Last night I had written quite a bit when  I stopped and re-read and decided I wasn't ready to let go of some of the thoughts, so I deleted them.  Today I think I can share a few of them.

The night Michael left us, I had gone to choir practice.  It had been a very difficult day for him, but he had many difficult days.  However, something that evening triggered his final decision and as his dad sat upstairs watching tv  and I was at church he changed his clothes, fashioned a well-practiced noose, stood on a chair and kicked it away, exiting this earth.  By tracing his phone calls we assume this was about 7:20 pm.  I arrived home at 7:30 to find him hanging there.  He was unconscious but alive.  The paramedics and advanced life-support team were unable to bring him back to us.  As much as I wanted my child to live, I understood his decision and respected it because it wasn't a decision he had come to easily. 

There is an intimacy that comes with holding your dying child.  It is as sacred as the moment you share when they draw their first breath.  I feel blessed that God allowed me to have those last few moments with my son.  How terrible it would have been to have had a stranger arrive at my door to tell me his body had been found somewhere.  Michael chose to die where he was not alone. His greatest fear had always been that of being abandoned.  It is a major trait of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder: the fear of losing those you love. He left our world knowing in a sense that he was "safe" at his parents house. 

When my husband lowered his body to the ground Michael lay on the lawn.  Often during the spring and the summer I would curl up on the spot his body lay and just put my hands on the grass trying to feel some sense of him there.  People used to ask me if we would continue to live here after his death.  Part of me wants to go away and never come back to this town but part of me wants to never leave our little home.  I don't want anyone else ever to live here.  This is not a time for decision making and so we are content to be here travelling to see our daughter who cannot return home yet.  Her time will come but her grief is too raw to face the town she feels is responsible for her brother's death.

Michael's birthday is coming up.  I fear it more than I fear our first Christmas without him.  November is also the month of his anniversary.  I clearly remember this time last year.  It was not a good time and the only consolation I have right now as that he is no longer in the terrible torture he was last year.  There is more to Michael's story: things which contributed to his stress, his frustration, his anger, and his loneliness, but these are in the past and to talk about them is painful, and, they are Michael's, not mine.

Michael, like my other children had a genetic predisposition to mood disorders.  So the part of me that screams "This was not fair!", also cries out for forgiveness.  "I'm so sorry Michael.  I didn't know.  I didn't know."