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I remember sitting there in the chair speechless and completely shocked. How could this happen to me? Was it a mistake or something?

I was only seven when my brother committed suicide so I didn’t fully understand what was happening, but to me the whole situation felt unreal.

Jack was only 16 at the time. I remember hearing my mum mumble the words ‘it’s Jack, he’s dead’. I remember feeling chills rushing down my spine. I didn’t know how to tell anybody as I was still in major shock.

A week passed and I went back to school. Everyone was asking me if I had been sick or why I had been off. I told them about what had happened but most of them didn’t believe me.

I don’t blame them as I know how hard it is to believe, but I still felt angry and confused because I thought they would believe me. Now I’ve come to see that it was a hard thing to accept. Other children used to say ‘he can’t have killed himself or you would be crying’. But no matter what anyone else said, I knew that it was real.

My family used to try and get me alone so they could ask me about how I was feeling. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say or how to feel. They used to think that I must be really upset and that I was hiding my sadness. But I wasn’t because I was only seven and too young to properly understand what was going on.

Now I have moved on because I realise that I can’t let the past ruin my life. I still think about Jack but I don’t let it get in the way of enjoying life. It just goes to show that grieving is hard but everyone moves on.

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