Reality and religion: me without you.
I’ve been reading about reality and the universe and everything. Brian Greene inventively wittering about how ‘humbling and stirring’ it is to ‘imagine just how expansive reality may be’. That there is a reality where Steven’s cancer was caught and he survived and we’re all down Paddock Farm larging it over some fat bastard cream tea and he’s like, d’you remember when we thought I was going to die?LOL. (scone factor at Paddock farm is 7/10 btw).
In my reality, that didn’t happen. There was no sigh of relief. I’m not smart enough to comprehend the quantum mechanics that allow for these possibilities or multiverses or bubble universes etc etc. So maybe it’s that which makes me wonder, are they possibilities or is it faith? How can there be other realities? How can it be proved? If it can’t be proved, isn’t it faith? Isn’t that akin to some sort of mathematical religion? Because yes, it is curiously soothing to think that there is this mirror world (another term) where Steven still exists and is merrily pissing on strawberries (it makes them grow better apparently).
I’ve written about my brother’s cancer before, but not really about his death. Thinking about it, that’s a mistake. But then I couldn’t write about it before because I was hiding in this sun-filled flat in leafy Didsbury, a nice place where everyone puts their litter in a bin and Steven was just back home in Darlington. I didn’t really talk and for a while I didn’t really feel. I didn’t know why I wasn’t sad.
Someone told me recently that grief is sanitised. My idea of what we’d go through after his death is a lone figure leafing through a photograph album. The reality can be quite different.
The inspiration behind Killing Daniel was a boy named Bazyli who I loved and who killed himself when I was 14. Since then, I’ve had a preoccupation with certain achievements in specific time frames and, also, people leaving. There are other reasons for this too, but these are mine.
When my brother got sick, it was easy in a way to be strong. Helping him to hope when there was this blackness of the terminal diagnosis is possibly the most painful thing I remember. Remaining optimistic and clear-headed, emailing doctors, getting second opinions, moving a big bastard of a mountain every day just to complete the day. To get through. We painted and took pictures and thought about how to save his life and how to end it. Again, such a miserable world we live in where a dog can get respectfully put to sleep, but oh no, people must suffer. He suffered. You wouldn’t think it when you see the happy pink cancer advertisements. Even I feel inspired. Nobody needs to be in pain these days, they said. This also was not true.
Here is the reality and I was not prepared for it, despite my nan having the same illness a few years ago. A testicle the size of a baby’s head, where the urine eventually came out through his skin. Cancer in the spine, cancer killing off the kidneys one by one. An illeostomy bag. Blood clots the size of huge slugs coming out half hourly from his penis. They didn’t come out – they had to be pulled. Cleaning up blood and shit for months and months and then going to work and being, like, totally professional teacher mode, nurses in hourly or more. Staying up all night in case this is the night and you don’t want him to be alone. You and him and everyone else sobbing because you’re utterly helpless. At the end, my brother kept trying to stand and fought us to do it, saying I want to live. And in the very very end, he realised he couldn’t and it was done.
Don’t kid yourself that cancer is this happy advert. It’s fucking awful and this country needs to do something better about it (I wish I knew what) but also, the right to die. You might have these conversations about suicide too, or how to end things without choking on your own secretions. I think it’s the helplessness, the absolute and sheer lack of options that hurt everyone.
When Steven was no longer there, I would say that neither was I. At first I felt nothing, and then I feared the loss of everyone else who was important to me, which is more people than I realised. If I’m being honest, there were two precise moments I remember now where I wanted to be dead and I wondered how I would do it. It was scary and I didn’t want anyone around me at that point. Even here, I’m sanitising. The reality was bat-shit fucking mental ugly grief Catherine-wheeling out in all sorts of destructive and fascinating directions.
It does pass.
I’m sure there are other dips to be found however, and it might not be the same for everyone of course, it’s personal and dependent on your situation, your relationship with the person who’s died, your own past. I’ve talked to some people lately who tell me how the years move but it stays with you and I imagine the grief to be like some slow-moving glacial shift.
Still. The painful and interesting thing I’ve found lately is the sense of newness and possibility. I would say I was very shaped by my brother, our blurredness at times and some of the difficulties of our growing up. And there’s this song I listen to now when I’m pushing up a motorway, towards things – Years and Years’ Shine. I’m not interested in the rest of the lyrics, but I like ‘I’ll be redefined – can you see me I’m shining?’. I grin when I hear it and think of all the things I’ll get up to. A little glee tickled in the other day – a, look what I’m going to do. It’s for Steven, yes, but also for me, whoever that might turn out to be.
Next week I’m going paragliding and I’ve started painting again, something we used to do together. Crap at it like, but it interests me. I’ve written the shit out of this current novel. The week after I’m going abroad, just me and my camera. The thing I feared – of not knowing myself without my brother, of being totally alone – has happened. First, as I say, was the blankness, then I would say a complete and utter crash. If there’s anything unresolved in you, don’t expect it to patiently wait for a more opportune moment.
There is though now this sense of the future. Something that isn’t ending, a thing that isn’t known or definite (sounds like a Terminator movie I know). There are anchors in the past that I need to confront and set down. There are pictures to take and laughter and cake. Walks with your cousin. Most importantly, there is something beyond that trauma. I thought I would never forget the still finality of his stopped white eyes, when his heart finally gave in, but I am and the other, better memories are coming back and it’s those that drive me to get up and out and on with things. Meet life head on, when you can, that is. I’m not pretending there aren’t or won’t be sheer and shocking slumps.
Last week I drove up to Darlington to visit my brother’s grave for the first time. I didn’t want to go with other people. It still surprises me that he isn’t here. The reality is almost too big and maybe you need to handle it in bite-sized pieces. Being alone is okay; it’s interesting – being me without him is weirdly new and full of opportunities.
A few weeks ago there was this thunder and lightening and I hoped and hoped my brother was there, in the universe in some way. I don’t think so. But he is in my head and heart and somehow guides the things I do. When I’m up in the air next week I’ll be thinking, see, Steve, I’m doing alright. I don’t have faith in science or religion, but I’m going to dance with my friends and make new ones and get over the troughs and explore the metaverse (or whatever you want to call it).
