Therapy with a Ghost: Conversations with My Brother After He Died

I started writing to my brother on the day he died.

Not because I thought it would become anything. I just didn’t know what else to do with myself. So, I wrote to him. Like he was still with me. Because, in a way, he was.

My younger brother Sam had Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It’s the sort of condition where you don’t lose someone all at once. You lose them slowly, muscle by muscle, over the years. You get used to adapting, to helping, to helplessly watching and knowing, somewhere in the back of your mind, what’s coming. This is what I've understood to be called anticipatory grief.

And when the inevitable happens, it still shocks you to the core.

The first thing I wrote to Sam was basically: I’m coming to see you. Which made no sense. I had just found out that he had just died and was on a train journey to see him on his deathbed. It was the worst experience ever. But I needed to talk to him. To keep him alive, so he wouldn't disappear properly.

So, I opened my notes app on my phone, and I didn’t stop. I still haven’t.

I write to him like we’re texting. Or like I’ve just got off the phone and remembered something else I wanted to say. Sometimes it’s serious, and most of the time it’s not. But it helps.

It’s like therapy, but the therapist is your dead brother. And weirdly, it works.

There’s something about keeping the relationship going that stops everything from collapsing in on itself. People talk a lot about 'moving on' or 'letting go,' but that’s complete and utter bull to me. Why would I let go of him? He’s my brother. That doesn’t just stop.

I talk to him when I’m walking, when I’m on the train, when I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. He’s still involved. Just differently.

Over time, all that writing turned into a memoir. I’m on a Journey to See You, Sam.

It’s those conversations. Those love letters. Those diary entries. Those therapy sessions. It's messy, honest, sometimes funny, sometimes dark. It’s ultimately just an older brother trying to figure things out while still talking to his younger brother.

I've learnt from this experience that grief isn’t something you solve. It’s something you carry. And sometimes the best way to carry it is to keep the person with you, in whatever way you can. 

For me, that’s writing. For someone else, it might be something completely different. But I don’t think we need to be so quick to shut those connections down. Sometimes it’s ok to keep talking to the people we’ve lost. Even if no one answers back.

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