I wrote a letter to my dead brother, to apologise for not saving his life

THE STORY

My brother died a Christmas ago, at a train station in Birmingham, UK. We only learned this 5 days after. CCTV showed him standing in the middle of the tracks, waiting for the train to come. The authorities had held on to him until he was claimed. There had been no way to identify him.

He was born 44 Christmases ago, in then-Socialist Bulgaria, unwanted. As a child he was abused by my father, grandmother, me (his disturbed older-by-2-years sister) and ignored by our mother; later classmates, teachers, kids on our street added to the abuse, my mother added control to neglect, finalising the ‘project’. Beatings, name-calling. Bullying. Demands. Restrictions. Bans. Humiliation. Rejection. Neglect.

He fell ill at 18, though we only found out when he went to university in Sofia, the capital city. I had no time to spend with him, despite sharing a flat. I was busy picking up shattered pieces of my personality in the context of my newly-found parent-less freedom. As usual, the parents were interested in nothing but our A-grades. Socialism had fallen; we were tasting democracy. The streets had burst out in colour; there were events we could go to. I was always out. My brother was always in. My university friends were starting jobs and getting married. I was wasting my life in churches, in a futile quest of a ‘’good Christian husband’’, who would save me from the hell at home. My brother was doing nothing. He was in his room, on the computer, playing Virtual Velocity for days on end.

One day he experienced a severe panic attack, shaking and crying, ‘’I am scared! I am scared!’’. My mother happened to be at home and witness the scene. An ambulance came.

I entered the mouldy corridors of the psychiatric hospital, white lights and white coats in my face— a stinky Doctor-Who dungeon. A psychiatrist was trying to force my mother to sign a consent form, authorising the medicals to perform electric-shock therapy on my brother, against his will. I had my heart set on saving him.

The peasant-like doctor tried the ever-present Bulgarian sarcasm: ‘’And you think you are qualified enough to advise me what to do with my patients?’’. I tried to explain that perhaps my brother would benefit from counselling, as a way to addressing problems with a stronger personality. I knew about Christian counselling from books friends had brought over from the US. I had read Larry Crabb. No counselling existed in Bulgaria in 1992.

The butcher (pardon, psychiatrist) turned to my crying mother. ‘’If you sign this paper for your son’s EST, he will never be ill again. I PROMISE’’. He put his finger on the paper as if to pierce it with his promise, then defiantly eyed me, emphatic — ‘’A patient needs sorting out the chemicals in his brain before even considering counselling’’, he said. ‘’A patient in a ‘crazy’ state cannot respond to counselling’’. I understood he considered himself – not me- ‘the qualified’ person to do the ‘sorting of the crazy’.

The news made my pale brother even paler. They had bogged him down under fistfuls of sedatives and tranquilizers, so that he was not even able to have another panic attack. My sobbing mother had already signed the paper, quivering under the mantra ‘’he would never be ill again’’. I had to get out of the white mouldy hell. I didn’t sleep for nights. A little boy needed saving and I had failed. I wept for days.

I went back to the hospital (my family insisted that visiting the sick showed care). The EST had been very painful, although it was not supposed to be — hell knows how they had performed it — ‘Bulgarian business’. My mother brought homemade food every day. The other inmates claimed it hungrily, by simply coming and taking it off my brother’s hand. The beds were stained. Neither of the windows could close — some were with broken panes — what must the place be like in winter?

My brother came home. My mother moved into our flat, ‘‘to look after him’’, administering daily fistfuls of multicoloured pills. He complained of feeling worse. He could no longer use his short-term memory. Exhaustion was becoming his permanent state. Reading or his beautiful drawing had ended for him. He sat at home all day, shaking his legs, staring at the TV between pill-taking time.

My mother watched him like a hawk, then regularly updated me: “Today Plamen was calmer, after sleeping for 16 hours – probably because I upped his sedatives by half a pill. He had been very agitated for days, walking round the town at night. He had even pawned my jewellery and the tape recorder. I had to go and redeem them’’.

‘’You cannot up his medication without asking the doctor’’, I said, ‘’You are not qualified’’. ‘’Believe me’’, my mother answered, ‘’when you’ve had years of this’’ — she pointed at my brother — ‘’you’d know more than anyone qualified’’. I wasn’t convinced, but she called the shots – he was her son.

My brother had years of ‘this’. He stopped going to lectures. ‘’I can’t read’’, he complained – so my father wrote his dissertation for him – and my brother managed to graduate with a Masters in Accounting and World Economy, to turn into a statistic in the segment of the qualified unemployed disabled accountants (if such a segment exists). His mates from university, whom my brother had previously helped with studies and tipped at exams, all found lucrative jobs with Western companies. They all put the phone down when he tried to resume contact.

So he lived alone, with mother. He would occasionally go shopping, but said that this tired him out so much that he had to spend the rest of the day in bed. At times he slept for weeks. Then agitation would seize him and he would pass rooms all night, or storm out for walks at 2am. He frequented all-night cafes, where he’d be served, but not spoken to. ‘’As if they knew I was different’’, he would say. They probably did.

He would buy coffee and cigarettes with his pension granted for his ‘’75% disability’’ — £60 a month — enough for coffee and a sandwich a day, but not enough for cigarettes — and he chain-smoked up to 60 a day. My mother would nag about wasted money. I felt angry and helpless — I worked and contributed to the bills; he didn’t care! Yet smoking must have given him occupation and calm. He had nothing else.

On a couple of occasions my brother managed to get work. He went to several job interviews, where they would demand to see his medical card, stating ‘’schizophrenia’’ in big letters across the page. ‘’Sorry, mate’’, the bosses would say, ‘‘we cannot take anyone like that’’. My brother understood, picked up his card and left. Only one KFC restaurant took him, to clean tables. He managed about a month; then was let go for not working fast enough. ‘’I was constantly confused’’, he confessed, ‘’I did not know what I was supposed to do at what point’’.

Then it was my mother finding work for him. She knew the headteacher of a gypsy school in the rundown parts of Sofia, where Bulgarians did not go. She asked for a favour to her ill son. So my brother started helping kids work with computers, on a full-time basis. There were 3 computers in the school, bare cables and live wires exposed all around them. My brother made sure the kids were protected from electrocution. Then people found he did any odd job he was told to do. His pay was for half-time. The assistant head’s daughter also worked at the same school, on a full teacher’s grade pay, although she only assisted half-time. When my mother questioned the ‘unique’ arrangements, she was explained that ‘’her son was ill, after all’’.

This job seemed to mean some hope to my brother and a reason to get him out of bed, plus pocket money. Although he took straight to bed after work, he was sounding positive for the first time in ages. Not for long. The school staff ostracised him. Colleagues crossed to the opposite side when they saw him in the corridors. So when the gypsy kids started to throw stones at him when they saw him out in the street, shouting, ‘’mad, mad!’’, he had to leave. He had lasted impressive 6 months.

By then I had left for Birmingham, UK, scraping with teeth and nails to establish a personality, learn to communicate, hold a job (high school teacher was the only thing my then-immigration status allowed me to do), build confidence, find friends, possibly a boyfriend — maximally avail of the relief of no parents sniffing down my neck. Found myself with money (pre-2008), I spent lavishly on clothes that burst wardrobes, lines of shoes in all colours and shapes, make-up I had nowhere to put, pretty furniture and books, books, books. Looking back now — I could have done with 2 pairs of shoes, one wardrobe of clothes, furniture from charity shops, books from the library. I could have given the saved money to my brother.

In Bulgaria his situation had not changed — living alone with my mother, on her meagre pension. Had it not been for this (and me sending money over), he would have starved. Other psychiatrically-ill people, disowned, rummaged in rubbish containers around Sofia.

In 2001 my father died. Our next-door neighbour, a law student, accused my brother of causing his death — I still have no idea why, but cannot even imagine being told such a thing. This neighbour also called my brother names and set his huge mastiff against him. Years later this lawyer-to-be, fully-fledged, rose to the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bulgaria. I wish I had told the plonker, all those years ago, what exactly I thought of his ‘’justice’’. (He didn’t last long – he had to resign when the news that he had hired the National Palace of Justice to porn video makers spread out and caused a national scandal).

Neighbours avoided my brother. In a country where you just walked into the opposite flat, demanding coffee for the cake you had brought, he was not even greeted with a ‘hello’. On the tram people stared at him as if they were seeing something bizarre-sque. Others stopped him in the street and demanded money. He gave them what he had, afraid of being beaten up if he refused.

A top floor neighbour, a known criminal with a gun and links with the police, was associated with missing car tyres, or cellars, ravaged and emptied of conserved food. No one dared complain; they gritted their teeth and repaired the damages. Yet one day after his afternoon sleep, my brother woke up to a half-empty apartment — the TV, the computer, my mother’s crystal glasses, even the woollen blankets from his bed were stolen. I could understand stolen car tyres outside, yet only the ill man’s flat had been so blatantly robbed from the inside. There was no one my brother could call for help, despite shaking with fear. They reconciled themselves to living without a TV again, although my mother had to pay off the rest of its 18-month instalments. They had the locks changed and prayed they would not lose the whole flat. Criminal gangs persecuted the elderly and the mentally ill, forcing them through violence to sign their flats over, then throwing the rightful owners out in the street. My family had been spared that.

In the UK I had my dream realised, be it only for three years — I married and had a son. After my divorce, as a single parent on zero-hour work contracts, surviving with my child was all my life focused around. I rarely had energy for others. It was a trial to hear my mother bemoan her lot on the phone, especially when my brother had been agitated, shouting or breaking furniture. He would occasionally take the jewellery, the CD-player and his camera and go and pawn them, to buy a smartphone or some other new gadget. Then he would slip into numbness and 16-hour sleep shifts again.

After each consecutive ‘crisis’ he would be hospitalised. My mother would phone for an ambulance. They would ask, ‘’Is it about a mentally-ill patient?’’ — ‘’Yes’’.- ‘’Sorry, then we are not coming’’.- ‘’Why so?’’— ‘’We are afraid of these’’. A taxi was then called — expensive. Sometimes I was able to replace the money. Sometimes not.

My brother saw no psychiatrist in-between hospital visits. He was assigned his life-long psychosis medication and ignored until another ‘’crisis’’ demanded hospitalisation. In the hospital he would be pumped up with outdated medicines (no money for modern brands) and when slipped back to ‘’calm enough’’, he’d be released.

My mother would ask why he kept receding into ‘crises’. ‘’He does not take his medication regularly’’, the doctors would explain. ‘’I can’t take them’’, my brother would defend himself, ‘‘they make me extremely ill’’. ‘’Then you have no chance of getting better’’, the doctors would insist, ‘’And your obstinacy will make it more difficult for your mother to look after you. You are an extremely ungrateful son’’. Vicious circle closed. End.

Occasionally the medication would be changed until my brother had tried every anti-psychotic under the sun, with unchangeable results — feeling worse, stopping the pills, going through ‘crises’ — then again. At last he refused any more experimentations. The ‘crises’ worsened.

Occasionally these manifested themselves through a ‘unique’ pattern — my mother would wake up to an empty house and money would be missing from the drawers or the bank. She would ring every instance she would think of — the police, the ambulances, the fire brigade, Interpol. The search would be fruitless, but in a couple of days there would be a telephone call: ‘’I am in Greece’’, or ‘’I am in Holland’’; ‘’I have run out money.’’ My mother would either send money for his ticket back, or get a ticket herself to fly to Amsterdam Schipholl, to fetch him.

His reason was always looking for work. He would have seen a newspaper advert about a job in Greece, or remembered an old friend in Amsterdam who could put him up until he had sorted himself out. On arrival the job in Greece turned out fake or no longer vacant; the friend in Holland no longer lived there. Back home would trigger a collapse, alternating crying for weeks with sleeping for weeks… until the next round.

Once, visiting a doctor in the UK, I asked about my brother’s condition. I briefly related the facts that no anti-psychotic would help him, nor did he show any signs of mind confusion typical of those with psychosis. The doctor took a piece of paper and wrote a list. ‘’This’’, he said, ‘’are the 5 symptoms of psychosis, 3 of which a patient is supposed to have experienced over a reasonable length of time, in order to be diagnosed: hearing voices, seeing things, feeling things, smelling things or tasting things that do not exist. If you have not had these symptoms persisting over a length of time, then you are not psychotic’’.

I read the list to my brother over the phone. He denied experiencing any of the symptoms. What if the ‘psychosis’ diagnosis had been wrong? I tried to convince my mother to consult a private psychiatrist (affordable in Bulgaria with English money) for a second opinion, and after going through a hell of an argument, she conceded. To her everlasting card, ‘’messing up with diagnoses does not make you better’’, I played ‘’he had never got better over 15 years, regardless of the diagnosis’’. Even she saw some logic in that.

Dizzy with my ‘‘victory’’, I asked around and was given the name of a ‘’young progressive’’ specialist practising at an EU-funded Orthodox Christian charity. The treatment would come free — a welcome bonus.

My brother visited the young doctor and was shown interest and involvement untypical of BG medical practitioners. She even considered our family environment. She was the first person to suggest to my mother that by failing to remove us from an abusive environment as kids she may have had contributed to my brother’s illness. Not an easy pill to swallow, yet for my mother it became the first medicine towards a life-lasting change.

So far, so good. So my brother showed the doctor the list of psychotic symptoms I had read from abroad and bravely suggested that, since he had never experienced those, perhaps, he had the wrong diagnosis, so could he be reassessed?

And then she cut him short. He was schizophrenic, full stop. Reassessment was unnecessary. If the hospital had said ‘psychosis’, then it was going to be psychosis — nobody changed the hospital diagnosis. The hospital wrote ‘schizophrenia’ on you records because they had learned that your uncle was schizophrenic? — unimportant. The hospital diagnosed your uncle and treated you? — nobody cares. Symptoms? — all the ‘’signs of madness’’— flying abroad with no warning, pawning things, wasting money, bursting into anger for no reason — what more proof? Medication did not help? Try another kind. Tried them all? Take higher dosages. They make you feel worse? Tough luck. Lie in bed and endure it.

Back to square one.

Exasperated, I tried Google (technology had progressed enough for that by then) — I was not satisfied with doctors flying on high horses. Typing ‘‘schizophrenia’’, I recognised a couple of symptoms, but no more. ‘’Depression’’ — he had some of that, too. There was something called ‘’borderline personality disorder’’, which my brother matched quite a bit. Then came ‘’paranoid personality disorder’’, ‘’social anxiety disorder’’ and dozens of other disorders. I gave up.

Still, as well as nightmares of his past and burdens of his present, my brother had to shoulder fears of the future. What was going to happen to him when my mother had died? Who was going to look after him? Was he going to end in the streets, or die beaten up by those who hated the mentally-ill?

I had refused to promise him the security of having him to live with me. I refused to turn into ‘’his keeper’’, like my mother had done. I refused to give him a room, which I would have to clean myself, then shop and cook for him, wash up after him, take him to doctors, make sure he took his medication, endure his anger outbursts, have furniture broken and money missing, go to other countries when he ran away, to fetch him back. I put a condition: ‘’if my brother would promise not to waste money, to be calm and reasonable, to help around the house and look after himself as much as possible, I would not mind having him live with me at all. But if he continued on his current behaviour, he’d better forget it’’.

Don’t we all impose conditions to protect ourselves from our fears?

My mother tried emotional blackmail on me (not for the first time). She told me how my brother, afraid of being left alone after her death, had suggested climbing up the mountain in winter, when the time came, and freezing to death. She tried to force me to promise to save him from suicide. ‘’What are sisters for?’’

Blinded, I still refused. I had ‘’just about dealt’’ with my past, or managed to ‘’just about function’’ in spite of it. I had a young son I looked after alone; I could not shoulder the responsibility of ‘’another child’’. Nor was I prepared to live in stress for the rest of my life. My life had been full of stress and continued being so. I had the right to look forward to a peaceful old age. I had to have that hope. Why should I be the only person responsible for my brother? Helping with money was OK (though I begrudged it, as it could be spent on my son), so were practical favours — but I could not face the responsibility of being ‘‘my brother’s keeper’’.

Changes must have been taking place in my mother’s thinking patterns. One day she woke up doubting my brother’s correct diagnosis by Bulgarian doctors. She recalled many big and little facts which could be indicating an error. She telephoned me with the request to help them move to the UK, so that my brother would be reassessed and treated in another country.

I did not mind. I was glad change was finally taking place. I helped my family find a flat to rent, bought their tickets, helped buy some things of first necessity, started the lengthy process of finding work for my mother (her pension would be nowhere near enough for UK rent rates) and getting my brother through the processes of accessing medical help and — why not a job as well, since the mentally ill were better treated in the West?

I do not have fond memories of this time. My mother made me go on dozens of websites to submit tons of CVs (composed by me) for both herself and my brother and then to daily check the replies (95% refusals). She phoned me every couple of hours to ask what I had done/not done and if she had interview invites. She would not understand how no company placing official Internet adverts would take someone aged 70, who spoke no more than 5 words of English and understood zero, to work for them. At last a friend of mine agreed to have her clean their house once a week and then recommended her to other friends. Within a month my mother had about 4 families with weekly cleaning slots; only then she admitted that she was not suited for a ‘’regular’’ job, no matter how ‘’lucrative’’ the minimum wage pay. Only then could I breathe in peace. This kind friend happened to save my mental health.

On his part my brother got some job interviews, as he could speak English. Still, when I phoned the companies for feedback, most said that my brother had decided not to take the job, or worse — had not shown up at the interview. I was furious. To me he had promised he had attended all of the interviews. I immediately assumed that he was ‘‘shirking’’, lazy, or playing me up, taking advantage of my efforts to help. Meanwhile he had told my mother he did not even have energy to take a shower, let alone ride on a bus to a job site, lose his direction and get off at the wrong stop through his muddled brain (sometimes he could not concentrate to follow a simple conversation). He had mentioned nothing of this to me. ‘’You should have asked him’’, my mother said later. Of course it was all my fault.

After 3 months on the waiting list my brother got an appointment with the NHS psychiatric team at Longbridge, Birmingham, UK. I went with him to present ’another angle to the story’. The doctor listened to us, taking copious notes, looking competent and interested. Still, when I asked if he would offer my brother counselling, he answered ’no’. I persevered, emphlasising on how important counselling would be — my brother had never had any and there was so much trauma he needed to get through. The answer was again a ‘no’, with zero explanation.

I left it at that. I knew that the deliberate policy of the current government was to intentionally underfund the National Health, in order to present it as ineffective, to justify its privatisation. I could search for counselling services through other channels, as long as we had the correct diagnosis and the correct medication established at last.

I had assumed that during subsequent appointments my brother would be given questionnaires to fill for each possible psychiatric condition, in order to establish what exactly he had. I had assumed that, with counselling or not, he would be correctly diagnosed and accordingly treated.

Nothing of the sort happened.

3 months later a letter came. The psychiatric consultant services were discharging my brother with no diagnosis, after only three appointments. He was not schizophrenic, they agreed, but they did not know what he was. They were not investigating further. They were sending him back to his GP. No questionnaires, no ticking boxes, no describing or crossing out symptoms. The adjective ‘’calm’’ frequented across the letter page. I guess, had he been ‘’climbing walls’’, he may have had a better chance of help.

I found this hard to believe. A second country, a second failed attempt. Not even a ‘‘wrong’’ diagnosis — a ‘’zero’’ diagnosis instead. I guessed, it was all (again) down to me.

I went back to Google Almighty, researching government and non-government organisations offering free counselling to people of lower social status. We considered private psychiatric care, but the fees of £250 a session put us off. Private counselling came £50+ an hour — again too high. I asked my brother if he would consider online counselling, since this came cheaper, but he refused. I phoned the NHS mental health service ‘Healthy Minds’. They turned us down — my brother did not fit their criteria — since he had been under a consultant, it was up to that practice to offer him counselling. He was also too ill for the ‘Healthy Minds’ — they only dealt with people with ‘’mild’’ depression.

I tried a charity. They turned me down because my brother was not currently under a consultant and was ‘’too well’’ for them, as he talked and smiled. Then I phoned MIND — the biggest mental health charity in the UK. I was told that ‘’free counselling’’ was not something they offered. I was tempted to ask, ‘’then what the f*** do you offer? How did I waste my money supporting you for a few years?’’, but abstained. I was just going to upset myself.

At one point we were referred to a good place, which seemed to have everything my brother needed. At inquiry stage they even proposed a care plan for him…until the official registration. Their resources were for the homeless only. My brother had an address. The end.

I did not give up. I resolved to take my brother back to his GP and ask to pursue another psychiatric route, explore another diagnosis, try different medication. I deliberated to pursue trialling until we’d had a result.

But it was half-term, so first I intended to take my son on a 4-day holiday to Austria as a 13th birthday present.

Not that I could forget my brother's problems. Sightseeing in Vienna comprised going over and over past events and conversations, replaying major and minor details, to pinpoint something — anything — I had not checked and double-checked. This, surprisingly, yielded a result.

A conversation with the psychiatrist reappeared in the back of my mind. This doctor had refused to give my brother an anti-depressant, on the grounds that third generation SSRI were known to trigger ‘’manic’’ episodes in psychotic patients. Until then I had thought of ‘’mania’’ (in ‘’manic depression’’) as ideas of grandeur — sufferers thinking they were God or a super-powerful being — the opposite of what my brother thought of himself. Checking ‘mania’ and its interchanges with depression had never until now crossed my mind, though I was aware the condition had been renamed ‘’bipolar’’.

And it was all there. I Googled ‘’bipolar disorder — symptoms’’. Before my eyes spread a clear precise description of my brother’s exact condition, manifesting itself through the years. Everything was there:

depressive episodes — low mood, obsessive fears, exhaustion, excessive sleeping periods…….

manic episodes— agitation, irritation, anger outbursts, insomnia, money-spending sprees, mood urges to realise new ideas (in my brother’s case — travelling abroad for work)…….

difficulty concentrating ……..

difficulty remembering things….

confusion…..

What are the signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder?

Bipolar disorder, also known as bipolar affective disorder, is a mood disorder. It used to be called manic depression…

www.rethink.org

It was all there, framed by its cyclical nature, which for 20 years had unbelievably evaded us. We had all missed naming it — me, my family, the doctors, everyone else.

Nobody had mentioned ‘’bipolar’’, not even people who I knew suffered from it themselves, who would have known the exact symptoms. My Christian ‘’brothers and sisters’’, who for many years had been throwing my brother out of their houses each time he created ‘’havoc’’ when visiting, not once had said: ‘’rather than throwing this person out, let’s get together to investigate ways of helping him’’. A ‘’friend’’ I knew had had the experience of disappearing from home to be eventually found by a river (for bipolar reasons), not once had suggested that my brother could have been disappearing to other countries for similar reasons.

Doctors, undoubtedly, were useless, everywhere. Globally. Hopelessly. But there were other people, too. This was not even Bulgaria. ‘’Bipolar’’ in the UK had been known and diagnosed since the 1960s. People knew about it. I had heard them talk about it. They knew people who had it. They knew the medication. They were familiar with my brother’s behaviour patterns and how they affected me (my brother had spent a whole year visiting me in the UK in 2001). They knew how difficult it was for me to get my brother to agree to go to the doctor — how he jumped out of windows when I had suggested it. Why had nobody offered to help me?

My plan was that on my return to Birmingham I would take my brother to the GP again, to finally consider the correct diagnosis and put him on Lithium. Even I knew that the panacea for bipolar was Lithium— probably the only drug my brother had never been forced to try. Later I read that Lithium was also a powerful suicide-preventor.

We flew back to the UK on Monday evening. On Tuesday my mother came to my flat, saying, ‘’Your brother has disappeared again’’. I did not think much of that fact — perhaps he was on one of his ‘trips’, so wait a couple days for the phone call. No call came. No money had been taken either.

I rang the police, reporting my brother missing. They prepared a report, which the British Transport Police picked up days later. The BTP visited us on Saturday.

They told us there had been a fatality at a Birmingham train station the previous Monday, the same night I flew back from Vienna. 5 nights ago he had stood in the middle of the rail tracks, waiting for the train to come. The authorities had held on to him until he was claimed. There had been no way to identify him.

THE LESSON

For a year now I have been sitting on a sofa, staring at a TV I cannot see, trying to make myself breathe, though hell knows, I see no point why.

I keep going over the depths of my mind, trying to reconcile the ‘‘what ifs’’ with the ‘’yes, but’s’’, unable to stop blaming myself.

Because now I know.

Now I know exactly how to look after you, how to be ‘’my brother’s keeper’’. I now know that I should have become ‘’my brother’s keeper’’.

What in hell did it matter that the whole world had failed you, if I could have been the person to save you? All you had to do was wait for 4 days.

Now I know exactly what I should have done.

I know that you had needed a second mother to give you a second childhood, full of everything ours failed to provide us with — respect, attention, a listening ear, reassurance, kind advice, encouragement, tenderness, protection. I could have given you that — I have had some experience with my own son. If you had needed to become my second child, then so be it. This would have saved your life. And yet — I had made a choice not to. I had been too bent towards my own comforts, following my own interests, my agenda — exactly what Christ (in whom I claim to believe) has warned us not to do.

Isn’t it futile to ‘’try and gain the whole world’’ if this would lead to the loss of my soul? Did I not lose you in the desperation to cater to my own interests and peace? Saving you could have gained me my soul.

I go back in memory and cannot believe the way I used to think of you — not as a friend to share my life, but a burden, a problem, a trial other people had been spared. How could I have been so blind and so wrong — so blatantly blind and so woefully wrong?

Yet, come back, come back to me, for I do repent of my choices. Only come back, and you will see us all changed. For us it would be a privilege — you would be our lives’ guest of honour. The least significant person on the planet would be given the prominence he deserved. It would be a privilege to take you into my home, to care for you, to take you to doctors, to monitor your treatment, to see you get better. Because you were going to get better and ‘’ in the darkness we would have seen a great light’’. Too late.

Death makes everything clear. It is the catalyst through which we see truths obscured in the ordinary course of the day. It is dark glass, turning translucent; rain, splashing the dusty windows, inviting the sun. Too late.

The strangest paradox is that I now would very likely be inflicted with the same bleak future I refused to save you from. When my mother is gone, my son — grown up, I would very likely find myself alone. Failed relationships and the state of the world have long stripped me of the hope that there would be someone caring to spend the rest of their life with me. I would probably end up a lonely old woman, in a flat with a cat, repeatedly waking up to the realisation that I had been given a blessing — a friend — yet screwed it all.

One day, obviously, I will see you again — you, and our dad, and our mum — and we’ll wait together for my son. We’ll all be together again, free of the ignorance and misunderstandings, free of the compulsion to protect ourselves, free of the fear, which has gnawed at our lives till they all collapsed. We’d be free to understand and love each other like we always should have done.

If only I did not have to wait for so long for this time. Life can be very long, very tedious, indeed.

Merry Christmas — can’t wait to see you in heaven.