And with those five words, my brother took his life.
As I replay all that has happened these past six weeks since I got the damned phone call early morning on 7 July telling me Rajesh was gone, I can only think of how I had hardly been there for him, let alone always.
There was a time, when just after our mother died, he told me we were the only ones left, and that we have to be there for each other.
Too wrapped up in my stuff, hurt by previous conflicts, and numb from recent grief, I could not accept his hand of friendship at that time. And just as we were beginning to connect again this past year, laughing and crying together about our respective divorces and dating lives, and the sheer idiocy of the last five decades, he chose to end it irrevocably.
In his final note, he thanked me for the one thing I did not do – always being there for him.
If only I had been.
My five words to match his.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W H Auden
24 December 2024
More than a year later.
Here is a note In Memory written by his former college friend from Amherst. Interestingly he is referred to as Raj in the note. He was called Raja by our immediate family.
A few years ago, he once asked me: why are you the only one who calls me Rajesh, and not Raja? I shrugged it off at the time but the question lingers: why, indeed, did I not call him by the name he preferred and which signaled affection for him? Ah, there is the answer as I write the question. My affection for him was fraught. Our relationship was turbulent. There were perhaps more downs than ups and more angry silences than words. The words, when used, were not always kind. Instead, there were fists. That was understandable when we were children perhaps but inexplicable and shameful that one time it happened when we were adults. We argued more than we agreed. We had opposing points of view on most matters: science, philosophy, parenting, medicine, money, India, and so on.
Except cricket. That was always something that excited both of us, and we played a lot together and we watched a lot together. Yet, even cricket pulled us apart. Ironically, it was the violent swing of a stump to the base of my spine when I chose to ignore his advice from behind the wickets while I was batting that became the metaphor for our relationship, at least in my mind.
I did not intend to write the above but it has found itself written and I now have the choice of erasing it. Why speak of things past, difficult things too, and when the other is not around to refute? There are unwritten social norms on what one says about those who have departed. But neither he nor I have been strict followers of such norms. Surely that which is honest needs no defence of its voice. And whose story is this anyway?
What remains is a living quality that is neither black nor white but a throbbing grey. I cannot say I miss him but when I do think of him, I end up crying. I can feel the pain and loneliness of the last few hours of his life, living it in the full knowledge of what he was about to do.
I look at that damned single tick on my last message to him, written a day before in some intuitive act of prescience: Is everything alright?
It just won’t turn blue.
Perhaps others have happier stories of their childhood, parents, and siblings. While I cannot say mine was sad, I cannot say it was happy either. It was just real.
This summer I chose to stay alone for seven weeks to grieve his passing away, knowing that the years ahead for me are without the three people I grew up with. I asked for forgiveness from all three and I let go of all I could.
There are no photos of them in my home. I sometimes wonder what they think of what I am making of this life, in their absence. I wonder if they know that, more than anything else in the world, it was their love that I sought the most and failed. I see that each of them would probably say the same.
Closures are significant but often elusive. We must find it in ourselves to heal through acceptance of all that has been, to be able to move forward to all that may be.
My greatest battle over the past year was to not succumb to the fear that I might just follow him.
My life circumstances had come to uncannily resemble his before he took his life, and there were the same pressures on me now as there had been on him. Amidst the noise of everyone else asking “why did he?” or the more indignant “how could he?” it made sense to me why he did. I did not agree but I could understand.
I then had to see that I was not my brother, despite the similarities in circumstances. I could make a different choice. One that says Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything.
On that note, Rajesh, while I won’t follow you, I will see you someday beyond those hills and perhaps we can laugh at the idiocy of it all, once again.
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