It's about three weeks since my brother died. Initially I could not absorb the fact that he was dead. It was all so sudden, such a shock and a rude interruption breaking upon the ennui of my daily existence.
The fact that I was there when he died and I witnessed it has thrown me more than I ever thought possible. One minute I was Lying in bed, the next I was running downstairs and picking him up after he had fallen down a flight of stairs backwards. As I tended to him he stopped breathing. This was literally as I was phoning the ambulance. Artificial respiration failed to revive him, my feeble efforts achieved nothing and the ambulance crews worked on him for over an hour; all in vain.
The greatest shock has been the realisation of the frailty of life. We all think we're aware of it and in a way we are. But, we don't really appreciate it in our gut so to speak. There is a term used by the hero of Robert Heinlein's book 'Stranger in a strange land' the term is 'grok'. It means to understand on a fundamental level. To comprehend as an intellectual and an affective concept. I suppose it is perception at both the essential and existential level. This is what has changed for me. I now 'grok' the all pervasive presence of death among us, taking place at every moment of every day all around us. While we are usually oblivious to it the reality remains as a central fact of life.
I've witnessed death before.I used to work on the County Rescue inshore rescue boat based at the Pier Head on the River Mersey. This has always been a magnet for the disturbed, the desperate, and those either seeking to make a desperate cry for help or to end their lives. Subsequently throughout my time there I witnessed the death of several individuals, as well as retrieving Lord knows how many bodies from the river of those who had drowned themselves in the river. But none of these deaths affected me on a fundamental level. Even when there was one instance where I had to work on an elderly lady and revive her, in the process breaking two of her ribs, this was very emotive. I saw her taken off to hospital by ambulance and only later on discovered that she had died en route to the hospital despite all of my and the other rescue workers efforts. I thought that had hit me hard. Events of the previous weeks have taught me I was wrong.
The death of my brother has brought home to me mortality in a way that my father's death did not. This isn't to say I didn't mourn my father. His death affected me deeply. But my brother's death, a death which I cannot help but feel was before his time has left me both in the depths of grief, though I doubt it has truly struck me yet, but it has left me with such feelings of insecurity about everything that I assumed to be true that I'm starting to feel everything I believed to be a sham and that I need to literally return to basics with regard to my feelings on life, death and any associated meaning I personally attached to either.
