In the months following my brother’s suicide, I began to have multiple conversations in my head. I was fourteen and flailing to keep my head above water. I had lost not only my closest sibling but in the aftermath of that loss, I had cut ties with most of my friends, left my beloved school and become too frightened of my family’s silence to initiate any conversation at home.
My family’s refusal to talk about my brother’s death did two things to my psyche: first, it left me very frightened of unarticulated consequences if I did speak out. I imagined that my parents, grieving as they were, would lose their tenuous hold on life if I spoke about this taboo topic. After the first failed attempts to start this conversation, I shut up and shut down in my outer life. I understood that I was required to toe the family line and carry on with life as if nothing much had happened.
Second, I was left with a lifelong need to bear witness to this boy who lived and died. By not allowing family conversations about the way he chose to die, my family was negating the way he had lived. And he lived a joyous life, he loved hard and well, and gave his all to his friends and to a larger circle of acquaintances. That need became an obsession to not forget him. I played his life and death in my head on an endless loop, keeping him alive in my memory. I began to imagine a conversation in written form very early on. We are a family of readers and it was natural to write his story, and inadvertently mine as well, in one corner of my mind. I added to it as the years went by, not consciously, but instinctively as I watched the people around me carry on with their lives in some bizarre parody of normalcy.
My mother’s death five years ago finally released me from that imaginary locked room of silence. I was angry that I had not allowed myself for three decades to write or speak, or in any way, have that all-important conversation about my brother’s suicide. A serendipitous meeting with a writer finally sent me down the path to transcribing the book in my head. I typed out sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters that had been written and rewritten in my brain over the years. The words were raw, hurting and hurtful but they were finally out of my head. It took more than three years from the day I sat down to write to the release of this book. These have been years of growing up, speaking out, losing family members and friends, gaining my sense of self and arriving at a place of equanimity. I have done what I promised my brother: I have borne witness to his life and death. I have sent it out into the world so that readers might understand what happens to survivors of suicide loss, the awful burden of guilt and social taboos and rage that we learn to live with. If we’re lucky, we learn perhaps to discard that burden and speak out about suicide and its effects on the survivors. My father read the book, refused to share his thoughts with me and agreed to let me publish as long as our family name was not associated in any way with the book. “You’ve had a happy life”, he says. “Why are you so angry?” I have a happy life, it’s true. I have also lived a parallel life of unanswered grief and anger that he chooses to not know about.
My oldest brother also read the book. Apparently, my memory of those far-off events is flawed. Only he knows the full truth of what happened all those years ago. He wants me to whitewash his character. This I won’t do. This story is mine to tell, from my memory, not his. “You are making up your memories to earn sympathy and attention”, says my brother. “You could have come to us any time in these past years and asked your questions.” The fact that I’m almost a decade younger than him and that he can shut down my train of thought with a single word of admonishment even today is no hindrance in his mind. Friends and extended family have reacted in mostly predictable ways. From staunch support and encouragement, to doubt and outright derision, it’s been an interesting social experiment. In the end, we are all together in this mourning grieving loving remembering thing for the long haul.
(Liana Mistry is a pseudonym. The author lives and writes in Mumbai and has just published 'My World Without Jehan: Surviving a Brother’s Suicide' with Speaking Tiger Books)