“I was like you. Angry. We were close, my brother and I. Thomas.” He smiled. “We did everything together. I was the youngest, just like you.” Simon sat forward, elbows on his legs. “And just like you, he didn’t tell me how he was feeling before he left us. I was furious. I became so angry it ate away at me like a disease. That was, until a therapist asked me a question that completely turned everything on its head.”
“What was that?” I asked, voice rough but laced with desperation. I wanted to know anything that could take this anger away for good. That would help me see Cillian differently than I did. I loved him. I just needed a way to understand.
Simon sat back and faced me again. “We all know that depression is a nasty, destructive mood disorder. But the problem is, many people skirt over just how debilitating it can be.” Guilt, swift and strong, wrapped around my heart.
Simon sighed. “Let me ask you this, Cael.” I hung off his every word. “If Cillian had had a terminal illness, if he’d had a long battle with, let’s say, cancer, would you be angry at him for dying?”
Just picturing Cillian dying that way made my stomach fall so low it was endless. “Of course not,” I said vehemently. “Who would think that?”
“You see, Cael,” Simon said softly, carefully, “depression, for some, can be so difficult to live with that it is a terminal illness.” Something was happening to the fire inside of me as he spoke. It was growing weaker. Losing its heat.
Second by second, as I replayed Simon’s words in my mind, that protective shield in my chest began to fall, exposing the mangled and sorrow-filled heart that lay beneath.
“Depression, for some, can be so difficult to live with that it is a terminal illness …”
“Depression is a sickness that eats away at all happiness and light until there is nothing left but hopelessness and despair. Like cancer ravishes the body, depression ravishes the mind, the soul, the spirit. It’s a silent killer, stealing life away gradually, moment by moment, extinguishing all light from the soul.” Simon laid a hand on my back. “Understanding that can help douse the anger that you have for Cillian for leaving you. And perhaps put you on the path to forgiveness, and a chance to mourn him without judgment. To help you understand why he did what he did, and that you couldn’t have done anything to stop it … and, by the end, neither could he.”
Cillian … No …
I bent down and let the fire completely fade until I was raw and exposed and twisted up from guilt. And the tears came. The tears came so fast and free that I could barely breathe, could barely see. Cillian had been sick. He hadn’t wanted to leave us, leave me, but his illness had taken him away. Just like Poppy had been taken from Savannah. He couldn’t help it … my brother couldn’t help it.
“Let’s get you back to your room, son,” Leo’s soft voice said, cutting through my emotional collapse. When I looked up, the sun had gone from the sky and the moon was rising, stars bursting into the black sky by their hundreds. Simon was still beside me. He’d stayed with me as I had broken down.
We must have been here for hours, suspended in time, with this new perspective.
Leo put his arm through mine and guided me to my feet. I felt weak, like my legs would give out at any time. With the blame gone, it was like I had just lost Cillian all over again. “I held him in my arms,” I whispered to Leo and leaned against him, gripping tightly to his arms.
“I know, son. I know.”
“He’s not coming back,” I said, and the cries that were ripping from my chest were brutal and sore. My emotions caved in. The sadness that followed was an avalanche, building and building until it was unstoppable.
“Cael?” A voice I would recognize in any lifetime broke through the fog of my grief. I looked up through swollen eyes to see Savannah rushing over with Mia behind her.
“Savannah …” I said, and she wrapped her arms around me. Had I been calling for her? Maybe? I couldn’t remember.
Too heavy for her to hold, we fell to the ground, knees hitting the grass, fully surrendering to my sadness. “It wasn’t his fault,” I hushed out and held her to my chest. Her cherry and almond scent wrapped around me too, keeping me safe in our bubble. “It wasn’t his fault, Peaches. He was sick. He was sick and couldn’t fight it …” I broke to pieces in the crook of her neck. I knew Leo and Mia were nearby, keeping watch. Just in case.
“He was sick, baby,” Savannah said, running her hand up and down my spine. “He was such a good person, who loved you so much. He wouldn’t have left you if he could have helped it. I didn’t know him, but I know that.” I gripped on to Savannah’s shirt tighter and just held on as my body shed months and months of anger and guilt and shame and grief onto the ground beneath us.
Eventually, Leo and Mia helped us back to my room. I lay on the bed, exhausted and feeling so ripped open it was as painful as an open wound. Savannah sat beside me. Leo sat on a chair at my other side.
I pictured Cillian in my arms, broken and gone. It hadn’t been his fault … he wasn’t to blame. But
I’d blamed him.
I was the bad brother.
I blinked in the room, feeling like I was seeing everything differently now. Savannah moved next to me, and I curled into her lap, arms wrapped tightly around her waist. I wanted to be sure she couldn’t leave me too. I heard the light sniffs of her own sorrow. I had never been more thankful for a person’s love and support in my entire life than I was right then.
“I’ll give you a few moments alone,” Leo said, clearly speaking to Savannah. “I’ll be back shortly. Call out if I’m needed.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. I heard him leave the room and held on to Savannah even tighter.
Taking a breath hurt my chest, and my limbs felt like they were made from lead. I glanced up at Savannah and met her sad blue eyes. “I love you, Peaches,” I rasped. “I’m … I’m so sorry …” I said, feeling nothing but guilty that I had laid all this at her feet.
Savannah shifted down the bed until she lay beside me. “I love you,” she said and stroked my hair back from my face. “There is nothing to be sorry for.” Concern was written all over her pretty face. Concern for me.
“He’s gone, Sav,” I said, and for the first time in a year, I really let that fact settle within me. It felt like being whipped with a thousand blades. But I had let it in.
Finally. All of it. Everything. Every ounce of pain.
“I know,” Savannah whispered. I felt the sorrow in her voice and touch.
“I’ll never see him or speak to him again.”
“I know.” Savannah let tears track down her cheeks.
“What … what if he’s not in a better place?” My heart squeezed at that thought. What if he never got to wherever we go?
“He’s at peace,” Savannah said with conviction. I could hear in her voice that she believed it.
“It hurts,” I said and threaded my fingers through hers. I squeezed her hand twice. Our sign that I was falling. But I knew this time I had to. I had to feel this. I had to allow true grief in to get better.
“You’re strong,” Savannah said. “And I’ll be here for you when you’re not.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.