Letter to Brian: April 10, 2013

Dear Brian,

I’m not sure what reminded me of this recently, but for the past few days I have been reliving a conversation I had with a friend only 5 months after you took your life.

We had a mutual friend who, at the time, was fighting cancer with every ounce of strength he had. She said to me in an e-mail, “you know, I realize you’re missing Brian but I wish you were here to see Tom’s passion for life and see how hard he is fighting for it… it is truly inspiring. I’m sorry, I’m on a tangent but I want his fight to inspire others to carry on even in the worst of circumstances.” While I had some strong feelings about those words in particular, I just simply asked her to pass on my love to him and let him know I was thinking of him.

But it really did hurt me. I know how hard he was fighting to live and yes, it was so great to hear of his continued zest for life and how appreciative he was for each and every day he was given. However, you had just died 5 months ago! I was in so much pain, Brian. No amount of will to live on the part of someone else was going to bring you back to me and it only served to remind me how badly you DIDN’T want to live and that hurt so much. In a sense, it seemed as though she were trying to rush me through my grief. Or maybe just guilt me out of the pity party in which she thought I was stuck. In my mind, there should have been no link made between the two situations as they weren’t connected at all and a small part of me felt like she was robbing me of my right to still be sad because someone else was struggling so fiercely to survive.

I should include another key piece to this story. This person was someone with whom you had become acquainted over the years of our friendship. You had begun to confide in her now and then; she would periodically relay things to me that you had shared with her and I admit that resented the relationship you two had developed. She was someone with whom you had opened up to about things you had not even shared with me. What hurt more than that was I often picked up on feelings of what seemed to be superiority on her part when relaying your conversations to me. It was if she had a bloated sense of pride about being able to say, “Brian told me this in confidence, so please don’t tell him I told you…” blah, blah, blah. She’d always had a tendency to enjoy being the “fix-it” person, the one people went to for help or advice. It hurt so much having to learn those things from someone else but it was exacerbated by the fact it was coming to me from a person who I sensed was getting some pleasure out of you choosing to confide in her rather than me.

But I am grateful for one thing she passed on to me after you died. She told me how you’d said that I’d always meant everything to you. She also said that you were so terribly worried about my decision to move to Austin with Mark. You were so concerned about how I’d fare starting over somewhere new. With no job prospects lined up at that time you wanted to know I’d be OK finding a good job, getting health insurance, making new friends… and truthfully you were worried about my own depression and how that might affect my ability to succeed in a brand-new place so far away from home and all the stability I’d ever known. You didn’t want me to know you two had talked about it because you didn’t want me to know how worried you were or that you were questioning my decision to move. But it felt good to know that, so I’m glad she shared that with me. And, while it did hurt a great deal at times, deep down I was grateful you had someone to talk to when there were things you couldn’t quite bring yourself to share with me. The pain was coming more from my feelings about the messenger than from the message itself. Besides, our family (myself included) has always been more likely to share our feelings with others before sharing them with each other. For instance…. this blog.  🙂

I still miss you every single day.

I love you.

Laura