Sam Meekings was jolted awake by his phone ringing in the middle of the night. Half-asleep, he initially thought it was his alarm, but it was his mother on the line. 'It's Luke,' she said, and instantly he knew something terrible had happened. His younger brother was dead at just 24.
Luke had pulled over on the side of the road while driving home from work. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late. He had cardiomyopathy, a heart muscle disease that caused his heart to swell and grow too large. The family never knew.
When Sam heard the news, the first emotion that overwhelmed him was guilt. 'I should have taken care of him,' he thought, berating himself for not noticing how red-faced and short of breath Luke had been. The rest of that awful day in 2008 remains a blur. He must have packed a bag and traveled home, but he barely remembers. What he does recall is feeling unbearably nauseous, feverish, and panicked.
That feeling lingered as days turned into weeks. But Sam couldn't explain the pain, guilt, and desperation to himself, let alone talk about it. So he bottled it all up and didn't even tell anyone at work what had happened. When he finally returned to the office after two weeks off, he pretended he had been sick.
Luke was a whirlwind, and the world felt empty without him. He was a prankster and a daredevil, always getting into trouble at school because he couldn't sit still. He was forever dreaming up practical jokes or elaborate schemes. Life was a rush for him, and Sam had to try his best to keep up, but he was his companion and co-conspirator. They were often in fierce competition.
Though Sam moved away from home as an adult, Luke stayed local, working as a bouncer and then on a construction site. They would catch up whenever Sam came home, chatting and laughing about their shared history. On the day Luke died, everything stopped making sense. The phone call from his mother kept replaying in his mind. It was like a terrible dream he couldn't wake from. Without Luke, Sam wasn't sure who he was.
In the weeks after the funeral, many friends called, inviting him out or offering sympathy, but Sam kept making excuses. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want help. He just wanted his brother back.
When Sam returned to work, he felt ashamed and embarrassed of how broken he was. He would find himself tearful and overwhelmed at his desk, running to the bathroom to hide and calm down. He swung between rage and sadness, anger and confusion. He tried to push these feelings down, telling himself he was supposed to be stoic and strong for his family.
While his boss knew what had happened, no one else in the office was aware. He squirmed when he repeated the lie to his colleagues that he hadn't been well, but he couldn't bear the thought of being pitied at work. Some co-workers suspected there was more going on, but Sam became an expert at deflecting questions about how he was doing by giving vague answers and turning conversations back toward them. He knew that if he spoke about his brother, he might start sobbing and never stop.
So he kept his head down, avoiding the break room and anywhere else he might get caught in casual conversation. But he worried he was falling apart. He couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two at night, lost his appetite, and couldn't focus at work.
That's when he started writing. At first, he wrote short letters to Luke, telling him what he was missing and how angry he was that he had left them to pick up the pieces. Then he started writing journals to process what had happened, focusing on the moments he was at his lowest ebb, like the time he fleetingly thought he saw his brother again in the supermarket. He tried to write a little every evening.
By the time he changed jobs a year later, he felt able to be open about what he had been through. He didn't shoehorn his dead brother into conversation, but he no longer tried to change the topic whenever bereavement came up. It was only through writing that he could articulate his grief to himself. He wanted to keep Luke alive in spirit, and he got so much pleasure from recording and reliving their shared history that he began to think it might benefit others too.
That's when he got the idea for his book, Wonder and Loss. Writing the book meant facing the fear of being vulnerable. He had been so ashamed of his emotions that the only place he could be open about them was on the page, but now he was about to share them with the world. It was terrifying, but seeing the book published was incredibly worthwhile because he knew others would realize they weren't alone in their struggles with grief.
Nowadays, life is still sometimes messy and heartbreaking. Some days he feels good, and other days he hears one of Luke's favorite songs in a movie or TV show and is plunged right back into heartbreak. The difference is that now he knows how to handle these difficult times by setting his feelings down in words.
His advice for anyone going through a devastating loss is to be patient. Everyone grieves differently, and processing grief can be incredibly difficult. Be kind to yourself, talk to others if you can, and maybe try putting pen to paper. Without writing, Sam says he would have lost himself completely in his pain; instead, he was able to map out a path through the darkness.
