Umaymah – In My Mind

I thought I was going to spend more time with my little brother during the lockdown, but little did we all know, he would pass away peacefully in his sleep.  Instead we were grieving in complete isolation from all the family and friends we probably would have grieved with had we not been in isolation, and that was all a bit of a blur and very strange.  

I keep being told how awful things must be for my mum, and we can all imagine and recognise the difficulties that must come with losing a child.  No-one can deny that, but no-one talks about how difficult it is to lose a sibling.  He was my best friend, and someone who was so incredibly intelligent, funny, caring and still the most talented and loving person I know.  

I am so lucky to have had someone who was always there for me, and he always gave me great advice and made me laugh, I’d always rant to him about everything and somehow we never really annoyed each other too much and I am so blessed to know that he loved me unconditionally, because I know he would have done anything for me and I would have done anything and everything for him. We were a team.

I really thought I would have him forever.  I mean who else is in your life from your earliest childhood memory and stays with you until you grow into old age? Your siblings.  If you’re lucky enough to have one like mine, then we should have had the most beautiful friendship that would have lasted our entire lifetime, but for some reason my friendship of a lifetime was cut short, way way way too short.  And it’s painful to think that there may come a day where I would have spent more of my life without him than with him.

To this day, he is the greatest love I have ever known, and I wouldn’t wish this loss on anyone.  In one of our final conversations, he told me I should keep writing songs, and so like always, I followed his advice and I wrote a song about my grief journey so far.  I will be sharing all of my proceeds with my grief song to CRY, because even if the song can raise awareness so that one person can get a screening and prevent one death, then I will be forever grateful that I could do that for someone in my brother’s memory.

If you know of any other siblings who have lost someone, please share this song with them.  Unfortunately, there are so many of us, there just aren’t enough people talking about it.  It is hard, and it really sucks, but I hope we all find peace and strength to get through the difficult days – because there will be many.  There’s so much that I miss, and so many experiences and memories I won’t get to make with him, and that’s difficult to work through.  But somehow I pray that we all find a way to learn to live a happy and beautiful life while we continue to carry the heart break from our sibling loss with us.  I hope we learn to live for ourselves and our siblings, and live a life that would honour them and make them so so proud of us.

Yes my brother died, but I know that his love continues to live on with me; all his memories and all of his love lives with me, in my heart and in my mind.

Thank you for reading, and please share.

– Umaymah