DEATH MIDWIFE PROBES REGRET, SADNESS IN REFLECTION ON BROTHER'S SUICIDE

When I saw the title "A Death Midwife's Perspective on Suicide" I did not suspect the post was by someone whose brother had died by suicide only a month before she wrote it, but so it was:

My brother, my best friend in life ... lost his battle with bipolar on February 25th ... My brother was also my hero, and we loved to rib each other. I miss him so much every day.

I was reminded, as I read, how much we who have lost a loved one to suicide have in common, regardless of who we are (or who we think we are); and I am grateful to the author, Rowan MistWalker --

a professional tarot and oracle diviner ... [who] from time to time, when Spirit wishes ... serve[s] as a medium, helping others connect with their departed loved ones

-- for reminding me of that.

Her post is a painfully candid review of her interactions with her brother during the final weeks of his life, in which she explains her regrets as eloquently as I've ever heard a survivor of suicide loss explain them:

I wish I had the compassion, the strength, the courage to confront him as he was, day by day, losing the will to live.

That comes from the kind of soul-searching not circumscribed by a person's religious preference, and the remorse and sadness in it breaks my heart. Other people may have the cosmos arranged a bit differently than I do, but if you prick them, do they not bleed? Suicide has shown me the truth of that again and again, both in how it claims its victims with indifference toward "who they are" and in how its aftermath serves as a great and awful equalizer among the bereaved.

Her post includes a picture of Ms. MistWalker's brother, and he looks like a person who would "rib" his sister (and take a good ribbing from her). No doubt he will be missed every day ...