is worth it. Even in the agony of endless mourning.