Louisa’s story
Louisa and Joe
Louisa speaks about her grief following her brother’s unexpected death.
Louisa’s brother Joe died in August 2020 aged 31. She was staying with her parents for the weekend when her older brother, who she shared a flat with in London, didn’t show up for work.
“I got a couple of Instagram DMs from his team that he works with at Global. And they said, ‘Joe’s not come in this morning, are you at home?’ and I said, ‘no, I’m actually at my parents’ house, I’m sorry. I’m sure he’s just overslept but can you like keep ringing him’.
As time passed, Joe’s friends went to check on him and then stopped replying to Louisa’s messages. She thought something didn’t feel right and told her mum they should drive to the flat, but then the police showed up.
“I was in the kitchen, and I saw a police car coming down the drive. I screamed and ran straight to the door, and I just screamed, and I was just saying ‘no, no, this is not happening, this can’t be happening’. Like your worst nightmare. The thing that you think is the smallest chance of happening is happening and it just terrifies you.
“Mum ran to the door and then obviously seeing the policewoman she said, ‘please don’t tell me my son is dead.’ She said, ‘Are you the Lyons family, can I come in?’ and she walked in the door and said, ‘I’m really sorry but Joseph has passed away.’
“We all just kind of fell to our knees. And Dad hadn’t even had any clue there was any issues [that morning], so he was just like ‘what is happening, there’s not even an issue, why are you even here telling me this.’
“We were all just in shock. We had no idea he was struggling.”
It wasn’t until later on that afternoon Louisa’s family learned Joe had taken his own life.
“We just thought he had hit his head in the shower, or I don’t know something that was completely out of his control. We had to wait on the coroner’s report to tell us any more information and it said that it had appeared that he had taken his own life.
“We never expected anything like this to happen. It was completely unexpected. He never showed signs of struggling with his mental health, and I guess that’s half the problem, you don’t necessarily know how someone else is struggling until you talk to them.”
Louisa says her and Joe went from winding each other up as kids to living together as adults. Reflecting on their childhood together she said:
“He loved winding me up, so we had a dog crate at home, and he did the classic, ‘ bet you can’t fit in the crate’ and I’d be like ‘I bet you a pound I can’. So, then I’d get in the crate, and he’d lock me in, and then I’d have to say, ‘mum, he’s locked me in the crate again’. And then he would say, ‘stop snitching on me’. So, we just did things like that quite a lot, and messing around.
“It wasn’t until he went to university, so I would have been in about year 8, that I actually started to miss him. And then when I then went to uni, he started to say things like, ‘I’m so proud of you’, and things I hadn’t necessarily heard him say before and it meant the world to me. I don’t think he realised just having those comments from him now and then meant so much to me.”
After university, Louisa and Joe moved in together in London.
“It kind of happened as a spur of the moment and I didn’t expect it cause I thought he was always the cooler older sibling, and I was the geeky younger sibling. And the last thing I thought he would want for his rep was to live with his sister.
“But it was good fun, and because of his working hours, we missed each other quite a lot but would catch up on the weekend and watch movies together. And things he loved like jelly and popcorn – he was just one big kid. So just having watching films together and things was just quite cute.”
Looking back on those times now, Louisa says it’s sort of love/hate relationship with her memories.
“I’m still in the flat and when Joe passed away, I didn’t come back for a year. And then I thought, I just didn’t know if Joe would want me to live in the flat because it’s got these really horrible memories of missing someone that you always thought would be there but also these really lovely memories of him just sitting on the sofa and spilling spaghetti down himself cause he’s drunk and had come back late and is really hungry. These funny little memories that occasionally just crop up.
“I still go home, because my parents aren’t far away, on weekends, but it comes in waves I guess, and I don’t really know what I’d do in the future. But for now, it’s nice to have that place that I know Joe used to like. This was his home, and he chose this place, so I know it was special to him.”
Following Joe’s death, Louisa went to counselling but also experienced anxiety for the first time as she learned to cope with her grief.
“I started getting panic attacks or I have nightmares mum and dad are going to die and then I’m going to be on my own and what do I do. And I suddenly felt this wave and then your body kind of tenses and you get these tingles in your toes and your hands, and you get really hot, and then you get ill, and it just feels grim. And I didn’t know what was happening because it had never happened before.
“So that was a big challenge and then obviously like the lifelong challenge of not having Joe. When they’re an older sibling they’ve always been in our life. But now you don’t have them anymore so what do I need to do to step up and kind of fill those boots a little bit just to guide the family and be there for mum and dad as they get older. “
“You always think of when a parent dies at least you’ve got a sibling who’s also feeling the same pain but now I’m just thinking of the future of just being on my own. It’s so depressing.”
Louisa said her family all found different ways to cope with their own grief.
“The first year just felt like admin and supporting mum and dad. So, you don’t feel like you process anything and with mum and dad, mum wore her heart on her sleeve so when she was down you could see that. And you had to do everything you possibly could to comfort her and put all of the dogs in her face to feel that love again, you know. Whereas Dad is quite mathematical, and he likes to write things and work on projects to keep his mind busy which is why we then have the charity (Joe’s Buddy Line) because he just puts all his effort into that.
“And then I’d be there to oversee them both and check in on them both, and all I wanted was to with my grief was just get in the car and drive. And mum would know I was having a moment, but she didn’t talk about it because I didn’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to say, but you just had to let your feelings out because it’s so raw and unexpected, you just didn’t know what else to do with them.”
In January 2021, Louisa and her family set up Joe’s Buddy Line. A legacy they could leave in Joe’s name which aims to protect the mental health of young people in primary school through to university.
Louisa says they hope that they can help people from a young age know it’s okay to feel the emotions they’re feeling and how they can then go about dealing with them.
“We go into schools, and we give them free initiatives and we speak to mental health professionals and if there isn’t someone there then we train them. And we would train quite a few because it’s not for just one person, you need a couple of people in a school.”
“We find out what the main mental health struggles might be for that school; might be like self-harm or bullying. And then we have these amazing leaflets, we’ve got a buddy board, a buddy bench, and there’s so many things on offer and we do everything for free. We can do workshops with parents and guardians with governors, teachers, and students themselves.
“We’re expanding so hopefully if there’s someone out there who feels that they need support they can get their school to reach out to us if we haven’t already spoken to them and try and get those conversations started to see how we can help.”
Reflecting on her grief, Louisa advises anyone who has lost a sibling to keep their memory alive and try continuing to celebrate those memorable dates:
“I think I was quite scared at the beginning of talking about Joe in case I got sad or making other people feel uncomfortable but at the end of the day who cares because you just want to talk about that person. Just keep them alive however you can.”
“ So, I would say celebrate them at the anniversaries, don’t think about them as a sadness as best you can. That person would want you to have a birthday cake for their birthday or celebrate the amazing things they did. Stay in touch with the people that loved them as well because I think that’s a precious network of people and they understand the loss that you have felt.”
She also says there was one thing her friends who do which was really helpful and might help others who have a friend who is grieving.
“People would text and say don’t feel like you need to reply. I loved that cause then you didn’t have the pressure. So, I would just send a little emoji back to say I’ve read it and I appreciate it.”
In remembering her brother, Louisa said he was a genius in his own right.
“He always did things in a way you would never really expect, always kept you on your toes. And everything he did, he did with his own spin on it.
“He was just a character, one of a kind. And I don’t really think I’ll ever like meet someone like him in my life because he was so unique and so spontaneous. If he ever annoyed you, you could never get angry, you would just laugh because he had such a charm with things. You could just never get annoyed at him. He was just a very much one-of-a-kind person.”
