The deepest loss is one you forget
A little melancholy going on at the moment. This year marks the 20th year since the suicide of my cousin Tracy, who was one of the closest people to me in my youth after my parents.
I was nine when it happened. I’d known Tracy as a loving young woman who was always ready to play and take care of me when I was a child, but who was always a little sad and distant towards the end of her life. The pain that eventually resulted in her death was something I simply couldn’t understand at that age, bu there have been times recently when I’ve been able to finally appreciate what drove her to that point.
She was 19 when she died. For the previous few years she had battled with Anorexia Nervosa, perhaps brought on by the stress of knowing her parents no longer loved each other, though that might be just speculation. Shortly before she died she came to stay with my family for a few days, and for a moment she seemed like she was starting to get better. Then she suddenly decided to go home again. Days later she took a dose of pain killers that wouldn’t have been even remotely fatal for a healthy woman her age, but was fatal for her because of how damaged her organs were, and how little mass her body had. It was a cry for help.
She was the closest I ever had to a sister.
I’d forgotten until a week ago that this was the 20th year since her death, some time in October I believe. I had been suffering increasingly powerful bouts of depression the last few months that I had initially attributed to my financial situation, but which I now realise were a reaction to the anniversary. My aunt – Tracy’s mother – has said that recently she has been overwhelmed by a desire to talk to Tracy, even though she knows she’s been gone for so long. I realise I too have been feeling something similar all year. A sense of loss that I could never properly place or identify, a feeliung of desire to communicate, though with whom and what about I had no idea.
Music would provoke emotional reactions when normally it would just be a little entertaining. Scenes in films where characters are reunited with their loved ones, or where the narrative described characters surviving profound and testing events, would bring me to tears when normally I would be unmoved.
I miss her.
