Another member of our family left abruptly on 7.8. only 2 years after father. I’m feeling so empty. This was something I could not expect at all!
I thought that Saturday would be just an ordinary day. I woke up normally in the morning, got up and started my morning like every morning: looking at the phone. I noticed that I had received both a call and a message. Both were from the same person, a friend of my brother. In the message, he said my brother was in poor condition and asked to be contacted quickly.
I called him immediately and this friend told me how he had tried to get my brother to the doctor because her lungs were blocked, she had a hard cough and she sounded weird. My brother had claimed to have already taken the corona test and then to the doctor again, but it had been revealed to be a lie. I heard a friend’s recording of my brother’s speech, and in it my brother really sounded strange: stuffy and otherwise weird. According to a friend, my brother had also been drinking a lot of alcohol recently, which was heard from the speech. I had lived in the belief that my brother was living with his girlfriend’s family, but I learned that he had lived alone in his home (my mother’s apartment) for the past few weeks. We agreed that I would call my brother and try to get him to the hospital -if he will answer to me-. Before we ended the call, my brother’s friend got a message from my brother’s girlfriend saying he had ordered an ambulance for my brother. I tried to call my brother after this call but he did not answer me.
It was only a week back we did talk with my brother. To my previous evening’s message he hadn’t responded, and I had been about to call him anyway. I was so confused.
Later, I called my brother’s girlfriend, and asked if she would know where my brother had been taken, but she didn’t know either. We concluded that he would be at Meilahti Hospital (HYKS -Helsinki university central hospital) or Haartman hospital. It turned out that he had been taken to Haartman Hospital but transferred to the Meilahti Intensive Care Unit.
The doctor said he was in a critical condition. His heart had once already stopped, but it had been restarted. His condition was treated as a pulmonary embolism although it was not actually known what was bothering him. I began to fear the worst though on the other hand I wanted to believe myself that my brother would survive. He has to survive, I thought… but he didn’t.
In the evening before eleven he took his last breath and left this world behind. It was time for him to get to his much-needed father.
My brother in the grandparents’ apartment (where he himself later lived when the apartment remained with mother). I am in the background photo (right, bottom) 2 years old and my mother is in that big painting 11 years old. 
My brother with his ex-girlfriend. This is our trip to Stockholm when mom turned 50yrs in 1994. 
My brother, I and mom. The same trip.
All that is left of my family is my mother and me… Speaking of mother, the next day when I told her of my brother’s departure, she took this surprisingly calmly. It scared me immensely to tell her about this because the departure of your child is perhaps the worst thing that can happen. It is so wrong that a son dies before his mother. Luckily, my mother’s memory illness protected her, as she seemed to have forgotten about this almost immediately. Mom also asked if Grandma and Grandpa had already heard of this, even though they had both been in the grave for well over 20 years.
However, I am grateful that father was not experiencing the departure of his only son. I can only imagine how painful it would have been for him.
Again, a funeral is coming. They are already the sixth funeral in my family within four years. So many unpleasant things have happened in recent years that there must be enough of it for years to come or atleast I really do hope so.
I have now, for the first time, arranged the funeral myself because I am the only relative who can do it (when my mother is in a nursing home). Today the pastor called and we went through the occasion. The pastor also surprisingly announced that my brother’s girlfriend had asked if she could come before the blessing to say goodbye. Apparently she had claimed that she had not been invited to the funeral, although that was not the case. I have invited her. She clearly doesn’t want to come, and I think I know why… but I will tell you more about this later because it’s already actually entirely its own chapter…
For a long time my mind revolved around what really happened to my brother. He was so young, only 47 years old. About a week ago, I finally heard about the causes of the autopsy. The main cause was cirrhosis of the liver which was certainly due to excessive alcohol consumption of which I had no knowledge before on the day of his death when I heard of it from my brother’s friend.
The other two causes of death were: gastrointestinal bleeding, and myocardial hyperplasia. I was quite shocked to hear the reasons. Hard things only for a 47-year-old man. I did know that my brother had been diagnosed with depression last year, but for that he had received medications that he said would work well. Admittedly, I heard from a girlfriend that the effectiveness of the medication was apparently starting to wane, or else my brother stopped eating them. Personally, I suspect he used too much alcohol with medication that negated their effectiveness.
I have been so confused about all this because I myself did not really notice anything different in my brother. He always sounded normal on the phone. The only thing I saw afterwards was that he was a little tasting lately when we talked on the phone, but only a little. He covered his drinking well.
I have also heard from his friends that they were forbidden to tell me anything that does bother me now. I wish they had told me. Maybe I could have done something. On the other hand, his friends also tried to help, but they didn’t get him to improve his lifestyle either. It ultimately depends on yourself. Still, it feels bad that I didn’t notice anything, and I didn’t even understand trying to help.
My brother didn’t tell me about all his worries, not even that he was actually resigning from his girlfriend. It is also sad that he suffered all alone at home in his last moments. It feels so bad when I think about it. When I went to his apartment, there was blood in the pot and there was a container next to the bed that also had a little bloody vomiting. He’s been in really bad shape!
Well, I can only hope he’s in better place now. At least the suffering is over now … and I want to believe that they are happily together with dad and watching us from above the cloud.
Forever my dear brother, rest in peace!
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