Nunani: Brother

RACHEL QITSUALIK

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
– Proverbs

I started out in this life with five brothers but now I have only two.

It is difficult to talk about any of their deaths, but the last was the worst. He committed suicide almost a decade ago.

Though my mind has suppressed the actual date, I roughly remember the time of year. My other siblings have said the same thing, when we could finally talk about it in bits and pieces. When we had the strength to. There was a time, though, when I could not even think of his name without going into a crying jag.

My first impulse was disbelief. When my younger brother called to tell me about it, I thought he was kidding, not that I assumed he was cruel enough to pull such a prank. It was simply that my brain literally could not process the information.

Time lost all meaning. I must have functioned on some level, but I don’t remember eating or sleeping in that first terrible month of trying to get through each day. I would wake up each morning thinking, “I’m never seeing him again. He is gone.” As surely as if he had evaporated, he was no longer here.

Then I would think of his children and how horrible it was for them. How would they live through so much pain? How would I? Fortunately, my husband was a solid rock when I could not stand one more minute of this existence.

Anger kicked in. How dare he leave me to deal with everything, including his death, while I have to stay stuck in this body? Why does he get to exit and I don’t? I was not suicidal, not then, but I didn’t want to be “here.” I felt guilty that I wasn’t mentally present for my now small family.

My husband and I went to see some elders about it, at a centre in Ottawa called Kumik. There, we happened upon an old married couple, both healers. They prayed for me. It so happened that they had recently lost their son to suicide, so I felt better for their understanding.

It never gets any better, they said, and they told me to allow lots of room to grieve, to let it out when I could. The man gave my husband extremely useful advice, telling him that my breakdowns were inevitable, to do nothing other than be there for me, since there were no words that could make it better. And the elders taught me a song to help me get through the roughest times. It helped. I don’t know what I would have done without them.

I lit a candle and tried to forgive my brother. Images kept going through my head about how it must have happened. I wondered if he died quickly or painfully. Where his soul now was. Was he in a good place? Would he try to contact me? Would I see him in the afterlife? There were no simple answers.

His funeral was held in Pond Inlet, where the remainder of our family lived at that time. His body is now a frozen shell underneath the snow, his essence no longer here.

I grieved, moved on, became buried in my work. My life had become cloaked in dark clouds of grief, and it was as though some aspect of myself had fallen into a deep slumber.

To my surprise, sunlight finally pierced those clouds with the most simple of events. One of my half-brothers called to see if I was all right. Hope came with the understanding that I wasn’t struggling alone. That other had known loss as well. I am now dreaming of a time when he and I can work on healing together, and this has taught me something.

One of our greatest errors, when we suffer, is that we refuse to burden others with our problems. We suffer nobly, alone, because we do not want to spread our affliction.

But just as suicide is a lonely act, only the embrace of others brings healing in its wake. Just as it is a loveless act, only love reverses it. Just as it is death, only other lives can bring light within its shadow.

My brother and I.

Pijariiqpunga.