Exactly three weeks ago, I was sitting blissfully on a train from Central London to my home just outside of London, perfectly happy after spending some time with a friend of mine (one of the few meet-ups I have had since the March lockdown in the UK.) Later that day, my sister would call me from her home in Canada - totally excited to tell me about her weekend plans for a beach BBQ and hike. Little did I know, that would be the last "normal" conversation I would ever have with her...
Our Life Together
A shaky start
So, let's start from the very beginning (as Julie Andrews would say.) I grew up as the younger of two sisters - Madz was two years older than me. As children, Madz and I had a pretty typical sibling relationship, there were times when we played together like best friends, but also times when we fought like cats and dogs (generally not physically...but we did get slappy once or twice!) We tolerated each other, but we each enjoyed spending most of our time with our separate friendship groups. To me, Madz was very much just the bossy older sister, and to her, I suspect I was just the annoying tagalong little sister.
I'm not exactly sure on the point when our relationship changed (and I expect it was more of a gradual thing), but when we reached secondary school age Madz and I grew a lot closer. We were always popping in and out of each other's bedrooms for chats, and Madz very much took on a "protective older sister" type role in terms of giving me advice and helping me with my homework, etc. When the time came for her to go off to University, I was absolutely gutted and went through a pretty dark period during my first year of Sixth Form at age 16. Thankfully, that period didn't last forever and I had several happy visits with Madz at her university digs, and I also enjoyed my own uni experience when it came a couple of years later.
Adulthood
Pretty much the minute I left the family home permanently and got my first full-time job, our parents separated. It wasn't exactly a shock, our parents were acting a lot more like roommates rather than spouses (and a lot of mine and Madz's conversations just before that time were along the lines of: "So when are mum and dad going to split up already?"). It still hurt quite a bit though, and I think it caused Madz and me to question a lot about our childhood. Some good did come out of it, however - I believe Madz and I became even closer as sisters due to that shared experience.
As adults, Madz and I lived close to one another for 5 years and were always having get-togethers to visit each other's flats and to watch theatre shows. Then 3 years ago, Madz (who has always been the more adventurous of the two of us), decided that she wanted the experience of living and working outside of the UK. So she moved to Canada in 2017 and began a new life there. I was pretty devastated when she left, but knew that it was her life to lead in the way she wanted and that it wouldn't be fair to guilt-trip her in any way. Even though we lived thousands of miles apart, we stayed close through messaging each other practically every day, and our regular Whatsapp video calls.
Madz visited the UK a few times over those few years, and I also stayed with Madz a couple of times in Canada. She made lots of friends there, and during my visit with her in 2019, we often had a group of them come along to the meals/activities we had together. I'm generally a very introverted person and uncomfortable meeting lots of new people at once, so I wasn't particularly happy for part of the visit (which probably showed). Part of me regrets being such a grumpy b**tard and not getting to know her friends more when I had the chance, but another part of me wishes I had so much more precious alone time with my sister.
For me, my happiest memories ever with Madz were from the last few years when we were on holiday in Orlando together, having the time of our lives at a Disney or Universal theme park. Spending time with my favourite person in the world, in my favourite place in the world. To me, that was perfect.
Envy - the ugly sister
One other point that I feel I should make about mine and Madz's relationship is one that I'm not exactly proud of. Envy has long since been one of my uglier traits - and although I loved Madz more than anyone else in the world, I was also insanely jealous of her. In my eyes, Madz has always just been a better person than me: the pretty one, the outgoing one who everyone wants to be friends with, the adventurous one, the generous one, and the intelligent one. Madz got all A*s in her GCSEs, went to Oxford University, and had been promoted to a manager in her job less than a year before she died. My grades were pretty good and I went to a Russell Group university, but I always felt rather pathetic in comparison to her. To anyone who knew both of us, I always suspected I wasn't really "Annie" to them - I was simply "Madz's weird little sister".
The Day it Happened
The very last phone call with my sister
The day my sister passed away was a Sunday in the middle of August 2020. I had woken up fairly early and had settled down with a paint by numbers canvas that I had bought from Amazon (in an attempt to cure lockdown boredom). I checked my phone and saw that I had several missed group Whatsapp calls from Madz (that my parents also missed), and one call that was just to me at 7:59am UK time. I called Madz straight back, and she answered my call.
I won't go into the full gory details on what that phone call was like (and to be honest, I don't even remember everything said), but Madz wasn't in her right mind at all. At first, I thought it was just a drunken call, but it quickly became clear to me that something was horribly wrong. I kept asking her questions, where she was and if anyone was with her, but I don't think she even heard what I was saying. We now believe it is the case that Madz was having a psychotic episode during that phone call - however there is actually more to the story of what happened that day that I won't be sharing on this blog now, but perhaps I will sometime in the future.
Although I remained connected with Madz's phone for around 40 minutes that morning, we were only speaking for about 5 minutes altogether. When I couldn't hear her voice anymore, I grabbed my work phone, and in a panic dialled 911 (which if you dial in the UK actually connects you to the UK emergency services, but I literally dialled the first number that came into my head.)
911 and calling our parents
Eventually, I got connected to the Canada police, and I gave them all the details I remembered about our conversation and my sister's address. I was pretty much in a complete state at the time, so it wasn't easy at all to clearly relay the details, but somehow I managed. Once I disconnected that call, I had the horrible decision to make: surely I must now phone our parents and let them know that their beloved daughter may have passed away in the most horrendous, shocking way imaginable?
I called our dad first: he is generally known for acting much calmer in a crisis than our mum. Even considering everything that had happened that morning, one of the main thoughts in my head was "I must protect mum from knowing that something bad has happened to Madz. She will be utterly horrified." The next half-hour or so was spent alternating between calling my dad, the police, and Madz's phone (our original call got disconnected at one point when my dad called me on my personal phone.) My dad also tried to get hold of my mum during that time, but as it happened she had slept in that morning and couldn't be reached yet.
At around 9 am, I finally got through to the police who then delivered the devastating news: my sister had passed away. They would usually want to deliver the news in person, but obviously, that wasn't feasible in our case. When they told me the news, I couldn't even form a complete sentence, I just stuttered down the phone in shock. I almost told the woman down the phone that I was really sorry for her, it must be such a shitty job to have to do to deliver news like that.
Shortly after, I got another call from my dad. Telling him the news of Madz's passing is the most horrible thing that I have ever had to do in my life, and the sound of my dad's tears down the phone will forever haunt me, I'm sure. I have to give props to him though - one of the first things he said on the call to me after I delivered the news was "You're going to be fine Annie." To be honest, I'm not sure if I will ever truly be fine again, but he said what I needed to hear at that moment, and for that I am grateful. Soon after, we got hold of my mum in a group Whatsapp call and hearing my dad relay everything that had happened was almost as traumatising as telling it.
Homeward bound
The rest of that day was just as much of a blur as the beginning. It was agreed that my parents would drive up to my home near London and that I would go back with them to my original hometown in the south-west of England to stay with my dad for a little while. I remember that I spent the next few hours pacing around my flat, constantly falling into crying fits but also going a bit crazy with the tidying and cleaning - even through all my mental anguish, I didn't want my parents to think that I was a complete slob.
I didn't talk much on the car ride with my parents, though I did speak briefly to one of my uncles when he phoned. He described Madz as my absolute soulmate, which to me describes 100% just who I have lost.
The rest of the day was quite uneventful, even ordinary considering what we had all been through. We went for a walk on the beach, watched some rubbish TV and I ate some plain toast for dinner - none of us had much of an appetite. Nothing could distract me from the heartbreak that I was feeling inside, and the complete and utter disbelief over the nightmare that my life had suddenly become.
The Aftermath
Following Madz's death, I stayed at my dad's house for two weeks altogether. When I first learned of her passing, all I wanted was to see my parents (whom I hadn't seen in person for months, due to COVID.) However, I quickly found that being around my parents all the time, (and having to deal with their own grief as well as my own) was extremely overwhelming for me. Then there are all the practical matters to take care of when someone dies - or being on "dead sister duty" as I so bluntly called it. There is no way to feel mentally prepared for this - these tasks are highly unpleasant to deal with, particularly at a time when your whole life has fallen apart and you can't function properly.
Telling family and friends
The first couple of days after Madz's death were pretty much spent informing family and friends on what had happened. My parents made the phone calls to our closest relatives, and sometimes I ducked out of the room when these were happening. I was already reliving my sister's last phone call and imagining how it had happened enough in my own head, hearing it described over and over again by my parents was often too much to bear.
And then there's also social media - in this day and age it seemed like the most convenient way to inform all of Madz's friends at once of what had happened. My parents made their own separate posts on their Facebook accounts, but it felt only right that I should be the one to post on my sister's wall. I didn't feel ready to do this on the night that she died (although my dad did on his personal Facebook) - it felt like making a post meant that I could no longer deny what had happened. So on the day after it happened, I went into my dad's garden for a quiet moment alone and wrote the post. No words felt good enough for Madz, so I did the only thing I could do and wrote from the heart.
After I posted the announcement, I received a lot of private messages on Facebook from Madz's friends: sending condolences, sharing memories, offering support, etc. Although I was grateful in a way for each and every person reaching out, it finally got to the point where I was like "Oh no - not another fricken message for me to reply to!!" The volume of messages I received did calm down after about a week, and many were left without a reply for quite some time as my brain didn't feel capable of forming an appropriate response at the time. Some friends also wanted to know how Madz died, so I phoned a couple of them personally. I felt a mixture of resentment at this - that I had already been through so much and that I was being bothered further by people who have probably never had to experience anything like the pain I have gone through. But I also felt an acceptance that Madz wasn't my possession, I wasn't the only person who cared for her and it wasn't just my story to keep to myself.
Other practical matters to deal with
When someone dies unexpectedly, they also leave you with a whole other heap of practical matters and unpleasant decisions to deal with. As much as you just want to turn your back on the world in misery, you have to keep functioning, or else these will not be taken care of. For me, I'm lucky because I have my parents to help take care of everything: indeed my mum has taken on the bulk of the work in terms of contacting funeral directors, taking care of financial matters, etc. Since my mum is retired and took care of her parent's affairs a few years back when they passed, she seemed like the most logical person to do this.
That hasn't meant that I am completely off the hook though - since I was closest to Madz, a lot of the decisions for the funeral in terms of choosing songs, poems, etc have fallen to me. Although I am relatively happy that my choices capture Madz's spirit, there is always that doubt in my mind over whether they are what Madz would truly want. One piece of advice though that I would give over these decisions is - don't be afraid to accept help from others. I have reached out to several of Madz's friends over the past few weeks over her favourite songs, charities, etc. (particularly in terms of Madz's favourite Britney Spears songs - her love of Britney has long since eluded me!!)
Attempts at going back to "normality"
After Madz's death, I didn't go back to work for a week. Pretty much all of my waking hours were spent with my parents: reading through messages from Madz's friends, thinking about funeral arrangements, and failed attempts at distraction (mainly going for walks on the beach and watching quiz shows on TV. ) I think that there is this perception that whenever there is a death in the family, the "right" thing to want to do is to stay close to other family members and comfort each other. However, in the weeks following Madz's death, I found my parents' grief overwhelming and upsetting to be around most of the time, and I think we were all wrapped up in our own thoughts too much to be particularly comforting to each other.
For me, having alone time to process my thoughts and also to get back into some kind of routine has just been so important. I'm sure people will have different views on when the "right" time is to go back to your usual routine after a bereavement. For me, I went back to working (albeit from home) after just one week, and I found that attempting to focus on something other than Madz's death and talking to my close coworkers provided a "normality" that I needed. This won't be the case for everyone though - my dad attempted to go back to work at the same time as me, but soon found that it was too much for him.
If you're a sibling survivor of suicide, I think it can be important to have some time away from your parents, if you feel you need it. You may be feeling a lot of emotions that are hard to talk about with your parents, or that you feel you can't bring up at all (personally, I've felt a lot of anger that I feel is inappropriate to discuss with them.) I also found that it helped to meet up with one of my own friends, if only for an hour or two. I felt that I was safe in venting my feelings to a person who was less emotionally involved with the situation, therefore I could be more honest and open.
So...Many...Emotions
During the past few weeks, I've basically been an emotional wreck. I can't predict how I will feel from one second to the next, I can be feeling fairly neutral one moment, then in tears with no warning whatsoever, and suffering from constant bursts of anger and rage. My emotions don't always exactly feel "appropriate" for the situation I'm in either - for example, I felt pissed off and resentful pretty much the whole way through my sister's memorial service from Canada (which I attended the live stream for - as I couldn't be there in person.)
It would probably be impossible to describe everything that I've been feeling these past few weeks, but I'll do my best to detail the most common emotions that have been taking over my brain:
Denial
The first stage of grief so they say, and I think there's some truth in that. The first couple of days after it happened, I kept thinking that this was all just a horrible nightmare that I would wake up from. Or that it was all some big misunderstanding and that some other girl had killed herself - not my Madz. Even now, a few weeks on, it's still impossible to believe sometimes. I often have these little moments when I want to text Madz about something, then reality completely hits me in the face that she is dead and can never reply. I'm thinking that this feeling could also be exacerbated by the fact that the death happened overseas (therefore I wasn't physically in the place where it happened), so it feels even less real to me. We haven't even had Madz's funeral yet though - so perhaps that may bring some acceptance and closure?
Sadness
The thought that I will never see my sister again, that I will never speak to her again, hug her or giggle with her again is truly the most heartbreaking thing that I have ever had to deal with. I wanted to grow old with Madz so much, to have so many fun experiences and holidays together, and maybe even to live together when we got really old (neither of us was particularly interested in marriage/babies.) Now that she has gone, I feel like I can never have the life I truly wanted, not just for myself but for both of us. Sometimes the sadness is so overwhelming that I don't want to get out of bed or do anything at all.
Guilt/bargaining
Ahh, the guilt. I think both myself and the rest of my family have had about a million different "what-ifs" going through our heads the last few weeks. What if Madz had never moved to Canada? What if the pandemic hadn't happened - would she have been happier? What if her foster cat hadn't been sick and in hospital that day? What if she hadn't been alone that night? What if she hadn't lived on a tenth floor flat with a balcony - would she have still done it somehow?
And then there's my personal guilt from being the last person to speak to Madz that day - just before she did it. I would've given anything to save her, and I constantly wonder if I did enough and if there's any way that day could've had a different ending. I so fricking wish that something, anything that I could've said on the phone that day would've saved her. Or that I had called 911 sooner. Anything at all, to save my sister.
Anger/resentment
Emotions when grieving aren't always "nice", and sometimes they make you feel like an extremely shitty person. I love Madz more than anything or anyone, but I also resent the hell out of her right now, and I feel like I can't be open about these feelings to most people (for fear of being thought a heartless psycho!!)
For me, anger and resentment reared their ugly head just a few days after Madz's death. I often feel like her actions are a massive betrayal, and that all my love and care has been rejected, and not seen by her as "worthy of living for". Then there are all the completely f**ked up practical matters that I have had to take care of following her death. Posting her death announcement on Facebook, choosing songs and poems for her funeral, writing a letter to go into her coffin, and making the decision as to whether I want to see her body or not - these are just some of the messed up decisions that I have been forced to make these past few weeks. And of course, it's not just me who is affected by this - when I see how broken my parents are by this, or I get dozens of messages from my sister's devastated friends on Facebook, it often only increases these feelings of resentment towards her.
Madz isn't always where my anger is directed either. Sometimes I feel angry at myself for not being able to save her. Sometimes I feel angry at my parents or her friends for not saving her either. And a lot of the time I just want to scream at the world for being such a cruel, messed-up place.
Envy
Now this one I actually haven't seen described as a typical emotional response to suicide loss, at least not in any of the pamphlets that I've seen... but I feel it nonetheless. Again, it's not exactly an emotion I feel I can be open and honest about, as it feels extremely f**ked up. Sometimes I feel very jealous of the position my sister is now - she is not having to "live" with the consequences of her actions, but I will for the rest of my life. She doesn't have to see our parents' pain, but I do. She will not ultimately have to face burying my parents alone when their time comes, but I will. Most of all - she will never have to live through the pain and heartbreak that comes from losing your favourite person to suicide, but I will feel this pain forever.
Loss of identity
This is quite strongly connected to my feelings of envy towards Madz. Since her death, my inbox (and the inboxes of other family members), have been clogging up with dozens of messages from friends all saying how beautiful, funny, kind, intelligent (etc., etc.) Madz was. I actually found these messages quite comforting at first, but fairly quickly my old feelings of jealousy and inferiority to Madz came bubbling to the surface, and it did nothing to improve my feelings of resentment toward her either. Given Madz's tragic death at such a young age, I feel now more than ever that I will never be anything more than "Madz's little sister". Although I feel incredibly selfish focusing on such a thought at a time like this, I strongly feel that most of the time I want to be valued for being me. Just Annie, not Madz's little sister.
There's no denying though that when you lose someone, you don't just lose them - but also the person you were when you were around them. Madz was such a massive part of my life, and so much of me is made from what I learned from her (Wicked reference anyone?!) I'm really, really going to miss that person that I was, and my role as Madz's little sister.
Physically exhausted/ill
Grief can be physically draining, as well as emotionally. I've pretty much had a permanent headache ever since Madz died, that painkillers won't get rid of. Then there's the messed up sleeping patterns too - personally, I find that I can get to sleep fairly easily, but staying asleep is a big problem. I often find myself waking up around 4-5am and not being able to get back to sleep. In contrast, I was lazy as anything before Madz's death and often hit the snooze button multiple times before 9am, inevitably calling into work meetings in my pyjamas.
Sometimes I have nightmares too - the other day I had a nightmare that my pregnant friend died whilst giving birth, just a few weeks after the death of my sister.
Appetite changes have been slightly less of an issue for me, but they are still there. I lost half a stone in the 2 weeks following Madz's death - I gradually regained some of my appetite back once I returned from my dad's house, but I often have moments where the reality of what has happened suddenly hits me like a ton of bricks, and I feel physically sick.
Almost...ok?
There are actually fleeting moments when I feel almost normal, and I have optimism that I will at some point be able to move forward with my life, do well in my career, eventually explore new places (in a post-COVID world) and form good relationships with other people. At the moment these are few and far between, but I am hoping that more of these will come, over time.
My Life Right Now
Given that my sister passed away just a few weeks ago (though it already seems like a lifetime), this is all very new to me. My life as I have known it for the past 29 years has been turned completely upside down from the moment I picked up the phone that Sunday morning. I feel like I have been robbed of so many experiences I should've had with her, and I feel like I can never be quite the same person again. Lockdown was tough before, but I was happy to bear the isolation whilst I had the thought of seeing my sister again once all of this over, and giving her a great big hug.
In short, my greatest fear has now come true: having to live a life without my sister in it.
At the moment I am just trying to take things one day at a time. I have been back to working from home in my desk job for a couple of weeks, and although my concentration and energy levels are pretty crappy at the moment, I am finding that the distraction and having a bit of "normality" is actually helpful. I was working like crazy on a tight deadline last night, and for the first time in a few weeks, I actually put my sister's death out of my mind, just for a short moment.
I am also trying to get back into socialising, though the very thought of facing people after my sister's death has been overwhelming, to say the least. I have started going to virtual meetups again (mainly quizzes - I must've attended like 100 of them since March!), and I have plans with a meet-up group next week to watch a comedian perform live. I am also in regular contact with my parents by text and video call, though it is painful having these conversations when there is a massive Madz-shaped hole in them.
In terms of anything that I have found useful in dealing with my grief so far, pretty much the only people I wanted to hear anything from in the days following my sister's death were other siblings who have been through the same thing. I have heard that there is a serious lack of resources around sibling suicide, and from what I have seen so far that does appear to be true, unfortunately. However, there are a few useful resources that I have found already. To list a few:
A couple of books: "The Forgotten Mourners - Sibling Survivors of Suicide" by Magdaline Halous DeSousa. I am also partway through reading "Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven - Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling" by Michelle Linn-Gust. Both are available from Amazon.
This Facebook group: Support in Bereavement for Brothers & Sisters - The Compassionate Friends. Great if you want to hear other sibling experiences/stories.
The Suicide Bereavement section of Reddit - also helpful in terms of hearing survivor stories.
The Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBBS) forum. They are also running virtual support groups - I will be attending my first one next week, wish me luck!
At the moment, one of the things that I feel is helping me the most is simply having distractions. I've already mentioned that going back to work has been good in a way for me, and it's nice to talk to people there who know and value me as "Annie". Otherwise just having trashy TV shows/books to turn to can provide some great escapism from everything that I'm going through.
I'm pretty much addicted to RuPaul's Drag Race on Netflix at the moment, that show is the very definition of entertaining and fun! I also tend to have my favourite childhood TV show, Friends, in the background as I work from home - I find it comforting to have it on in the background. In terms of books - I am currently reading my way through some of the Saddle Club series books (they are meant for children - but I find them easy, comforting reads that remind me of another favourite childhood book series: the Sleepover Club.) I have also started to read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - the Hunger Games prequel. I was quite a big fan of the Hunger Games books back in the day (the first two anyway), and I'm finding it an engaging read so far.
And of course, there is my lovely cat Sparky to make a fuss of, he is keeping me (mostly) sane at the moment!!
Keep going my fellow sibling survivors, hopefully, time will be a healer and we will all get through this.
Love and hugs,
Annie xxx
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