Nama : Jana Eti Wulandari
Literary Newbie
I was asked to write this piece for my
university course. It was intended to demonstrate a real loss and real
emotions, and focus on the 'ecstasy' of 'grief'. I'd really appreciate any
feedback you can offer. Thanks 
Ecstasy suggests an intensification of emotion so powerful as to produce a trancelike dissociation from all but the single overpowering feeling: an ecstasy of rage, grief, love.
He was a boy.
A man, and yet a boy. I think it’s possible to be both.
Sometimes I catch my mind wandering from this to that and I hate it. How horrible I must be to get so easily distracted. It’s been five weeks to the day since his funeral and it’s the first time I've had the courage to even look at the dress I wore to it. And now I go back home for the memorial the family is planning. Everyone is going back. I don’t know how they can bare it.
It’s hard being together; all of us sitting around without him. It makes it more real somehow.
“Are you okay?” they keep asking. I know what they’re trying to say. They’re saying “I don’t know what to say.”
I don’t know what to say either.
“Are you okay?” they keep asking.
Is there an answer?
I wish I knew. I don’t know. I talked to him a lot.
I can still see his face and I can hear his voice so clearly. I loved him.
That’s what I said to them, that I loved him.
“Did you tell him?” they’d ask.
“I didn’t have to.” I’d mumble. And it’s true. My brother always knew. We had our own language, the two of us. I loved Jackson and he loved me. He loved everyone.
Dear Journal, I would like to say something about my brother now;
I have been contemplating the question; ‘Aren’t we ALL afraid to die?’
Often when someone we care about dies, we’re forced to evaluate the times that we were fortunate enough to share with them. Today I have been forced to do just that.
Most people would agree that the people of import in our lives teach us lessons in some way and leave us with answers to questions we had not even known we were asking.
I have found in my experiences of loss that losing someone you value can often help you to better understand them.
In my life I have been surrounded by strong willed individuals; unafraid and determined. I always thought that was just my Dad’s side of the family.
My brother has been ill in one way or another for as long as I can really remember him.
For the longest time he was scared.
The way his eyes would open a fraction wider any time he felt a twinge, or how his hair might sometimes stick slightly to his forehead as he pushed endlessly through the unrelenting fevers.
Reflecting now on my previous opinion of Jackson, I am ashamed.
For so much of my life I have seen his fear as a frailty, vulnerability, and considered him weak when compared to others. Perhaps at times I considered him the weakest of all my relatives.
If my brother is anywhere now where he might hear me or read this, there is something I would like for him to know…
My relatives are strong in character, but I was wrong to assume, because he was different, that my brother was weak.
It’s my firm belief now that it’s all too easy for a strong person to be strong. It is a much harder feat for a weak person to be strong.
Jackson was the strongest man I’ve ever known. To fight through so many obstacles. To be so afraid. My brother was not ashamed to ask for the help that he needed to push through each illness to more life than any of us expected for him.
Jackson did not want to leave this world… but he was not afraid to ask to when the time was right for him.
My fear; my biggest, the biggest in all my life, was that he would be too scared to take his final breath, and that his fear would be plain on his face when it happened.
I held his hand and I waited. His hand grew cold, clammy. It moved up his arm, over his shoulder. I lifted the blanket to cover him as the cold moved over his body. He wasn’t going to be cold I’d decided.
He was asleep and he breathed slowly. I knew it was time and I could feel his pain in my throat. All his pain, all his life… and my pain. My pain was there to. I held his hand tighter. So much pain! I could feel myself choking; I wanted to take it from him. I squeezed him and willed it to stop hurting him, to hurt me instead. I was already hurting so what did it matter.
My brother. My beautiful baby brother looked into my eyes for the last time and he smiled. And then he went to sleep. No pain. He didn’t struggle when it happened, he just slept until the sleep was somehow permanent and the relief that I felt in that moment was unparalleled.
It is a strong man who can be so afraid and still fight. I realised; it was in his smile, it was not just the pain at the end, the pain that I had felt. He had fought his whole life, every day, every second. He’d looked into my eyes and the scared young boy I’d known smiled up from the face of a man far stronger than most, a man much beyond his years.
He was a boy who his whole life had feared death and he looked into my eyes courageous, unflinching and wise.
My brother was a strong man; one of the strongest I’ve been fortunate enough to know… and his lesson to me was this…
It’s okay to be afraid.
And for this I would like to say…
“Brother, I’m not afraid anymore. I love you.”
Ecstasy suggests an intensification of emotion so powerful as to produce a trancelike dissociation from all but the single overpowering feeling: an ecstasy of rage, grief, love.
He was a boy.
A man, and yet a boy. I think it’s possible to be both.
Sometimes I catch my mind wandering from this to that and I hate it. How horrible I must be to get so easily distracted. It’s been five weeks to the day since his funeral and it’s the first time I've had the courage to even look at the dress I wore to it. And now I go back home for the memorial the family is planning. Everyone is going back. I don’t know how they can bare it.
It’s hard being together; all of us sitting around without him. It makes it more real somehow.
“Are you okay?” they keep asking. I know what they’re trying to say. They’re saying “I don’t know what to say.”
I don’t know what to say either.
“Are you okay?” they keep asking.
Is there an answer?
I wish I knew. I don’t know. I talked to him a lot.
I can still see his face and I can hear his voice so clearly. I loved him.
That’s what I said to them, that I loved him.
“Did you tell him?” they’d ask.
“I didn’t have to.” I’d mumble. And it’s true. My brother always knew. We had our own language, the two of us. I loved Jackson and he loved me. He loved everyone.
Dear Journal, I would like to say something about my brother now;
I have been contemplating the question; ‘Aren’t we ALL afraid to die?’
Often when someone we care about dies, we’re forced to evaluate the times that we were fortunate enough to share with them. Today I have been forced to do just that.
Most people would agree that the people of import in our lives teach us lessons in some way and leave us with answers to questions we had not even known we were asking.
I have found in my experiences of loss that losing someone you value can often help you to better understand them.
In my life I have been surrounded by strong willed individuals; unafraid and determined. I always thought that was just my Dad’s side of the family.
My brother has been ill in one way or another for as long as I can really remember him.
For the longest time he was scared.
The way his eyes would open a fraction wider any time he felt a twinge, or how his hair might sometimes stick slightly to his forehead as he pushed endlessly through the unrelenting fevers.
Reflecting now on my previous opinion of Jackson, I am ashamed.
For so much of my life I have seen his fear as a frailty, vulnerability, and considered him weak when compared to others. Perhaps at times I considered him the weakest of all my relatives.
If my brother is anywhere now where he might hear me or read this, there is something I would like for him to know…
My relatives are strong in character, but I was wrong to assume, because he was different, that my brother was weak.
It’s my firm belief now that it’s all too easy for a strong person to be strong. It is a much harder feat for a weak person to be strong.
Jackson was the strongest man I’ve ever known. To fight through so many obstacles. To be so afraid. My brother was not ashamed to ask for the help that he needed to push through each illness to more life than any of us expected for him.
Jackson did not want to leave this world… but he was not afraid to ask to when the time was right for him.
My fear; my biggest, the biggest in all my life, was that he would be too scared to take his final breath, and that his fear would be plain on his face when it happened.
I held his hand and I waited. His hand grew cold, clammy. It moved up his arm, over his shoulder. I lifted the blanket to cover him as the cold moved over his body. He wasn’t going to be cold I’d decided.
He was asleep and he breathed slowly. I knew it was time and I could feel his pain in my throat. All his pain, all his life… and my pain. My pain was there to. I held his hand tighter. So much pain! I could feel myself choking; I wanted to take it from him. I squeezed him and willed it to stop hurting him, to hurt me instead. I was already hurting so what did it matter.
My brother. My beautiful baby brother looked into my eyes for the last time and he smiled. And then he went to sleep. No pain. He didn’t struggle when it happened, he just slept until the sleep was somehow permanent and the relief that I felt in that moment was unparalleled.
It is a strong man who can be so afraid and still fight. I realised; it was in his smile, it was not just the pain at the end, the pain that I had felt. He had fought his whole life, every day, every second. He’d looked into my eyes and the scared young boy I’d known smiled up from the face of a man far stronger than most, a man much beyond his years.
He was a boy who his whole life had feared death and he looked into my eyes courageous, unflinching and wise.
My brother was a strong man; one of the strongest I’ve been fortunate enough to know… and his lesson to me was this…
It’s okay to be afraid.
And for this I would like to say…
“Brother, I’m not afraid anymore. I love you.”
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