Trigger Warning: Suicide
This piece contains reflections on death by suicide.
Three days ago, on the 23rd of December, my eldest brother James died by suicide.
My parents were spending the day travelling by train from where they live on the Franco-Spanish border to where I live on the Franco-Swiss border. The phone rang. My dad’s familiar voice came on. He blurted:
“Emma – have you heard the terrible news?” (I’d heard “bad” news the day before, but not what I would class as “terrible” news).
I replied, “No – what?”
”James has killed himself.”
I’ve never been the recipient of such news before. Only the giver of it, after Julia’s suicide. Mad as it sounds, and yes, it sounds utterly mad, having now experienced both sides of that terrible experience, I might just prefer being the giver of the news, if only to know what is about to be said. But that is only distance, perspective and shock speaking. Right now, I have neither distance nor perspective – only shock. It is so brutal to receive such news.
My shock response, my grief response, is all too familiar to me.
Coherent thinking is not possible. Thoughts come only in fragments. Any writing I do will be a testament to that. Short pieces only. Incoherence bubbling out of me. I have multiple half-baked notions of writing, perhaps a working title or one sentence. That there are so many is because my thoughts are a jumble and cannot cohere long enough to land anywhere.
Emotions are blunted, buffered in the cosy bubble wrap of what I call “protective shock absorber”. I have long been grateful for my layers of protective shock absorber. Numbness and disbelief reign supreme, punctuated with shards of clear and compassionate understanding.
Time is distorted. Stretched. Accelerated. Slowed down. Going backwards. Forwards. Warped. Splitting into multiple pathways – following filaments of known and supposed events leading up to the tragic news, then unknown threads splitting out into unfathomable futures. No solid ground. All versions unable to gain a hold on sinking sand.
My body is on full alert, coursing with adrenaline and cortisol, 24 hours a day. My capacity for sleep, ever my weak spot, dissolves “like salt in a weakened broth”. (*) I fall asleep through sheer sleep deprivation only to awaken violently at 3 am, body pinned to the bed with exhaustion, but mind racing, struggling to grasp on to anything that might make sense.
Nothing does.
I have had ten years of nights where my heart pounds and races, and my mind loops relentlessly. Not one of myriad calming practices has the power to extricate my brain from all the “what ifs” and “if onlys” that come with the terrain that is death, suicide, and grief.
All the while, Christmas rolls on.
Messages of rejoicing and resolutions. Photos of happy gatherings. Hallmark jingles and jarring verses. Smiling faces from the fortunate whose Christmas has not spiralled sideways. I respond with an emoji, and to my closest friends, a note saying simply, “I will write in a few days”. None of the digital invasion into a freshly grieving person’s life is anyone’s fault. It’s just unavoidable. We never know what is going on in another person’s life.
Still, the timing is brutal.
Grief does not pause out of seasonal courtesy. It does not soften because the calendar insists on cheer. Indeed, it exacerbates it. The dissonance is vomit-inducing. Private tragedy colliding with societal celebration, as the world keeps doing what it does at this time of year.
I’ve written before about how Christmas has a way of engraving itself in technicolour when something terrible happens. Long after the decorations are packed away, the body remembers. I know this from experience. My paternal grandmother died on Christmas Day in 1994, and while I don’t always consciously mark it, the date has never been neutral since. She was elderly and ready to go; the texture of that loss is utterly different from a close-in, out-of-order death.
In the last decade, each Christmas has carried additional weight, as new ruptures tore into my life. Far from being a refuge, Christmas became something extra to carry.
It sounds churlish, but I had finally been looking forward to Christmas this year. My parents, now in their late eighties, were coming to stay with me — something I don’t take for granted from one year to the next. After so many years of upheaval and loss, 2025 has been my first extended period of stability. I have been grateful for that all year. I finally felt I’d be able to enjoy Christmas. I was not expecting a new, close-in loss. But here we are.
I like to simply wish people peace at this time of year, but I find that there is none available in this moment. Too much is reawakened, particularly around Julia. This is such a shocking space – the aftermath of a suicide. This close in, I remain grateful for the protective bubble.
For those who do find joy and peace in this season, I am truly glad and hope it long remains so. And for those carrying devastation beneath the veneer of the seasonal cheer, may you be met with gentleness, compassion and unflinching support.
(* ) Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye
For reflections written from a different distance in time, see:
A Decade of Decidedly Different Christmas Days (Christmas 2024)
https://kaleidoscopedevelopment.com/a-decade-of-decidedly-different-christmas-days/
Shattered Christmases (Christmas 2020)
https://kaleidoscopedevelopment.com/shattered-christmases/
Photo: A selfie taken by James on his last day alive, in the Lake District. I am so grateful to have received this beautiful photo from his dear friend, Guy.
