Content Warning: This piece includes talks of mental illness and suicidal ideation.
By Lily Dennis
“Family Photo” Taken in 2009, with my brother Josiah pictured on the very left, Jonah on the middle left, my sister Lydia on the middle right, and me on the right.
I used to view suicide as something that only ever happened in the movies, something that was a big enough problem to hear about occasionally while watching the news. To me, it was something that was unfortunate enough to happen to a close friend of a distant relative, but not “real” enough to affect me personally. Throughout elementary and middle school, I had heard about it plenty of times in passing. The idea of suicide, and especially losing someone to suicide, had still felt like a foreign concept. It wasn’t until my older brother started severely struggling with his mental health that I truly realized the heavy weight that the term “suicide” holds. At that point, we were both in high school, with Jonah, my brother, being a junior. Being only a year apart, I was a sophomore. Besides him, I also have a lot of other siblings. All of us have close relationships to one another, but Jonah and I were especially close. We were only a year apart, and we were involved in the same groups and sports at school. He told me everything, or at least I had thought so.
Our parents are divorced, and had been for more than twelve years at that point. With each being remarried to a new spouse, and living in separate states, the topic of our custody was something that the legal courts were probably tired of hearing about. That year marked either the fifth or sixth time that our parents went to court against each other, each one hopeful that the judge would grant them full custody of us, if not to buy more time until the cycle repeated again.
For the time being, we were living with our Mom in New Mexico, which was something that had definitely been an initial adjustment, especially for Jonah. Although he had friends, as well as what one would argue a “good” social life, he told me that he had gotten mixed into the wrong crowd. When COVID-19 shut down everything, I saw a major change in his mental constitution— he was usually a very friendly person who tried to make anyone laugh, no matter the situation. I witnessed firsthand what it looked like for his depression to destroy that. I tried to be there for him in any way that I could, especially as his mental health plummeted. Whether that entailed just sitting on the couch with him while his favorite movies played, listening to him talk about his frustrations and anxieties, conversing with our court-mandated attorney for solutions, or going on drives, I tried my best to be there for him. Almost five years ago in January, I saw him alive for the last time. I don’t remember what I said to him last, but I hope it was something good.
Over the course of the past few years, I’ve written a series of poems about Jonah, both to serve as a reminder of his memory and as an outlet for my grief. This first poem I wrote encompasses what it was like to see him for the last time. I wrote this poem as I made the transition to a new school overseas in England after I moved back in with my Dad. It was around a year and a half after I lost my brother, so it was hard having to start completely new without him.
Red Light
the front door creaks
before slamming shut, just as it had done for weeks
and weeks.
I knew it was you before you walked in—
your shoes always
made your steps sound
bigger than they were as they
hit the ground.
I asked where you had been
(it’ s been hours and hours),
and you replied that
you ran a red light and got pulled over—
you said it with a grin,
laughed and shrugged it off.
Threw Mom’s keys on the counter,
told me nothing could hurt you,
and left without dinner.
Slipped out your window
with the first sign of sunset,
and again you disappeared
into the heavy night air.
The other poem I’ve included is one that I’ve written recently. After I graduated high school, I moved back to the small town in New Mexico that we had lived in with my Mom. Although it was hard, as reminders of him were in everything, even in the air that I breathed, I felt like I had gotten some form of healing. The feeling of connection that I had to Jonah even after he had passed felt a lot like closure, or at least some version of it.
I Drive Until Tomorrow
Morning light turns evening,
wash of bright colour stretching
across vast horizon
quickly fades away from view,
specks of silver tears
mark Time’s weeping
spilling across the sky.
It’ s midnight. I drive alone
through miles of silent land.
Thin desert air fills
heavy lungs, thoughts
replace lack of noise.
I retrace empty roads we learned
to drive at fifteen and sixteen,
counting familiar landmarks
of streetlamps,
sparse trees.
Daybreak, golden beams
fall across our atomic
shadows, cast on warming sand—
again wind picks up
to erode away my youth and
to scatter yours further behind,
where forever it’s held,
cherished in
the arms of relentless
Time.
Although four and a half years seems like a long time, some days, it seems like just yesterday that I had seen my brother last. Other times, it seems as if it has been decades, or even an entire lifetime. When I lost my brother to suicide, my grandma told me that he had “used a permanent solution to deal with a temporary torment,” and I think that she was right. My personal experience with suicide and grief may not even look close to someone else’s for a lot of factors, but I think that overall, we should be kind and empathetic to one another, if not for any reason other than the fact that we are all human.