My brother's death left me a tangled ball of love and anger. Grieving doesn't get easier.

Please tell me at some point it will get easier.  Friday was the third anniversary of my younger brother’s unexpected death. As it approached, it was the tick-tock of the daily countdown that I dreaded most in life.

Lee’s humor, intellect, and the kind warmth that made all within his orbit feel special, came naturally. But he struggled with his weight since he was a child and for several decades he was clinically obese. 

The heart arrhythmia that took Lee, after 26 minutes of failed CPR, was preceded by a series of horrors that once found me wiping my brother’s blood off the walls of his apartment, after the thin skin on his legs freed a vein to burst. For years, I did what I could. But three years ago, I abandoned my life-long effort to unlock the secret of why food was the balm that comforted my brother and how I could change that. 

A brother fading from memory 

In the days after Lee’s death, I ripped through his belongings, desperate to get rid of the clothes, furniture, and scented hand cream that could momentarily trick me into believing I’d see him again. But when someone you love dies, they don’t disappear all at once. They fade gradually, as leaves collect on their car, their voice messages meet expiration dates, and their friends stop calling to see how you’re managing.

Recently, my dad called me in tears. He was having trouble remembering what Lee looked like and was terrified that in his mind’s eye, he may lose the ability to see his son. I did my best to convince him that would never happen, but truth be told, I can no longer remember whether the fleck of yellow I used to look at when I talked to my brother was in his right eye or left.

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One of Lee’s friends recently forwarded me some emails he wrote her.  Lee wrote the way he talked, and in those emails I could hear his voice and see the expression on his face – as though I’d discovered a hologram he made before he died. The comfort was immediate, but it left me wrecked for days. 

In the center of the pain that comes with losing someone you love, lies a battle: A desperate grab for anything that brings back their memory … and the simultaneous agony that comes with the reminder of all they were, and all you’ve lost. It is a tension with no resolution, a contest with no winner. 

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Last year I had a cookie tin’s worth of 8 mm movies, taken of Lee and me as children, transferred to digital files. I can’t get myself to watch them – to see the images of my smiling carefree brother before his genetic code took control and left a life of unhappiness in its wake.

After Lee’s death, I joined a siblings’ grief group. Some brothers and sisters died from a split-second tragedy, some from a protracted illness. But all of my fellow grievers seemed to have uncomplicated loving relationships with their siblings. I envy them.  There was never a shortage of love between me and my brother, but our relationship was twisted with the complexities that came from my effort to save him from himself, and his effort to live his own life. 

Assisting to the end 

Lee worked full time, and was largely self-sufficient, but there were things he could not do for himself. Shortly before he died, he asked me if I thought I’d come to resent helping him. I told him that I already resented the fact that I worried about him all the time. I also told him that if it became necessary, I’d come by every morning, drag him onto the toilet, and wipe him when he was done.

When you live with a tangled ball of love and anger, even if the love weighs more, it makes grieving an impossible journey. If I’d known how it all would end, if I’d read the last page first, there are so many things I would have done differently.  It’s the regrets, the missed opportunities, and the unkind words that become animated exaggerations of the role they played in the lives of the people we loved and lost.

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As the last three years unfolded, I expected that time would bring the thing people call “closure.” It didn’t. My therapist has suggested that I’m holding onto the sharpest edges of the pain as a way of keeping Lee alive in my mind. I think she’s right. 

And so, my 2022 New Year’s resolution is to find a way to both remember the wonder of Lee and to convince myself what I know to be true: He would forgive me my missteps.

There will be new opportunities for closure. I still talk to my brother in my sleep.

Michael J. Stern, a member of Paste BN's Board of Contributors, was a federal prosecutor for 25 years in Detroit and Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelJStern1