A Slow Voyage of Acceptance
“I don’t know how to tell you this… [your brother] passed away this morning.”
I had to read the message several times before I processed it. Then my legs stopped holding me up. I sat down hard.
I wasn’t close to my brother, but he trusted me. I’d always assumed that he would kill himself one day, but expecting something doesn’t make it easier to bear when it finally happens.
My deckhand sensed something was wrong and turned from his computer. “Nic? Are you okay?”
I pulled myself together for long enough to get him started on his online training course, then stumbled up to the office.
Most of my brain wasn’t processing; the fraction that still functioned was working through the all-too-familiar mental checklist of, “How to deal with a personal crisis when I’m on board a ship.”
- Stabilise the situation
- Warn my head-of-department that I may have trouble focusing for a while
- Reschedule non-critical tasks
- Ask my close colleagues to give me some space
- Find somewhere safe to cry
- Stay busy with simple jobs until my brain comes back online.
Following the checklist, I held myself together for long enough to explain things to the…
