The most significant event

Somehow I missed the most significant event of my life from my first post. I won't go in to detail about it now but just wanted to add it to my timeline, to give a fuller picture.

On December 18th 2009 my brother Pete died. He literally dropped dead. It took over a year for the inquest but it came in as an unknown, natural cause of death. He was 33.

Most of the family find it frustrating not to know how he died but it isn't a huge issue to me. The end result is the same, he's gone and the most important thing of all is he didn't suffer. Whatever happened it was all so quick that he didn't even reach for his phone in his pocket. Knowing he didn't suffer is huge for me.

So obviously this was a huge event for me and I suffered a lot from it, I still suffer. But there was also a positive that surprised me. I still feel bad saying it but it's the best thing that ever happened to my depression. It gave me my fight back. I felt so bad that Pete couldn't live his life and I was basically choosing not to live mine. I know it wasn't that simple, I had real problems that made life hard but I also used them as excuses. I had given up to an extent and was basically just aiming to do the bare minimum to get through each day. Pete passing made me reflect on all the things that he would never be able to do, all the dreams left unfulfilled. We never know what tomorrow will bring so why keep putting off til tomorrow what we can do today?

At the same time I was thinking about working for myself doing web design which was a hobby of mine. In fact when I traveled down for Christmas I was going to ask Pete if he wanted to help me in some way as he used to have a real passion for design. He wouldn't be able to create but I thought he would be great in a consultant type role. Obviously I never got to ask him but I did get around to setting up the business on my own. It's helped me so much and raised my self worth an untold amount. Knowing I could achieve things and people appreciated and even depended on me was just amazing.

It was a huge turning point in my life and unexpectedly it was for the better. Of course I would give anything to have Pete back but I can't. I can just make the most of what remains. It gave me my simple but powerful mantra -

Live life