Brotherly love

Relationships between brothers and sisters have often been called life's most influential and longest lasting relationships - lasting longer than ties to parents, spouses, or children (Bank & Kahn, 1997). As such they can certainly teach us a lot about ourselves.

This past weekend I spent some time with my brother, just he and I, something we have rarely done through the course of our relationship . He is walking a very hard road through life at present, having recently lost his wife of almost 30 years suddenly and unexpectedly as the result of a rare complication following a surgical procedure. I spent some time sitting with him in the hospital the day she died when he was faced with the enormity of having to give his assent to turning off the life support mechanisms. The nightmarish atmosphere of that room and that day lives with me still ... I cannot conceive of the torment it must have caused him.

This photo of them both was taken during a holiday in Thailand I shared with them several years ago, when we all had a fantastic time visiting an elephant camp.

She was a delightful woman, much loved by her large family of sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews - quiet, unassuming, but warm, caring and perhaps one of the most completely unselfish people I knew. My brother has lost someone very precious.

However he is moving through the grieving process and all it entails with quiet fortitude, dignity and a remarkable degree of perceptiveness. We talked on the weekend about what this journey is revealing to him, about himself, life and also, as became evident, his other family relationships. Some of the things he is learning on this painful but illuminating journey of self-discovery I think I should try to incorporate into my own journey, to help with those periods of stress and uncertainty we all face at times. Perhaps one of the most significant is gaining a real appreciation of today and a gratitude for the life we have in our hands now, because we can never be sure there'll be a tomorrow. To me this means taking the time to say thanks, or I appreciate your help, or I love you, or I understand how you feel to those people in life who mean a lot to us. There's no guarantee they'll be around next week, next month or next year to hear those words and be cheered by them. It also means enjoying what we have in life that's good - warm clothes, delicious food, lovely fragrances, a beautiful sky, flowers, a hug from a friend, the quizzical look on a dog's face - all that every day stuff that makes life worth living ... or taking that long dreamt of trip if we can possibly scrape the money together and just soaking up the wonder and discovery of that experience to the best of our ability (and worrying about the damage to the credit card later!)

Another challenge for my brother, and for us all I think at different times in our lives, is letting go of the future, giving up trying to control the universe to conform to our desires (and as a control freak from way back, this is a major challenge for me!). The universe and much that's in it, is largely completely beyond our control and while we can do our best to influence outcomes for the better, essentially we have to roll with the punches and learn from whatever curved balls get thrown our way. The forward path is pretty much obscured for my brother right now and with the death of his much loved wife, his plans, dreams, expectations and hopes in that regard have been shrouded in a blanket of incertitude. But he is learning to move forward despite that, trusting that things will unfold and evolve in time, and in the process developing those wonderful (and rare) qualities of patience and acceptance.

So my dear brother in his sadness had much to teach me and I hope I am always able to be there at his side along the journey into the unknown, and also that it eventually takes him to a place of warmth, safety, love and security again.