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.