He Was My Number One Boy—How ‘Succession’ Helped Me Grieve My Brother’s Death

I didn’t watch television the summer my brother died. Focusing on something wasn’t possible. Not much was. By the time fall came around, I thought maybe I could use TV as a distraction.

The thing is, there are no distractions from a tragic death. It’s always at the forefront of your mind, being turned over and over, examined from every angle in a perpetual state of magical thinking. If it happens to slip into your periphery, it will come racing back out of nowhere, like you’ve been slammed from behind, knocking the wind out of you every time. It’s almost better to think about it constantly than to experience that shove over and over again. Bam. He’s dead.  

But still, I decided to put on The Bear. I had also stopped listening to the news or reading anything about current events or culture, but I had somehow absorbed that a show about a restaurant was getting rave reviews and that its protagonist was making girls who like bad boys (hello!) go wild. 

As I watched, though, the only thing I felt was numb. I recognized it was a good show, and yes, the main character was quite attractive. But nothing penetrated through the haze that had enveloped me. I was barely even phased by the fact that the hunky chef’s brother had the same name as my brother, Michael, and that they had both suffered the same tragic fate. 

I’ve never been a huge TV person. I often fall asleep on the couch while watching, even if it’s a show I really like. It annoys my husband, but giving into my heavy eyelids and letting myself melt into the couch as voices lull me to sleep feels comforting, even if I’m missing out on, well, the plot.  

Still, I needed something to occupy my nights other than the circling, wine-fueled phone calls with grieving family members and the few friends who could handle listening to my misery spiral that took up most of my fall and winter. So, as I began to see the early signs of spring outside my window, I thought I might try watching TV again. 

Succession had long been a phenomenon, but season four was about to start and everyone was abuzz. (I was paying a little more attention to the world by then.) I was jealous that people could feel excited about something so simple. I wanted in. I was suffocated by the feeling that my new reality would never end. I wanted out. 

I had tried watching Succession several times since the series started but I only began to get into it a few weeks before my brother died. I had made it through several episodes and was becoming happily sucked in—then came the phone call that forever changed my life, that shut off the TV, and my brain as I knew it. 

Now, daffodils were beginning to bloom, and seemingly everyone was starting to watch the final season of their beloved show, and I pressed play again, determined to catch up. Trapped in a grief that felt so isolating, like people who haven’t experienced it couldn’t ever understand the pain (thank god for support groups), I wanted to feel connected to something outside of it, something normal.

What I didn’t expect was to feel connected to my brothers. 

Like Shiv, I am the youngest of four, and the only girl. Like the Roys, when my parents got divorced, it was our mother who left, not our father. While my dad is not a ruthlessly narcissistic media CEO whose approval my brothers and I are desperately seeking (though his temper can erupt à la Logan at times), watching them felt like looking into a mirror—minus all the quiet luxury. 

Yes, the Roy siblings are assholes. (I would like to think that the Cahn siblings were only assholes on occasion.) But in between their self-absorbed—and undeniably toxic—moments, I latched onto the sweet ones. I soaked them in. Some people may have a different definition of a sweet moment, but they probably didn’t grow up with three older brothers. 

In a scene the night before Shiv’s wedding, she, Roman, and Kendall meet up, and Roman convinces them (it doesn’t take much) to smoke weed “for old times.” As Roman passes the joint to Kendall, he calls him motherfucker as naturally as one would say buddy. A term of sibling endearment served up and taken in without the bat of a lash. After they each take a hit, Kendall, who is in the throes of the first of many paternal takedown attempts, tells his brother and sister he is happy for them, and in all his goofy earnestness says, “Can I suggest a hug?” 

After a brief pause and mocking giggle, Shiv and Roman give in, but Roman turns around announcing he is going into the hug butt first. The bout of cackling laughter that erupts is one that could only come out of a group of people who have been side by side since birth. As they embrace, despite all the drama pitting them against each other, in this moment they are just siblings. 

This complete ease and comfort of self (who else could you go butt first into a hug with?) made my heart expand in a painful way. It was a feeling I had never experienced before, in reaction to a scenario I had experienced so many times. Feeling a completely new emotion at the age of 41 may seem rare, but grief will take you to the most foreign places. It made me ache for my brothers. It made me feel the phantom limb of my dead brother, longing for what was no longer there. 

At first, I wasn’t sure if I could handle the intensity of watching the four of them, but then I began to crave it. Sure, I wanted to see what shenanigans would go down between Tom and Cousin Greg, and of course, I had to know who would ultimately succeed Logan. But I really wanted to watch the dynamic between the siblings: constant banter, endless competition, relentless teasing, all accompanied by that familial ease. 

Some may argue that we get pigeonholed into the stifling roles of our youth when we are with our siblings (“I am the eldest boy!”), while others believe you are never more your truer self. I think both things can be true at once. Sometimes roles feel safe, even if we have evolved past them. Even if our siblings know our wounds, and can prod at all those tender spots—like pushing on a loose tooth, that familiar pain can also feel good. 

The saying, to get under one’s skin, must have been derived from siblings. Like a splinter, though, it doesn’t take much to get it out—and isn’t there something just wonderful about someone knowing you so well that they can’t help but use it against you from time to time?

I almost burst into tears as a grown woman in her early 30s playing Apples to Apples on a family vacation in Stinson Beach because my brother Andrew was able to predict my exact move. I was so obvious to him, so easy to take down, and he was happy to do it. 

While my brother’s teasing stung, I was over it by dinner. And the evening that followed—the four of us, plus a few other family members, drinking around a fire pit nestled between the house and the sand dunes, breaking into a spontaneous singalong about our trip, each made-up line funnier than the last—will be forever etched in my brain as one of my happiest moments. 

Many of my fondest memories are from such family vacations or holidays when we were adults but slipped back into acting like children. Like the Roys playing baseball together, or the game of “I went to market” on Thanksgiving, or in the finale, when the trio plays the infamous Meal Fit for a King—a childhood ritual revived for the occasion of Kendall’s anointment—concocting a disgusting potion of everything they can find in their mother’s barren kitchen, plus a bit of Shiv’s spit, for their leader to drink.

My favorite scene of the whole series, however, that delivered the gut punch I was so hooked on, came a few minutes before their last happy moment together in the kitchen. Down on the beach, Kendall makes the case for why he should be CEO. Shiv and Roman need a moment to discuss, so Kendall swims out to the floating dock just offshore to give them some space. 

They both agree to back their brother, but not before playfully discussing murdering him and how he would react if they couldn’t get the job done. Each of them doing their best Kendall impersonation in true sibling fashion. 

“Did you actually just try to murder me? You guys are the worst. How dare you?” deadpans Shiv before they swim out to the dock to meet him. 

Then: “We anoint you,” she says to her brother from the water. 

“Yeah?” Kendall questions stoically without moving a muscle. “Thank you.”

“Look at his face,” Shiv laughs. “You can smile, bitch.” 

At that, a toothy grin like nothing we’ve ever seen from Kendall spreads across his face as if he’s been lit up from within. 

“There we go, look at those goddamn teeth,” says Shiv. 

“Happy Ken,” says Roman. 

“Happy Ken, “ says Ken. 

“Yeah, that is what happy Ken looks like,” says Shiv. 

I could close my eyes and envision exactly what happy Michael looks like—and this was becoming a problem. Another thing about grieving, at least for me, is the insomnia. Sure, I could fall asleep on the couch when a TV was blaring, but my bed was a whole different story.

When I laid down, visions of my brother would flood my head: the way two of his teeth came to a point, the way his pinky and forefinger moved when he spoke, all the little details imprinted on my brain that I had no idea I had memorized. Because why would I?

I didn’t need to remember how his chest moved underneath a t-shirt, the pitch of his voice right before he broke into a laugh, or what happy Michael looked like. I experienced it. You don’t realize how well you know someone physically until you can’t touch them anymore. 

I hope I never forget the details of his living body, but those nights when I closed my eyes and they flooded my consciousness one after another, it caused such a surge of pain in my chest that I would have to open my eyes to make them stop—and you can’t sleep with your eyes open. 

I tried guided grief meditations that sometimes worked but my nights were often unbearable. That is, until I started bringing the Roys to bed with me. I was always under the impression that having a TV in your bedroom was bad for you, but this was a time to say fuck it. When I was on the second season, I started to watch on my iPad in bed. I’d get through an episode or two, but then my eyelids would become heavy in a way they hadn’t since Michael died.

I let them close as Roman made a wise crack just like my brother Andrew, or Kendall tried to enlighten his siblings as my oldest brother Aaron often would. I let it all wash over me: the tinkling of the piano, the swooping drama when the violin comes in, the theme song, my own personal lullaby. 

Not wanting to miss a single detail, each night I would start the episode over exactly where I closed my eyes, maybe even before. I milked every moment of it, knowing my weighted blanket of a show would soon be over. 

I would have liked it if the series ended with my favorite scene in Bimini, happily ever after. But as I know all too well, life doesn’t always work out the way you hoped. After all, I wanted a future with Michael in it, where the four of us would once again find ourselves around a roaring fire with sand in our hair from a day spent jumping waves with our children, or in one of our kitchens after a Thanksgiving meal in hysterics over a joke no one else would understand. I wanted more chances to laugh like we were kids, to tease each other, to get mad and come back together again. But in the end, like the Roy siblings, one of us didn’t stick with the plan. 

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