To the brother I never knew: How should I feel grief for you?

Back when I was a teenager – back when I first heard of you – I truly did not know what to make of you. Your passing was just a phone conversation that I had no part of. I remember it vividly, but perhaps not as detailed as I’d like. It was a long time ago.

“One of the children has passed away,” my mother had said.

Now, that was a surprise to me. My brother isn’t dead; he’s comfortably working his retail job.

“No, no,” my mother followed up over the phone, “One of my husband’s children from a former marriage. Yes, it was a workplace accident.”

Former marriage? I wasn’t aware that my father had any former marriages. I was interested in knowing more. Curiosity piqued. It’s a bit of a shame I never asked, but I found my answers anyway.

And who knew that the answers to many of my questions were right in my bedroom? I had no idea that the tub of documents that sat in the corner – collecting dust – were legal, and handwritten on them were the names of the brothers I had never seen. When I came across the first names in the pile, I’d spent the rest of the afternoon picking through sheafs and flicking off dust and cobwebs. It didn’t reveal any more.

At some point, my brother – the one I knew – had poked his head into my room and asked why I was going through the thick pile of our father’s documents. I simply dismissed him. But, more than anything, what was I going to do with this wealth of information? I felt awkward. Awkward that this had been in my room for years. Awkward that I had half-brothers who lived halfway across the country.

Regardless, I had names and basic information on how my brother died. It didn’t take long to find a few news pieces on the internet. Of course, “workplace accident” described it pretty well, and the poor guy had only been married for a couple of months. Reading this was a detached experience. Detaching in the way that this person was my family member, yet I’d never known them.

It wouldn’t be until almost a decade later, when I searched again, did I find the cause of death. A co-worker – a crane operator – had gotten a hand cramp. He couldn’t let go of the controls and crushed my brother. His life was snuffed out painfully and he died in the hospital.