THE STRONG ONE

Content warning: grief, sadness (no rugby in this one)

I’m the older brother of three. It shouldn’t make a difference, not after all these years, but it does. I am the executor of my father’s will and so it’s me that is dealing with the solicitor, the bank accounts and the house. It will be me that organises the funeral and has to hold it together while delivering a eulogy; . I’m the older brother. I’m the strong one.

Don’t get me wrong, I resent none of this and my middle brother and his wife have been fantastic with both Dad and Mum, while the younger one is marooned in Africa by Covid and has no way to get home. I just accept some of these things must fall to me; accept that I need to be the strong one.

People at work have been continually telling me to “take some time” this week, while dumping a huge pile of festering crap on my desk, knowing full well that this particular pile of crap is the one thing that only I can sort out. That’s how, on the very day after my dad died, I came to be parked near a drive-through coffee shop, sharing tears over the phone with my lovely cousin, before immediately diving into a difficult business meeting with a company that has been grievously wronged by an employee of mine. I was proud that I could do that meeting so fresh from the tears, that I could still find a way through the knotty problems, and plot a path to reconciliation.

I was proud that I could be the strong one.

However, I can see how easy it would be to get lost in the list of “Things that have to be done,” locking away my own feelings just so I can get through it all. Perhaps, this is the old me; the me I wrote about here: “the sensible one, made head boy twice because of his sensibleness and dependability… just putting one foot in front of the other.”

Maybe, I don’t need to worry, though. The evening after Dad died, after a day spent making the worst possible phone calls to my brothers, my sons and to Dad’s friends,  I wrote about my last day with him. I shut myself in the tiny upstairs office, a cosy little space that I go to sometimes when I need to allow myself to be vulnerable; I re-watched the rugby match I had watched with him a few days before, drank a glass of good red and cried out my feelings into my writing. I felt so close to my father while I was doing that, and I felt truly in touch with my own emotions. My grief for his untimely loss felt very real and tangible, but the sense of allowing it to flow through me felt cathartic and, even at this early stage,  like the start of coming to terms with it.

There are signs that I’m not doing as well as I tell myself I am. I’m eating and drinking too much, not exercising enough and my sleep pattern is even more badly messed up than normal.

But it’s OK to not be OK, right?

I don’t need to be the strong one all the time. Right now, the strong one is the part of me that other people need. What I need is the part of me that is open to the overwhelming feelings of loss and sadness when they come, and is able to cry for his dad and for himself, shut away in the little office.