Live For Me

I had a dream about my brother last night. He was young again and swimming in a river. The river was very wide, with shallow spots in the middle of it. The other kids in my dream were saying how they were “Tommy spots” because he was always in them. I was watching him swim by himself, content and wishing he wouldn’t have to grow up. At some point I started swimming too. I got to the shallow end and looked around for him. I couldn’t find him anywhere. A little boy was playing by me and I asked him if he saw where my brother went. All of a sudden he was right in front of my face, he looked concerned which was off-putting because he was so young, and said, “Your brother is gone.” I started panicking, looking everywhere, swimming below the water with my eyes open when I couldn’t find him on the surface. I came up for air where the realization hit, my brother was not a child anymore and he was gone. I didn’t wake up though, instead the river started rushing over me. I started screaming, “Tommy!” and letting the river take me over. I woke up with the scream stuck in my throat.

I’ve never been much of a loud person. I’ve actually come to hate loud noises. They have always set me on edge. So when the urge comes to me now, to scream for my brother, it usually gets caught in my chest and sits heavy like a rock. In my sleep, it tries to make its way out. In the first few months after losing him, I don’t remember dreaming much at all. I don’t remember much of being awake at all either. The dreams that turned into night terrors came later. I would wake up to myself yelling or sobbing, sometimes drenched in sweat, most times in a panic attack. It has been 2 years now, they come less frequently, but they’re still just as awful to go through.

My brother became sick about 3 years before he passed and life was not easy for him. My mom and I took classes at NAMI, they were called Family to Family I believe. I started listening to audio books about mental illness. I researched medication and schizoaffective disorder. I picked up on the medical jargon surrounding mental illness so I could advocate for him when he was admitted. I tried being there as much as he would tolerate it. Looking back, I feel like it wasn’t enough. Nothing prepared me for what he was going to go through and I didn’t know how to be there for him in the ways he needed at all.

It is not an easy thing to understand or relate to, mental illness. Many people can’t even find the empathy or compassion when it comes to the mentally ill. In all honesty, it is not something I thought much about until it happened to Tommy. Everyone is familiar with depression and anxiety. We know the stigmas around psychosis, suicide, schizophrenia, bipolar, and OCD, and if you start paying attention you’ll notice you hear them frequently. On TV, in music, social media, in phrases people use, sometimes you may even speak on it yourself without truly knowing the gravity of the illness.

Anyway, it went something like this: Tommy was a chunky little baby who rarely cried or whined. He had big, light brown eyes that always looked a little sad unless he was laughing. When he was little he had an obsession with dinosaurs and as he got older it turned into video games. He joked with his friends, played football, rode bikes around the neighborhood. He kept to himself at home, was raised in a household of all females, but participated in family outings, holidays, and craft or movie nights. He listened to all kinds of music but preferred rock/metal. He loved spicy foods and would willingly eat a ghost pepper raw. He once covered our mom with a blanket when she passed out on the couch before he went to bed himself. After I miscarried and became pregnant again he looked at me and told me I would not lose another baby. Then he grew up, life got busy, and then next thing you know he is pacing back and forth outside of a restaurant on Christmas Eve stringing together words and sentences that make no sense to you. The cops are called, he is talking away in an ambulance and sent to an in-patient psych hospital. They overmedicate him so when you can finally visit he can’t lift his head or keep his eyes open, never mind try and talk to you. When he is released there is no care plan or explanation as to what happened. He comes out and self isolates despite the multiple welfare checks and his family begging to see him. Then it is in and out of hospitals all over the place, at one point he becomes catatonic from the medication and you don’t get to hear his voice for almost a year. You don’t know how he is being treated or if the hospitals and medication are even helping. He is given a temporary diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder but never stays in a facility long enough for them to confirm. Very rarely, he has lucid moments that give you hope. Things might end up okay. You go to his favorite restaurant and eat hot wings. You see Godzilla vs Kong. You talk about what elemental power would be the coolest to have. You do all these things not knowing they would be the last moments you got. You wish him happy birthday but don’t get a response. When you visit, he stays in his room with the door shut and doesn’t answer to knocks. Then you got to AZ to visit family and the whole time you have a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach but can’t figure out why. You’re in Sedona when you get the phone call you’ve feared for what feels like a long time. You see your mom throw herself on the ground and scream. All of a sudden, you think you’re going to puke. Things become distant. You just want to get home. You just want to be there, even though he is not.

You do the therapy and medication thing, you try to get back to “normal”, you let time do its thing. You are told by almost everyone there is nothing you could have done and it is not healthy to sit with guilt. You are also told that it never gets better, it gets different from people who have also suffered loss. That is the only thing I’ve heard and known to be true.