Two Brothers Dying by Suicide Seems an Unbelievable Fate

I’m left to wonder about my own in a family marked by trauma

Jul 07, 2025

**Author’s photo — My Brothers.** Left: Tony, circa 1995, age 33. Right: Greg, circa 1982, age 22

I looked down at my phone on the desk as it vibrated silently. My aunt’s name flashed across the screen, and my heart sank. She only calls when something’s wrong. She is, inadvertently, the bearer of bad news.

Aunty Di, my mother’s younger sister, was once my partner in crime. With only twelve years between us, I was in my mid-teens when she’d let me tag along to do grown-up things like drink, smoke, and get up to general mischief. And although she and Mum were close sisters, Di never told her about our shenanigans. She was an ally when I needed one. Di didn’t know it though; I kept my secrets to myself.

Bonds can fade over time as life takes us in different directions. Di got married and had a baby while I kept pretending to chase dreams. I didn’t realise I was chasing ghosts, trying to outrun a destiny that looked a lot like hers. Marriage and kids? No thanks. I had bigger plans for my life, and changing nappies wasn’t on my bucket list.

I’d be a free-spirited nomad, escaping the mental confines of my upbringing. I wouldn’t be like my two older brothers either, nomads of a different kind.

Tony was two years older, and by the time he turned thirteen, he already knew he was an alcoholic. From his first sneaky sip of whisky from Dad’s stash, he unwittingly set in motion a life destined to fail. He would follow a long line of ancestors haunted by that demon.

At forty-two, he’d hung himself with a bedsheet in a prison cell – rope is contraband that’s hard to come by, obviously. He was being held on drug charges, waiting for a hearing. I wish he’d waited a bit longer. It might not have been as bad as he thought. I imagine his final act was his last chance at the exorcism he’d been seeking his whole life.

Greg was four years older, and his demon had a completely different nature. A heroin addict by the age of fourteen, he once told me that the first time heroin entered his bloodstream was the first time he understood what peace meant. I was so stunned by his comment that I knew I would never truly understand him. And I never did.

“Marce? I’m sorry to call so early, but I have bad news.”

Of course she did. As if I didn’t already know that. Poor Di, I felt sorry for her. Her voice cracked as she tried to hold it together. She wasn’t the kind of woman who broke down in tears—more of a fighting warrior than a damsel in distress. I thought she was going to tell me her brother had died, my oldest Uncle. It would be sad, but he was over eighty; you’d expect news like that.

“It’s Greg. They found his body late yesterday. They’re not sure when he died, probably two days ago.”

What did she just say?

Time seemed to stand still as my mind struggled to process this new information. My mouth went dry. My tongue felt like a dead weight, unable to move. She kept talking, but it made no sense. It was as if she were telling me about her latest find on a true crime podcast, giving me an update on some mysterious murder.

She paused, and in the silence, I willed my paralysis away.

“What? Who are they? What do you mean, Di? I don’t understand…”

Greg and I had been estranged for the past four years when Di’s call came in September 2021. Dad had died in December 2016, and the reading of his Will sparked a fierce reaction from Tony’s three daughters. My father hadn’t left his dead son anything, and Greg and I were left to cope with the fallout of that decision – a legal battle that lasted a year as our nieces fought for their share. That’s a whole other story.

The fight had somehow become mine and Greg’s as I tried to accommodate everyone. Legal fees ate into our inheritance, and he was furious as if I alone was the cause of the legal battle. He blamed me for being a martyr, always trying to keep the peace when others didn’t deserve it. Greg was never big on sharing; he was more of a taker.

The rift tore us apart. After the final bank transfer, we cut ties with each other, and that’s the last time we spoke.

I didn’t know anything about his life when Di called. Had his long-term dodgy health worsened? Did all those decades of heroin and methadone push his organs too far? Or was it the demons he’d been running from his entire life that finally defeated him, just like Tony?

Yes. As it turned out, the demons caught up to him.

Black Sheep

Since I can remember, Greg bore the weight of Dad’s brutality. Tony received the same, but there was something about Greg that Dad despised. At least, that’s how I saw it as the little sister hidden in the shadows—watching, witnessing, unable to help. Mum tried, but it never ended well. She had just as many bruises as the boys. Staying hidden was my safest choice, and it mostly worked.

Mum’s soft spot for Greg was the culprit. It was as if Dad loathed this weakness, this mollycoddling of his firstborn son. How would he become a man if he were wrapped in a mother's arms every time there was a hiccup?

I can’t begin to understand why my father was a tyrant or why the sight of Greg made him so angry. Hatred seemed to hang in the air whenever they were in the same room. It took decades before I could even make sense of the violence of our childhood, and longer to realise that Dad harboured demons of his own.

Greg would carry those too. He first ran away around age twelve. He should’ve run faster. Dad nearly killed him after that miscalculation. It didn’t stop him, though. He kept running, usually to our grandmother’s house.

Vera, Mum’s mother, was a force to be reckoned with, and she wasn’t afraid of Dad. She adored the boys and would stand up for Greg – and later Tony – hiding him away until Dad caught up. Greg eventually came home like a stray dog, tail between his legs, ready for the inevitable beating.

And one day, Dad stopped chasing him. Greg would disappear for weeks at a time. No one knew where he was.

“Your stupid son has gone walkabout again. That fucking kid must be part Aboriginal. That would explain the black sheep in him. Useless bastard, good for nothing.”

I must have heard that a hundred times. Mum got braver as she got older, but sometimes I wished she’d just keep her mouth shut.

“Yeah, well, if you weren’t such a bully and maybe showed him some love now and then or tried being a compassionate father, he might’ve turned out differently.”

Oh shit.

I’d flinch as I waited for the slap. Sometimes it came, sometimes not, and sometimes Dad would just look at her and walk away. I loved those times.

Greg reappeared less often until he eventually stopped coming back. He moved in with Nanna when he was eighteen. He would come and go from her place, too. Still, no one knew where he went. We found out years later about all those walkabouts.

Overdoses, rehab stints, and time in jail. He’d been through it all by twenty-five and never told anyone in the family. He also had more car crashes and broken more bones than you’d think possible for one lifetime. Yet, he kept surviving. It didn’t matter. Dad could never reach a place of sympathy or say a kind word.

“Evel Knievel strikes again. That bloody kid must’ve been a cat in his last life. Nine lives my arse. He’s had about a dozen already, hasn’t he? Idiot, will be the death of all of us.”

Oh geez.

Judge not…

Dad mellowed over the years, a long story. He and Greg eventually learnt to tolerate each other and found some common ground. But the past was never spoken of, no apologies or accountability. Not in my father’s vocabulary.

I had my differences with Greg. He’d done bad things and made terrible decisions. In my youth, I blamed him, judged him, and wondered how he kept making so many mistakes and hurting so many people.

Tony was the go-between—a different sort of black sheep. I felt closer to him even though he’d done terrible things and let me down in ways brothers shouldn’t. He and Greg shared camaraderie born more out of circumstance than choice, reluctant brothers-in-arms.

They were both troubled, and I never understood either of them, but who was I to judge? Their souls had been broken long before I witnessed any broken bones. They were doomed from the start. How could they ever stand a chance, being born into our family, with a father like ours? How do boys grow into good men when all they’ve experienced is brutality?

They were victims. None of it was their fault. I know better now than to judge.

“The police found him. He’d been missing for a few days. They found his car on a track near an old fishing spot, and then found his body hanging from a gum tree…”

I didn’t hear anything Di said after that.

I sat in silent contemplation as tears quietly rolled down my cheeks. There was no urgency in my grief, no hysteria. I knew the drill. I’d been here before. This is how it begins: the calmness of shock until the floodgates burst, a whirlpool, the spiralling, the ‘but why’ and ‘what ifs’. There’s no stopping it.

Regret seeped in like an old friend come to visit. Invisible arms wrapped around me like tentacles. I know this grip. And then the visuals started.

I pictured the bush track, a fishing hole, and the gum tree. This brother had used a rope, and I wondered if that made it easier. Greg and Tony were both keen fishermen; they knew how to tie knots, every type of knot, which would’ve helped, I’m sure.

It dawned on me that I didn’t know how to tie a knot, not like that. I knew how to tie bows and shoelaces, belts and scarves, but not a hanging knot. And what if one day I need to know that? What if that’s my fate, too? Who will I ask to teach me?

It hit me then, like an electrical zap. What were the chances of two brothers taking their lives in exactly the same way?

Greg, how could you do that when you know how the story ends? When you know what’s left in the aftermath.

I saw it all in my mind’s eye: Greg hanging from that tree, as if Di’s words had cemented my ghostly presence.

In the aftermath

The ones left behind are the other tragedy.

I thought about my nephew Gavin and how close he and Greg had been. Despite Greg’s upbringing, he proved to be a good father. He showed his son all the love, respect, and patience he’d never had. I was truly moved by that.

And now Gavin will be left to face the torment of what his father did, just like Tony’s three daughters. It broke my heart all over again.

I think about Gavin getting married, having kids, and them hearing the stories about a grandfather they’ll never meet. I wonder what stories Gavin will share, and what sort of father he’ll be—a good one, like his dad, no doubt.

A son raised with proper guidance can achieve a lot in life, unlike my unfortunate, broken brothers.

Final thoughts

With Covid restrictions, I never made it to Greg’s funeral. Gavin sent me the file of the movie he made, and as I watched it, I cried for another brother gone too soon. I saw snapshots of a smiling man I didn’t know. I’d missed so much. I was glad, though, to know he had a loving son who’d made a beautiful tribute to a father he loved.

We were a fractured family, drifting apart from the moment we were born, it seemed. Each of us was just trying to survive the best way we knew how. It worked until it didn’t for my brothers.

I’m still here, so that’s something.

In memory of my family, gone but not forgotten.

I do wonder, though, if the order of this list would have been different if nature had been in control and taken the proper course. If generations of trauma hadn’t been in our DNA, would it have turned out differently? I’ll never know.

Thanks for reading, friends. May your lives be blissfully free of knowing the fallout of suicide.

This story was first published on Medium last year. I have since updated the copy to reflect this heavily edited version.

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