63 Years of Silence - My Brother’s Story
Dr Linda Blockland shares why her youngest sibling’s life, and death, moved her to donate to DignitySA.
Christopher was my youngest sibling, the sixth of us. I am the second eldest, the eldest daughter. In August 1963, while our family was travelling, my mother, heavily pregnant, fell down a long staircase in a hotel. That night she went into labour. Christopher was born seven weeks premature after a complicated and chaotic delivery. At one point, a priest was summoned and administered the last rites. My parents were never fully told what went wrong, only that a crisis had occurred and somehow passed.
When Christopher came home, doctors were unable to determine the extent of the damage. At first, everyone believed he was blind. He did not focus. His eyes rolled uncontrollably. Later, it became clear that he could see but had no control over his eye movements. As time passed, the full reality emerged: severe cerebral palsy affecting all four limbs, no head control, no speech, no ability to sit, feed himself, or live independently.
Epileptic seizures began at six months. They were violent and terrifying, marked by relentless screaming and rigidity. Medication helped but never stopped them entirely. Christopher required full‑time care from birth. Despite my mother’s tireless efforts, his needs eventually overwhelmed what our family could provide. As a child, he was placed in long‑term institutional care.
It has been sixty‑three years, and I still cannot think of my brother without sorrow. It is a lingering grief with no end.
When he was still at home, I helped care for him. I cleaned him after school. I fed him. I spoke to him. I sat with him. I loved him. And I wished, more than anything in this world, that I could help him escape the torture that life had imposed on him.
It was Christopher who led me to psychology. I read about the brain, about damage, and about hope. But he was always beyond help. Always beyond reach. Over the decades, his condition only deteriorated. His body became rigid, his pain constant. He needed to be heavily medicated. Without it, he screamed continuously. When I visited him in later years, he was restrained in a bed, almost entirely motionless, unresponsive to voice or touch.
On one visit some years ago, he lay in a wooden, box‑like structure, open at the middle of his body. The image struck me with shocking clarity. He looked as though he was already in a coffin, waiting only for his last breath so that the lid could be closed. It felt as though my brother was already being treated as someone whose life was over, even while his body continued to breathe.
The doctor responsible for his care acknowledged that the situation was untenable, that facilities and resources had deteriorated so severely that there was no realistic prospect of improvement and no meaningful quality of life possible for someone in Christopher’s condition. His life had become one of sedation and containment, not care. His medical report stated that he banged his head against the wall, had no self‑help skills, and was mute, with no comprehensible speech. This was not living. It was endurance imposed on a person who could not understand it, could not consent to it, and could not escape it.
Our parents are now gone, and my older brother lives in the UK. I remained closely involved in Christopher’s care and well‑being.
In March 2025, Christopher fell ill. We were never given a diagnosis, so we did not know what was wrong. As Christopher’s contact person, I spoke to the doctor and asked that if he became seriously ill, he not be treated aggressively, but rather be kept comfortable. That request was not well received. I was told that if I felt so strongly, I could take him home and manage his care myself.
Christopher was taken to a general medical hospital, where a feeding tube was inserted into his stomach. Hearing this was deeply distressing. I struggled to understand the purpose of such an intervention for my beloved brother, whose life had already been defined by pain, dependence, and profound limitation. Such an effort to prolong what kind of life?
A few days after being discharged, Christopher was returned to the psychiatric hospital, where he passed away shortly thereafter. The date of his death was 13 March 2025.
The doctors and staff who cared for him were kind and attentive, and I do not doubt their intentions.
They worked within systems, protocols, and beliefs that shape how care is understood and delivered. Still, Christopher’s final days leave me with the same question that followed his life. At what point does keeping someone alive cease to be care and become endurance imposed without consent?
This is why I support medical assisted dying reform in South Africa. Not because life is disposable, but because dignity matters. Because compassion matters. Because keeping someone alive at any cost, without consent, without awareness, and without relief, is not care. It is an abandonment.
Christopher never had a choice. But we do. We can choose to create laws that allow compassion where medicine can no longer heal. We can choose honest conversations, rather than allowing fear to dictate care. For Christopher, and for so many others like him, we must.
This story was editted by Vuya Ilengou
