Even though it wasn’t my life at risk, the experience of my brother Sasha’s stoke and brain surgery has had a profound and lasting effect on me.
I feel like the last few years have been a waterfall of grief. I learned about Peter Russell and John Godfrey’s grave illnesses shortly before their deaths and funerals. I have gone through the loss of my relationship with Katrina, as well as an initiative which I hoped would finally give me a functional platform to fight climate change from.
In the lead-up to Peter and John’s funerals, I spent large amounts of time pre-grieving: deliberately working through, naming, and experiencing the feelings, so I might be able to avoid being overwhelmed when the time for dignity and gratitude came at the celebrations of their lives. I was doing much the same in Victoria (along with fervently, atheistically praying for his welfare): emotionally working through every possible outcome, steeling and reinforcing myself for whatever might come.
In the time since I returned to Toronto, I have still felt seized with these feelings and questions. In part, the experience underscored how I am now definitively past any sort of preparation or training stage in my life. There is no escape from dealing with life at its most serious, and from deciding how to use it in furtherance of one’s values and goals. Figuring out how to cope with a world where some beloved things are gone forever and where all others are threatened is a substantial challenge if you refuse to fall back on feel-good rationalizations or unjustified optimism.
Life is fragile and subject to arbitrary and abrupt revocation. It is also a realm where a person can be easily dominated by those who feel entitled to control them. Coping with and making sense of life, with all of its limitations and confusions and conflicts, remains an ongoing effort.
The day after the surgery — and following a practice that Sasha taught me — I walked from the hospital to Thetis Lake and walked around the water under the cover of ancient trees. The feeling of relief and gratitude was overwhelming, but I was surprised by the realization that this would also have been the right thing to do if the worst had happened: to thank the land from a position of agony and gratitude for the gift that had been my remarkable brother.
What a sensitive and touching reflection on the losses we face. Nothing in my life so far was as frightening as Sasha’s medical crisis. I was seized with a huge sadness and helplessness from the moment that I realized that this was so very serious. Sleep and even breathing became painful. The day of the surgery almost broke me, but your presence by my side, although separate and unreachable, was the closest that I felt to you perhaps ever. Nature saved me from collapse while we waited, Sasha suffered without complaint and the masterful hand of Dr. Fleetwood saved his life. Nature is the best healer that we have and we are lucky that it is available to us in sadness and in joy.
This was beautiful.
Your reflections are so thoughtful. Thank you