Megan Wright’s life was shattered when she discovered her brother’s lifeless body. In this heart-wrenching feature, she bravely shares her journey of grief, guilt and healing, shedding light on the devastating impact of suicide on the loved ones left behind.
By Alexander Marks McLeod
The garage door had been open. Now it was shut.
Megan Wright, 21, had looked everywhere for her little brother – everywhere, but the garage.
She approached the steel door which was rusted and pitted and tried to open it, but it was locked. Locked from the inside.
She dropped to her belly and placed her ear to the space under the garage door. A cool wind. Nothing. The light inside gently flickered and then went out. Megan grabbed the cold metal handle and frantically tried to pry the door open. She tugged, she pulled, she strained with all her might, until finally, the door yielded to her desperation.
She will never be able to forget the tiny, intricate details of this moment. She can even recall the exact order she saw it in.
A darkened room. She stood there, frozen, until her eyes were accustomed to the darkness. A broken light bulb. The faint smell of rot. A knocked over chair. And her 16-year-old brother, hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the room, dangling over the mottled carpet. Lifeless.
She howled in pain.
This is the day that Megan’s life folded in on itself: October 8, 2020. The day she found and lost her little brother.
“Growing up we were such a happy family,” says Meg. “My mum, Sarah, and Dad, Steve, gave us all a really happy childhood here in Desford, Leicestershire.
“My brothers, Samuel and Oliver, are twins – not identical twins, but they looked as if they were. I always could tell them apart, though, even since they were babies.”
Oliver was born 45 minutes before Samuel. He always liked to remind them that. He loved trying to get a reaction out of Samuel when telling him that those 45 minutes laid claim to his older brother rights. It worked every time.
“We were a tight family unit. We thought we could all trust each other, and tell each other anything,” she says.
But like most teenagers, Oliver lived in the corners, under the pale light of obscurity. Anger and sadness felt like dark secrets to him. No one knew of the demons that were slowly eating him up, bit-by-bit, day-by-day.
“We have talked a lot since the incident about the power of silence. I wish I gave Oliver the silence and space to fill with his own mental battles and emotions,” says Megan, whilst biting her blunt fingernails.
“It’s my biggest regret. The month or two before his death where we had already lost him but just did not know it.
“I’ll never get that back.”
It was Megan’s first week at university on that unforgettable day, grey and cold and a light rain falling. Oliver had come home early from school because he said he was ill. Megan saw him come through the door and walk straight up to his bedroom.
She thought nothing of it. But it seemed especially poignant later. That was the last time she would ever see her little brother.
“I had an online university workshop, but as soon as that was done, I went to check on him,” she says.
“I first went to his room. Nobody there. I then checked the toilets and then the playroom and then outside. No one.”
Megan began to panic. This was unlike Oliver. Hours passed with still no sign of her little brother.
She tried to reach him on her phone, repeatedly, desperately, each time praying that Oliver would answer and let her know that nothing was wrong and that she did not need to worry anymore. The phone rang and rang.
“I called my mum and dad and told them I didn’t know what to do. They heard the hysteria in my voice, and both went to leave work,” she says.
“That’s when I saw the closed garage door. The lock engaged from the inside, the latch holding fast. It was an old garage, so it did not take too much strength to crack the door open enough to fit my body through a gap in the side.
“My mind started racing with all the terrible possibilities, but nothing could ever have prepared me for what I saw.”
Megan squeezed into the garage, and it took a good amount of time for her to process what she was seeing. She stood there. Frozen. His eyes were cold and black; the same colour as his lips, the same colour as his fingernails. Reality set in.
She collapsed onto the garage walls, walking like a cat, low to the ground from fear. She felt the word unsteady beneath her feet.
She cried and wailed at the life-shattering confusion that came from realising that the little brother she knew would now only exist in photographs – aged 13, wearing her old Nike sweatshirt on holiday – and in a video on her phone, scaring his twin brother with a worm he found in the garden.
“I have no recollection of even calling the ambulance, I just remember the sirens,” says Meg.
The blue flashing lights lit up the darkened garage. Then came the smell of death permeating every room of the house, and then the air ambulance and then the sobering reason as to why Oliver could not answer his phone.
The police tried to comfort Megan and calm her down, telling her to take a seat and focus on positive, relaxing images and to breath slowly and deeply. Nothing worked.
“My mum was the first to arrive,” she says.
“I don’t know what was worse, seeing the body or her reaction. I watched my mother crying and begging for her son to live.
“The police told us we couldn’t let my dad know what had happened whilst he was driving. So, I ignored his calls. I can’t imagine what that drive must have been like for him.”
When Stephen neared his house, he saw the swarm of police cars parked along the street. Immediately he knew: whatever had happened, whoever was already there – he had arrived too late to save his little Oliver.
“The days that followed were a blur of grief and pain,” says Meg. “I couldn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. And I couldn’t remove the picture of Oliver in the garage out of my head.”
“Five years before, when I lost my nan, everyone told me to be thankful that we were in each other's lives. I was told I needed to be strong. That she wouldn’t want me to be sad.
“Then, in the days and weeks after Oliver’s death, people said that I should be thankful that we were in each other’s lives. That he was watching over us, and he wouldn’t want me to be upset.”
There was not any deviation from the script.
When the truth is too grim, we speak in platitudes. They roll off the tongue. But they don’t comfort those grieving, they exist to relieve people bearing witness to grief, people on the other side of the loss.
“I hated it all,” says Megan.
“For me, my way of dealing with our loss was blocking it out of my mind completely.”
It’s easier that way. She couldn’t hear sirens without going back to that day. She couldn’t hear the chopping blades of propellers without shaking in fear. Yet, she still tried to block it all out.
But these leaps and twists of the mind, to escape a horrible truth, reflected an unsustainable mental agility. When Megan finally spoke to a therapist, they confirmed the worst. There was no running from this one.
“The therapist told me that I was suffering from PTSD. But there was not much she could say, or I could say. I was told time is a healer. That’s it,” says Megan.
“Samuel really struggled. Losing a brother is hard enough, but losing a twin is like losing part of yourself. And having Samuel always with us is like a constant reminder of Oliver.”
We asked Samuel if he could share a few words about what it was like to lose his twin brother. He couldn’t. He said it would be too painful for him.
It’s now been three years; years of emotional torment, tears, traumatic memories and slow, tentative, steps forward. The family's tragedy is always the silent focus of everyone in the room. But no one knows how to start that conversation.
“No one wants to bring up the dead brother in the family,” says Meg.
“I wish Oliver could be here to tell this story, I think it would be far more powerful. A boy explaining how, in his teens, he became silently depressed. About how he believed he couldn’t talk to anyone, no matter how bad it got. How the dark slowly made Oliver suicidal.
“But then, when it all changed. When he eventually told just one person that one word. Help. And then how saying that word changed his life forever and took him on a better journey. A journey which allowed him to celebrate his 18th birthday and go to university and walk his older sister down the aisle and eventually start a family.
“This isn’t that story. My little brother is gone.
“But we will never forget you, Oliver. You only hear the good about a person when they die. But there truly wasn’t a bad bone in his body. Such a happy boy. Such a kind heart. I can remember him for that.
“So, thank you, Oliver.
“Thanks for it all. xx”
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