Death, Grief, and Racism

Each one is painful, traumatic, and difficult to overcome

Five years ago on this very day, my big brother Boris was in the intensive care unit at Zurich cantonal hospital fighting for his life. On this day we were still full of hope — me, his wife, their two very young children, my sisters, my younger brother, and my mum. The renowned cardiac surgeon who had performed open-heart surgery to remove the stubborn blood clots that kept on clogging up his lungs had assured us that she would do everything possible to save him. I believed her. A few days later, somewhat unexpectedly, my sister-in-law Agnes called me from Zurich and said that the wait was over. We had to let him go, he wasn’t going to make it.

As the second child, the eldest daughter, and because I was in Geneva at the time, it fell upon me to tell my mother the news that no mother ever wants to hear and no sibling ever wants to give. It was up to me to tell her that her child was dying. When I hung up the phone with my sister in law I let out a piercing primal scream — a bit like a wounded beast in agony. No, no, no, I thought to myself, he couldn’t die. My big strong brother who was always first, a judo instructor, a brilliant chess player with a personality larger than life couldn’t possibly die, he just couldn’t. I implored God to keep him alive, I implored anything that would give him a second chance — the healer a thoughtful friend had recommended a few days earlier, cardiologists from the four corners of the earth, and my ancestors in the afterworld. I cried and screamed and begged for him not to die, at one point, I even asked God to take me instead of him. That was how desperate I was.

My husband drove me to my mother’s house. There was a palpable stillness about the place that day. There was no noise or agitation. A few of my mother’s colleagues and her sister were seated around the dining room table, speaking quietly. I entered the house and noticed that none of the Christmas decorations that would normally be up at this time of year were up. The dwelling looked as though it was waiting for someone to come home before starting off the end-of-year festivities. It was as though it was waiting for Boris to come home. I made my way to my mother’s room at the end of the hallway, my stomach in knots, tears threatening to flood my already large, swollen red eyes. My mum looked hopeful, she looked at me as though I was the bearer of good news and it pained me to have to break her heart.

“Mummy, Agnes called, we need to go to Zurich. The doctors say we need to say goodbye to Boris.” As I said the words, my mother looked at me shaking her head vigorously.

“No Rebecca, that can’t be. I saw him yesterday, we prayed together, he looked fine. I even thought he looked better. They should wait a bit longer, they should wait”.

Her eyes were pleading with mine, begging me to take back what I had just said. At that precise moment, I hated being the one to tell her that horrible news. My role was one that no one in the world would ever willingly ever want.

“But we have to go, Mummy, we have to go say goodbye”. I insisted.

My mum went silently toward the wardrobe, took out her coat, and picked up her small trolley bag. We exited the apartment into the cold, dreary, grey, inhospitable winter day. I remember seeing the sun on the horizon. As we entered the speedway en route to Zurich with my mum, my aunt Pat and Boris’ two young children, I remember looking back at the sun dipping behind the horizon and realizing that that was my brother’s last sunset ever. Tears filled my eyes, as my heart pounded frantically in my chest. I was filled with anguish and felt both helpless and hopeless.

By the time we got to Zurich, my brother was just about to take his final breath. He died at 9:48 pm that evening. The pain was raw, unbearable, insurmountable. How did he move from being a big strong healthy man to a shadow of himself in less than two months — how could he possibly die so young. There was still so much I wanted to do with him. I wanted to watch him become the father that we had never had, I wanted to watch him fulfill his business dreams, I wanted to watch him in his old age, I wanted to hear his large, contagious laugh over and over. In my head I thought to myself, no he couldn’t possibly die, he couldn’t possibly abandon me so early on in this journey called life. He just couldn’t.

The children were hungry so we had dinner at a pizzeria in Zurich. It all felt so surreal. I felt that my big brother, as playful and cunning as he sometimes was, was tricking us. I felt that he would pop out of somewhere and have a good laugh at our expense. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. I had an uneasy sleep that night, and the next day, I helped my sister-in-law with funeral arrangements. On December 11, 2016, my brother was buried in a small cemetery in Versoix, a village on the shores of Lake Geneva. He loved that village so much and had even come back to live there after university. Everyone else in our family, including me had gone to live elsewhere, but he was so attached to the place that he had decided to spend his life there.

We put him to rest in the ground there, somewhere between the lake and the Jura mountains. From his resting place, he will always be able to observe the hundreds of planes that fly into Geneva each and every day. I cannot think of a better place for him to spend eternity.

For the last 5 years, I have relived the trauma of my brother’s death at exactly this same time of the year. From the first day he landed in the hospital, on October 17th, to the day he died, December 6th, I still had hope that he would survive, that he would recover. During those weeks, I went through highs and lows — times when the doctors’ would say he would make it, and times when they lost all hope. It was a tumultuous time, a heart-wrenching and anxiety-ridden time. It was the most difficult time of my life.

Now, 5 years later, I still feel the raw pain of his absence in my heart. I miss him every single day. Sometimes the grief is so much it keeps me, hostage, in a sea of tears for hours on end. Sometimes I pick up the phone and want to call him and then I realize he is no longer there. Sometimes I buy his favorite food and binge eat it, sometimes I listen to his favorite music and ball my eyes out. And sometimes I feel so damn hopeless that I look at photographs of him the whole day long. I am still in the midst of grief and I know today that I will always be. At first, my friends and colleagues would pressure me, saying that I should be done grieving him in a few months. At first, I believed that I should — that is until I realized that grief is a personal process. For some people it may be a linear process — the more time you put between yourself and the death of your loved one, the faster you get over them. For me, it has been circular and in waves. Some days I feel that I am closer to Boris in the ethos — and on those days, I miss him terribly and my grief is strongest.

This year I turned 50. Boris and I often joked about how I should “kiss the ring” because he was the oldest of us two. It was a joke we had between us because he knew how badly I had wanted to be the older child. We had spoken about how we would celebrate his 50th birthday a few months before he passed. I had rented a lovely villa in France for my husband’s 50th and Boris had loved the majestic venue with its 10 bedrooms, indoor pool, and beautiful brass fittings. It overlooked beautiful Lake Geneva and Boris thought it could also be the venue for his special day. I had secretly contacted the owner to reserve the place. That was going to be my gift to him. He didn’t yet know and I guess he never will. I felt odd turning 50. I was never supposed to be the one to get there first, he was. On my birthday, I realized even more that I had lost my protector, my tester, the person that was always supposed to experience things before I would, hand me the cheat sheet and warn me about the pitfalls to avoid.

In a few days, we’ll have a memorial mass for my brother and we’ll come together for a small brunch. We’ll spend the day speaking about him, remembering the incredible things he did and the impact he had on all of our lives. It will be a difficult day as it is every year, I’m not even sure how I’ll make it through it. Sometimes when I’m in such a maze of grief I remind myself that my brother may be gone physically, but that his spirit still lives on. I see it in his children’s faces and expressions — they look so much like him. I see it in all the good fortune we have had in our lives since his death. I know that he is watching over us.

Today represents a big step for me. I’ve been writing on Medium for over a year and have never been able to write about the pain I feel at having lost my big brother so soon. Over the last week, I have been processing my grief as I do every year and I have been unable to pursue my anti-racism writing. In some ways, it is also because I realize how much my brother as a big Black man was often a victim of despicable racism. He didn’t like to talk about it but I saw how much it made him suffer. Despite a Ph.D. in robotics, he struggled to find a job. When he was in the hospital, he complained about how some of the nurses would treat him badly. He explained how they didn’t believe him when he was in pain. I’m not ready to write about the racism he faced in his life yet, but I will be able to get to it at some point because it is important for people to understand that racism is all-pervasive and that as Black people, it affects every corner of our lives — no space is spared its ugliness.

I consider myself privileged to have been granted a brother like Boris. Even though I would have wanted more time with him, I must say that I am happy for the time I did have. When I close my eyes, I think of all the memories we shared. I remember climbing mangoes trees in Sierra Leone when we were kids, I remember him outrunning me on the red copper-colored earth sports track on the hill above our H8 house in Fourah Bay College, Freetown. I remember the blue and black dress he bought me on my seventeenth birthday. I still have it. I remember his selfless generosity and kindness, I remember how despite his shortcomings, he was the best big brother that anyone could ever wish for. The beautiful memories of him give me the strength to get up and face the world each day. It gives me the determination and drive to succeed. I know that who I am and what I am becoming will make him most proud.

Thank you for reading this important piece that has taken me a while to write.