Warning: This article discusses suicide.
I was 32 when my older brother Sam died by suicide.
To call him that, a brother, feels inadequate. As kids, we were by each other’s side when our youngest brother, Luke, died of SIDS at eight weeks old, and as adults, we travelled overseas together, lived in share houses, and socialised in the same circles.
Jessica Maguire with her late brother, Sam, as kids.
Sam was my safe space, my cheerleader and my best friend. When he died, I was crushed. Emotionally, I felt life’s foundations collapse from underneath me. I experienced a sense of profound shock and felt untethered, like I didn’t know what, or where, home was any more.
For weeks, I couldn’t eat, suffered severe insomnia and was crippled by persistent and debilitating stomach cramps. In the months following, I would swing up to the highs of anxiety and hypervigilance, and lie awake for hours at night. I also found myself collapsed and exhausted, unable to muster the energy to face basic life admin, make decisions, or handle conversations with family and friends.
When Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler published On Grief and Grieving in 2005, they took great pains to explain that we shouldn’t think of grief as a linear process. Yet despite this, the pair say they still regularly receive........