Friday, October 29, 2010

The start of day 246 - not 176. Good grief.


I'm up, burning a candle for my boy and looking for music on YouTube to post to his page. Once I read something that said that anyone who didn't believe in God only needed to listen to music to become a believer. What, other than some higher power could give us the ability to create something so powerful..and so I feel that when my words might not reach Michael, the music will.


The past two days literally brought me to my knees; hence the title for yesterday's post. The pain wasn't just a pain of the soul; it was a physical thing, like having the wind knocked out of me and drowning at the same time. I've been trying to figure out what was different about Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday was sunny, clear, quite cold, and there was fresh snow on Mt. Cheam. The day was very similar to days which followed Michael's death. Thursday was just a miserable day so reminiscent of the many days following the loss of our son.


Shock continues to wear off still and is replaced by memories which are painful. Moments frozen in pictures stored in my memory will suddenly flash into view. As yet, they aren't happy moments. They are snapshots of my son at very sad, lonely, frightened moments of the last two years of his life. And I am overcome by the need to protect him still, to take away his pain, even after death, and to make it all mean something.


Suicide leaves a wreckage of broken hearts and souls in its wake. So many questions which can never be answered hang on. All the "what ifs" and "if onlys" play back in my thinking. So, because I'm not an abstract thinker I make a list, two lists, actually. One says "What If", the other said "If only" and I start to write. The lists are long because they can go back until before Michael was born. I think I am just looking for someone to blame. We (my husband and I) blame ourselves. Michael was our child. God sent him to us to care for 31 years ago and he ended up taking his own life. How did we fail to protect our boy from the world?


However, I don't think it's the guilt which makes me want life to just stop moving forward. I think that's just grief. How can seasons change? Why do people still laugh and joke and have fun? Can't they see that Michael isn't here? Don't they understand that his life was so unbearable that he had to leave? I know logically this doesn't make sense, but there doesn't seem to be much logic in this kind of loss.


So, I work at pulling positive thoughts out of my emotional hat. It's all for effect but someone told me once that if you force yourself to smile every morning, even if you don't feel like it, it might become a habit. My positive thoughts focus on the ones I love. I will work at getting strong because they will see and will draw from that strength to help with their own journeys down this difficult road we are walking together.

1 comment:

Steven said...

Mama M,

Feelings, a thing I most often have trouble sharing even with ones closest to me. I do know that losing Mike has deeply effected me to the point that my outlook on my life has changed. I think about him every day, and at many points during my day. I also think of the people he has left behind and I think that is what makes me most sad. The fact that no one who loved him can go back to "the way it was" before he left us. I have no words that can help anyone, I only know that everything has changed. The questions that will never be answered are hard, and the things I should have said and done will always ring around my head. Seems strange for me as I had not seen him in person for such a long time that you would think I should maybe be able to cope with this a little better, but after thinking about this I know why I am not. Here it is, he was ALWAYS there when I needed him. At the end of the phone or an email. And I never thought after our last phone call that I would never speak to him again. And maybe I took our friendship a little for granted over the years, but life seems to have a way of doing that, we meet someone have kids, and we go in a different direction for a while, but we always seem to end back where we started after a while. I miss him, I wish for some more time with him. But I cherish the time and the memories I have. I only know my life is richer for having him, and all of you guys in it, and I would not change any of that.
Love you Always and Forever xxx
Steven