I feel strangely reluctant for the year my much loved brother died to end. It makes him feel even further away. By Angela Barnett.
I was boarding a plane, and a woman next to me was holding a box of Dunkin Donuts. It was cheerful, that box, matching her demeanour, and we exchanged smiles and small talk. I asked why she was going to Wellington, and she told me she was seeing one of her sisters. I asked how many siblings she had. I don’t know why; I knew I was getting close to pricking the gingerly balanced balloon inside my chest. She had three and one brother.
I could feel the question about to come back to me, filling me with a brew of dread. Do you have siblings? My heart thumped. Was I suddenly an only child? I couldn’t say 'I had one, but he died a month ago'. No, I couldn’t put that onto this nice woman who had an excess of siblings; she didn’t deserve to be pulled into my grief.
I also didn’t want to share it with her. It felt too precious to let strangers handle it. That was July 5, one month after my brother, Shaun, passed away.
People want 2024 to end. We want to move on from things – Trump, redunancies, Andrew Tate – but selfishly, I don’t want the year to end. I don’t want it to be "last year" that he died.
It's the opposite of what I expected. I thought I would be galloping away from grief as fast as I could, if my history of dealing (badly) with uncomfortable emotions was anything to go by.
In our teen years, growing up in Taradale, my brother was smart, funny, entertaining, good-looking. He was masculine with his love of the wild outdoors but also emotionally intelligent – not that we had a word for that in the 80s – and I thought all guys had these qualities. Once I ventured into the world and discovered not all men were as impressive as my brother, I ribbed him that he'd set me up.
He shrugged. It wasn't his fault he was an exceptional example.
Fifteen months older than me, he was my friend. We often lived in different cities as adults, but I loved spending time with him. He listened. He told funny stories. We discussed our roles as son/daughter/parent/partner. But the role of siblings was never analysed. It just was.
When we found out his brain tumour was terminal, we felt like we were slipping, feet first, down a polystyrene slide on a hill. There was no stopping it.
My sister-in-law and I tried to become grief nerds. We were going to nail it. We read books and listened to podcasts. But nothing prepares you for gone – the void.
We will never see him again in his study or at Mum and Dad’s or behind a camera lens or hiking or in a bookstore or walking down Cuba Street. He’s nowhere.
There is no manual for grief. Nobody can say the right thing. "I’m sorry for your loss" reminds you of the loss. But then, if they don’t say anything, you feel miffed. Everybody tries. "Punch me in the arm," I warned one friend who was meeting me in a café so her hug wouldn’t dissolve me into a puddle.
In Joan Didion’s powerful book, My Year of Magical Thinking, she says, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” The sadness. The hollow feeling. Often, I feel naked, embarrassed by my uncontrollable feelings, flouncing around with their shirts off.
The confusion. Three months after Shaun died, I was preoccupied with a hefty deadline. As it loomed, stress swallowed my sadness, and I panicked. Had it gone? As soon as I hit the deadline, it came rushing in, and I felt relief. Hello grief!
Memories of Shaun are locked up in my sadness. Love, too, and I don’t want to let that go.
I’ve heard people say – not directly but indirectly – "You’re the sibling, how much worse must his kids and partner feel? And what about your poor parents?" Then I’ve felt greedy, like there is a pie for grief, and I’m hogging more than my fair share.
Was I unlucky to have had such an extraordinary brother that I feel the loss so keenly? Or lucky to have had such an extraordinary brother that I got to love so keenly? There is no answer. Some people don’t get on with their siblings.
Even though Shaun is nowhere physically, he’s everywhere, especially in nature. He worked hard his whole life to preserve the whenua and encourage others to get amongst it. His legacy lives on in the 14 books he wrote: Tramping in Aotearoa, A Bunk for the Night, Day Walks, Weekend Tramps, Shelter From the Storm, Across the Pass, A Wild Life (out now).
He told us who he wanted around at the end, and I’ve never felt so honoured to be asked to be somewhere. In the last month, I moved in. His partner, children, and I read books to him. I called it competitive reading; when one would get up from the reading chair, the next person would race to get the spot. He was gracious. He allowed space for his friends to say goodbye, and a string of people would fall apart around his bed, and he welcomed them with open arms. He let us love him. It was beautiful. It was brutal. He was an exceptional example right to the end.
We sang te Aroha when he passed.
We sank to our knees.
Riroriro and Pīwakawaka circled.
All these memories are locked up in 2024. Everyone says time heals, but none of us are rushing to a time when we’re not sad about Shaun. Time steals, too. In our whānau, we’re learning the goal is not to get over or through grief but to find ways to hold it.
I relayed the Dunkin Donuts story to my sister-in-law when I landed in Wellington, and she suggested I tell strangers I have a sibling. "He will always be your brother," she said. And no amount of time can take that away.
Angela Barnett is a writer based in Auckland.
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