Loss of my brother

[scott76]

Hi everyone and thank you for listening to me. In January this year, my brother passed aeay st the age of 47. He was a fit and healthy guy and played a lot of tennis. I came back from overseas on Boxing Day and spoke to my brother for an hour and he was in great spirits and looking forward to 2 weeks off work and seeing my twins in February.

I tried to call Justin a couple of days after Boxing Day and the phone rang out. I also sent him texts each day and didn’t get any response. I didn’t worry too much as I knew he had 2 weeks of leave and was a single guy so thought perhaps he might have gone away. On the 11th January 2025, I started to become really worried and called police for a welfare check. That afternoon I got the worst news of my life when police came over and said Justin was deceased in his bed. They also advised there was no forced entry or anything suspicious and it appeared he had died of natural causes.

I flew straight down from Brisbane and my sister and I arranged Justin’s funeral and had to give DNA for identification as the heat had caused body changes. We were in shock and distraught to know our beloved brother passed away in such circumstances and on his own. Our Dad had only passed away 5 months earlier and Justin had been by his side every weekend for the past couple of years as he was in a nursing home. Justin was also there holding my Mums hand when she died in 2011.

Late last week I received the medical report from the coroner and it stated that the cause of death is unascertained which makes it so hard to understand. The report also mentioned that due to Autolysis and body changes it was difficult to ascertain a cause of death.

I am in a senior management role and put on a wall to ensure my team are supported and my job gets done but I feel totally broken. I have 6 year old twins and a loving wife and I don’t want their quality of life to be impacted because their dad and husband is always sad.

I am finding it tough to feel happy about anything and am full of guilt that my brother died alone. There was only 14 months between us and he was my best friend. It feels like the light has gone out in my soul. We still have to go through his house and work out what to do with his clothes,possessions etc which is going to take a few months. We will be interring Justin and Dads ashes at the end of the month and I’d like to be happy to make it a celebration of their lives.

Thank you everyone for listening to me. I really appreciate it.

Topic

[VM-Johann]

Hi Scott, thank you for reaching out – what you have related is very tragic event. Loss of someone so close is hard enough, but when the answers we need to provide understanding are not there, this only compounds the grief. So everything you are feeling is completely normal for what you have experienced. It is also very common for us to feel we need to stay completely in control of the normal routines of life – you described your responsibilities as a senior manager and a desire to keep disruption out of your family life.

The fact that you have reached out on this forum is good sign you are actively looking for the support you need, because trying to maintain normal routines and grieving can be very difficult to do longer term if you don’t have those supports. I have been in a position of being a senior manager during a time of grief – and sometimes you can be surprised to discover that a supported work team are more than willing to support you in return by stepping up to do what needs to be done. I have been fortunate to have my reports give me back bandwidth to do the processing and grieving I have needed to do.

It is encouraging to hear that you and your sister are supporting each other through the necessary tasks, and it sounds like you both have a clear idea about remembering and celebrating your brother & father with a meaningful connection. I can only encourage you to have a perusal of the support information on the Griefline website and perhaps consider whether being able to talk someone might also benefit during this process – there is a closed group bereavement support service that might be of interest.

Please try to be gentle on yourself at this time.

[Author]

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