Sometimes I am a little angry

I am doing my thesis on suicide bereavement.  Grief and suicide are both great passions of mine and so I have combined the two into the culminating work of my Master's degree.  I am under a little bit of pressure to ensure that I get it done in time to graduate--having a baby kinda threw a wrench into my grand scheme of things.

Today I have spent hours reading and re-reading my transcribed interviews and I feel a little angry.  Several weeks ago, I had an emotional breakdown while looking at the data.  I wrote a bit about it earlier.  While I do not imagine I will ever stop missing my brother, today I am a little mad at him. My last memory of him is a trip to Four Peaks mountain in Arizona...the same mountain where he later took his own life.  I don't remember much about the trip except that I pretended to sprain my ankle to come home early--and that I was scared.  One of the key factors in my brother's suicide was the abandonment and rejection he felt from his birth father (my mother's first husband).  One of his last comments to my mother was, "I hope Quintin's (that's me) trust doesn't get broken like mine was."

Well you know what, it was.  And he was the one that did it.  He was so obsessed with his own issues of abandonment and rejection that he abandoned and rejected his eight-year-old brother that worshiped him.  It is a little unfair that every time I go hiking or camping I think of that hike and how I wish it would have gone differently.

Even with all that said, I still love him.  I still miss him.  My love of the outdoors, as well as Batman, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars are all ways in which I remember him and keep him close to me.   While I was down in Arizona last time I snapped a picture of this copied picture with my phone.  It is now one of the two pictures I have of Eric.  The other I also snapped with my phone, but I love this picture especially.  It is how I remember Eric.  I looks a lot like his Suzuki (that I remember vividly) and I have almost identical shirt.  But more than his before-his-time ability at taking a selfie, I love his smile.  He looks real to me.