Thirty-eight years ago tonight my brother set himself on fire and lived for 43 days.

I have posted here in the past. Some years this day slips by without me realizing. Sometimes I quietly acknowledge it. Some years it is very vivid like it is tonight.

For the first three years I felt I had to will every breath I took. I did not think I could survive the crushing pain and sadness. I am here to let you know I have a productive life and I’m happily married. It took a long time to find my way and my brother’s death is still the worst thing that has ever happened in my life.

Things that helped me: therapy, journaling, asking for help, finding nurturing things to do for myself. Sometimes all I could do was wrap up in a blanket on the couch. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Keep coming back here. You are not alone.

Hello little brother. It’s me again. It’s a couple of days from what would have been your 60th birthday. It’s also getting closer to the one year since you left us. Life is hard and difficult, and I hurt everyday. Alice comforts me when I am having bad days. I don’t know what I would do without her.Mom is getting worse and the prognosis isn’t good. She had both her legs amputated a month or so back. As terrible as things have been this year (2024), losing mom would devastate me even more.

You would tell me all the time to get right with God. I know you were, and if there’s a Heaven, I know you are there. I still cannot bring myself to believe is something that holds me accountable and demands me to follow their will, yet won’t do anything to stop people’s suffering all over the globe. I know some of these feelings about God comes from my anger about losing my sister, my brother, my son, and the many friends through the years. Our friend Dennis passed in October.

I thought I would be better about dealing with your passing, but with the “day” coming up soon, I am miserable.

Missing you brother. If God will have me… until we meet again.

April of 2011 my younger brother who had just turned 34 a few days earlier took his life in one of our childhood homes, a home I owned at the time. He was my only sibling, and to say the years have gone by and the need to talk to him has only grown stronger. Since his passing, I feel I not only lost a sibling and a best friend, but also became to some degree an orphan. The pain and suffering for them is truly something I can even begin to understand, as a father myself I can not fathom their pain. As a child of theirs, I feel the day of my younger brothers death was the day I lost my parents too. It feels they have decided to just allow life to exist in wait of their deaths, instead of embracing the life they are so blessed to still have. It is painful to me to watch them live out the rest of their years like this, they have grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so many friends who love them. I can manage my pain, and my loss of Michael (my brother), but how do I get through the pain of watching my parents suffer and distance themselves from living?

It’s been 48 hrs since I got the phone call from Dad to say that you were not longer with us. In all of my 46 years you’ve been there. Quietly and dependably. We don’t talk regularly but I’ve always known you would drop anything if I needed you.I am struggling to imagine the future without you being there in some way.

I promise I’ll look after Mum and Dad. We’re being practical at the moment (as you’d expect knowing us as your do) but don’t imagine for one second that means we don’t miss you and grieve for you.

Rest in peace my darling brother. X

Hi Bubba. I just want you to know that i miss you and I regret not talking to you more. I wish we could’ve been close like how we were when we were younger. I miss you everyday more and more. I’m so lost without you – you were everything to me. And I will always remember and love you no matter what. Even if your stupid self decided it was the only way out. But I don’t blame you; you did what you needed in the moment. You’re an idiot. But forever my idiot. Love, your sibling.

I miss you. It’s been more than 2 months since you passed. You missed my birthday. You missed Nanny’s 80th. I don’t blame you for any of it, and I hope you saw these days.

I hope you see every day. The good and the bad. I hate to admit that there have been both. I hate that there are still bad days, I know that’s not what you wanted for us. I hate that there are good days; it’s been 2 months – how could there be ‘good days.’

Paul, I hope you understand (understood). I don’t know whether to bury the past or carry it with me? There is a straightforward answer: you are the past now and it’s best I carry that with me. But it’s not so simple, or else it wouldn’t be a question.

Should I let go of everyone I met before I knew of your struggles (maybe they distracted me)? Should I let go of our parents (how could they let you go and make me stay)? What should I do (maybe you knew the answer but I’m afraid you didn’t)?

I will never know the answers, that’s a truth that I wish you never showed me. Paul, I love you. Everyone wishes you were back. I hope you found something that I can’t imagine but will discover, in due time.

And in the flip side, I wish you learned how full life is. At 23, I don’t understand, which makes me all the more sure you didn’t know at 19. Still, I hope I can show you now while it’s too late. How to take the good with the bad; the beautiful with the ugly. I hope you see.

When I meet you (in due time), I hope we can share stories of the different paths we took. I hope neither was better than the other.

But most of all I hope I get to see you again.

Dear Bud,

You have been buried for 30 days today. I saw you for the last time that day. The worst and most necessary thing I’ve ever had to do.

You had only just turned 15. My baby brother. Still shorter than me. You looked like such a baby. It came out of nowhere. It was shocking, how could a baby have done what you did? Known what you knew to do? I’ve tried to understand, but there were no warnings. It still doesn’t make sense. I talked to you a few days before on the phone. You complained about a school trip you had been on. I laughed with you about how hot and miserable it sounded. You said you were still glad you went, but that you never wanted to do it again. You were kind to others. You were kind to animals. You were a know-it-all. You told me I made Kraft Mac and cheese wrong. And that I didn’t unload the dishwasher in the proper order. I stand by my Mac and cheese method, but grant you may have a point about the dishwasher.

For two days in a row I have not cried. Today I began to feel sick to my stomach. I needed to feel the pain of your absence — it had been too long. I cannot outrun or avoid the grief from losing you. If ignored, the pain will fester. So I will not ignore you again.

I love you forever,
Your big sister

I no longer have a big brother. He’s the one who sang to me as a baby so I wouldn’t cry, You are my Sunshine. The one who took care of me while mom was working, made sure I was safe, fed, and most importantly, happy. The one who could always make me laugh, even on the saddest days. He even named me!A piece of me died with him that day. It physically feels like a piece of my own self is gone, just not there anymore.

The two of us have gone through so much together, side by side, holding each other up when we couldn’t stand alone.

People are blaming the traumatic brain injury he got 6 years prior to his suicide. How could it be? How could his wife not reach out to ANYONE and ask for help?