Easter in Heaven

I am sitting at the table on Easter Saturday, looking out to the little back yard we have and as always the cherub with the broken leg in the wee garden I plant for Michael looks back at me and reminds me that Michael in a place of peace now.

Please God, let this be true. 

I have been hoping I would dream of my boy because he talks to me in my dreams I hear his voice and it comforts me.  Lately I've needed to hear his voice.  This weekend I am going to listen to it.  We have a video of him taken a few years ago and I've not been able to listen to it yet, although I've tried to watch it.  Today I need to hear his voice.  Sometimes I am afraid that I will forget the sound of him speaking and laughing.  When he was a little boy Mikey had a high voice. But as a man he had a beautiful deep tenor speaking voice and I miss it. I miss everything about my son, except his pain. 

Just checking in.  It has been a tough few months.  With the sun and spring I feel strong enough to start to write again.  We are working on a Defeat Depression Campaign and in the next week I will post information pertaining to that.

Michael, I love you.  This is your third Easter in Heaven.  What a wonderful place to be....but I would rather you were here with me. 

Always.  Forever.
Mom.

Approaching the two year anniversary of the loss of our son

When I started to write this journal or blog about my life following my son's suicide I anticipated being able to look back at it a year or two down the line and see some change.  Not so.  The pain and sadness is the same, the guilt perhaps more than it was then but I blame that partly on the shock that sets in for the longest time.  When I talk of guilt, it isn't only in my own failures but at that time I should have been advocating far more.  Let me tell you a little story though of the consequence of one of my attempts.  I may have told this in an earlier blog.  Michael had requested a Health Canada assessment.  He knew he was in trouble, and as a federal employee, had been assured that the government helps take care of their own.  Total fabrication.  The government will ensure you get seen by someone....however, the accuracy of that diagnosis can be (and in Michael's case) WAS wrong.  I requested a review but naturally the review board felt all proper procedures has been followed.  I hadn't questioned that.  I had questioned how they could come up with an incorrect diagnosis, totally disregarding reports by his own doctor who had know him his whole life....and this after 2 one hour visit.    At any rate...that isn't what I wanted to tell you.  I felt I had to tell this doctor how far off the mark she had been and had she identified Michael's illness he might possibly have found some help and maybe, just maybe might be alive.  And I think I probably crossed the line by suggesting I hoped she liked herself because I certainly didn't.  She immediately phoned my doctor to find out if she was safe....perhaps she did recognize the possibility of moody dysregulation after all. 

Perhaps I shouldn't say that I've not made progress.   I will now advocate on behalf of all who suffer for depression and other mood dysregulations.  I will talk about my own battle with the mood demons, with self harming attempts, with risky choice making.  I can forgive my mother for things that happened in our lives that we didn't understand. 

Yesterday I was able to take some of my sons things which have been pack in trunks in the garage and rent a nice storage unit and move them there.  I will do the same with his books and this is in preparation for selling this place.  This is the house Michael hung himself in.  Every time I walk in the front door I see that picture in my mind.  I don't think we (my husband and I) can start to move forward by staying here.  Each time we hear a neighbour running up the stairs we imagine the Michael is going to walk into our bedroom, much as he did the last three months of his life. 

But the tears and the loneliness and the grief remain.  I loved my son.  He was really not much more than a boy when he first moved out...just 20....he didn't move far...but for a young man with borderline with bipolar tendencies or vice versa he moved to an atmosphere ideal for fostering good healthy emotional problems.  Although he moved home a couple of times over the next 11 years, each time he was less strong, more emotionally beaten, less confident, more afraid of abandonment. 

Borderline, bipolar and many other illnesses creep up on you.  You find your behaviour changing...your ability to cope with certain things less than ideal and your reaction to circumstances sometimes (often) inappropriate.  It then takes a true friend, a true love to say...I will be here for you.  I will not leave you.  I will help you through this hell because I KNOW this is not you.  This is a reaction in your brain.  I still know the beauty of the soul within.

Some will say this is a fairy tale.  Well maybe it is.  Maybe we are too damned self involved...we care so much about us.  Reach out to someone this week.  My son took himself away on the 25th of February 2010.  Please do something kind for someone in his memory or the memory of someone you care about.  Thank you.

Thursday thoughts

These past few weeks have been reminiscent of the months following Michael's death.  I'm not able to "get a grip" on my emotions.  Trying to figure out what's caused this and the only thing I can think of is: nothing.  I'm guessing it's part of the path of grief. Maybe not, does anyone have any ideas?  Even my garden isn't offering consolation because all the bits of empty space are full, nothing is really blooming because we don't have enough sun and my eyes are constantly drawn once again to the spot Michael chose to take himself away.  I can't get that picture to leave my brain.  Thankfully I don't dream that picture so I have respite from it when I'm sleeping but it haunts me during my daytime hours.  It's like someone took a snapshot, animated it so it had arms and legs and could talk and whenever I am doing something or thinking something the snapshot jumps up and down in the background yelling..."Hey, look at me, look at me!!!"    Is this part of the PTSD I'm diagnosed with?  When will it take a quiet back corner and allow me to remember my beautiful son when he was happy? 

My doctor has upped my antidepressant and my anti anxiety meds but I know that meds aren't the only answer.  Prayer?  Yes, I pray: for strength, for peace, but we don't always get what we pray for..we just hold onto the belief that one day we will.  In the meantime what gets us through? 

When I'm out and about I feel like such a fake because on the outside I smile and talk and on the inside I'm curled up in a ball saying "take me home". 

I live for my visits with my granddaughter here and my family who aren't here.  We only get my granddaughter here one afternoon a week unless there is a special occasion and we ask specifically for her.  If we didn't ask for her I don't know if we would ever get her.  Yet those times with her are so special.  I would move from here tomorrow were it not for her.  Too many memories in this small town jump out at every turn.  I hate it.  I really do. But our granddaughter needs to know her Daddy and her Daddy's family so we stay, at least for now.

I realize this blog serves as emotional purging but it's the reason I started it.  What comes across as quiet typing is actually screaming inside my head.  Seeing what I'm thinking come up on the screen as I type has a calming effect on me...it gives me a sense that I still do have some control.  It means I haven't taken Michael's baseball bat to the walls, the windows, the dishes.  I've gotten through another day without taking my grief out on someone else.  As my oldest daughter would say, I've gotten through the day without making it worse.  It would be such an easy thing to do, to make it worse.  How easily I could cause damage and probably be excused because at times I feel a bit less that in control.  But what purpose would that serve?   I wouldn't hurt any less for having hurt someone else. 
And I need my children and grand children to know that we can all be stronger that those around who are hurtful. 

Mikey, can you hear my rants?  I've talked myself in a circle today but I'm okay now.  I love you.  I'm angry at the things you were angry at, the unfairness and the cruelty shown you, the lack of understanding and the refusal to attempt to understand, the disposable attitude you were shown by some.  But I will be strong for you because for as long as I live I will tell people the beautiful side of you as well. 

Ativan and a cup of tea will get me through this day.

Thanks for being out there for me.

On Getting on with things.

Because part of my reason for chronicling the journey I travel following my son's suicide, is to help others who find themselves in the same position,  there are some things I want to say about suicide.  Carla Fine, in her book No Time to Say Goodbye, says:

      Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time....the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic...the initial impact of discovery scars us forever..."

I will never be the same person I was 15 months ago again.  I feel guilty that I am alive and Michael is not.  There is nothing that can or will ever change those feelings.  But Michael lives on in my heart and will forever.  Apparently, according to the "experts" in order to move on, I must begin to be able to separate Michael from his suicide.  I'm not there yet and I don't feel guilty about not being there yet.  One day, with luck that process might begin. 

I have "friends" who no longer talk to me and I know it's because they are uncomfortable with the manner of Michael's death.  They feel that suicide is a sin.  Fundamentalists.  In their book Suicide and It's Aftermath:  Understanding and Counseling the Survivors, Charles Ruby and David Clark point out that the Christian view of suicide as sinful and forbidden evolved in the second half of the first millenium AD.  Did we understand depression, mood disorders, psychiatric illness then?   Hardly.   Why do some churchs still judge? Is our God not a God of compassion and of understanding?  That's my belief and I'm comforted by Rubey and Clark's theory that it's unlikely that God judges suicide as either moral or immoral because He understand that a person who takes his or her life is "experiencing the kind of pain that is the hallmark of illness or depression"  When Michael died, a Catholic priest who Michael had talked to many times, came to our house and sprinkled Holy Water over the ground where Mikey lay.  My minister has been here a number of times and we go out and stand  and pray where Michael left us.  So...here is my advice on this, if any of you are finding the same thing...or worry that your loved one's leaving damned them eternally.  Please don't let yourself be taken down that road. 

I question daily what Michael would want me to be doing.  I've been told that he would want me to be living my life, to be carrying on.  I do this every day just be waking up, breathing, getting through the day, going to bed, waking up, breathing....it's enough for me right now. These are still such early days.   I understood my son, and he understood me.  We were cut from the same cloth.  I have struggled with debilitating depression most of mylife.   The mood swings started in my late teens.  I passed these genes on to my children.  Michael will understand my struggle.  The one thing I do know for certain is that Michael would not want me to take my life to follow him.  He took himself away from us for a number of reasons and some of those reasons were very unselfish reasons. I do not believe suicide is selfish, that is is a coward's way out, that it is a sin.  I believe a healthy person does not take his or her own life.  I believe that despite all our wonderful achievements with medicine, we have not figured out how to cure things like depression, BiPolar, Boderline, Schizophrenia. I believe that not enough resources are put into these illness because there is still some kind of stigma attached to those things "mental". 

 Michael will not be saying, "C'mon Mom, get on with your life", because he will understand that sometimes you just can't.  As I said before, maybe, hopefully, there will be a time when I want to make plans.  Or maybe not..I don't know.  But in the meantime I will advocate for my son, for other's like him....did you know that not so long ago the Cancer was whispered, much like suicide is now whispered?  It's by shouting the words that we contribute to understanding and acceptance of things.  So..SUICIDE IS A PERMANENT SOLUTION TO A TREATABLE ILLNESS.  SUICIDE IS PREVENTABLE. 

 Michael, I love you. 

broken limbs among the flowers

Months and months ago..probably shortly after Michael died, our counsellor said to us that one day we would find that we hadn't cried that day.  Then it might be that we hadn't cried for a couple of days.  I didn't believe her.  But then one day it happened.  I realized that I hadn't cried the day before and I felt terrible, wondering how I could have not shed a tear for Michael, for our family, for myself.  Let me say here that because there are moments, days even, when I don't cry,  does not mean that there are moments or days when Michael isn't in my thoughts.  It's difficult to explain, but if you can imagine viewing everything through a sheer curtain, that's what life is like now.  I view everything through a curtain of memories of Michael. 

This morning though is a morning of tears.  Michael's candle is burning and our digital picture of frame of pictures of Michael is on and I look at those pictures and am still struck by the unreality of this.  This cannot be.  He can't be gone.  Not forever!?  Am I waiting for him to come back?  Waiting for him to say God gave him another chance to come back if he wanted to, and he did want to?  I would still make that bargain with my God.  I will go and Michael can just come back to those who love and need him. 

For now I will go outside and work on the little area I have as Michael's garden.  His angel fell and it's leg broke off the other day.  I had a moment of panic and then realized that there is something very special about broken angels so Michael's broken angel is sitting amidst the primulas with his leg propped up beside him.  I love it. 

A beautiful day in the Valley - trying to muster some enthusiasm

It was so nice today that I saw people wearing shorts.  This is November.  It isn't normal for our weather to be so mild this late in the year.  I mean we're only 7 weeks from the shortest day of the year.  I wanted so much to get out and feel that little rush of happiness that usually comes with a bright sunny day.  But, I think my meds are starting to kick in.  While overall this is a good thing, at least for now, the downside is that the medication also makes it difficult to feel the little highs that would normally come along.  At this point in time, though, it's more important for me to feel I have some control over the depths that my grief and depression take me.  So the logical part of me looks up at the sky and sun and acknowledges that yes, it is a beautiful day and even though, at this particular time I can't respond emotionally, I appreciate that at another time, this kind of day would give me great pleasure.  Is this being mindful? I'm not sure, because I don't quite understand mindfulness. 

I only cried a little today and that was at a therapy session.  The rest of the day I managed.  I see people looking at me uptown and wonder what they see and what they think.  Ten years ago, what would I have thought if I knew someone whose son or daughter had committed suicide.  Would I have pitied them, would I have had any idea what to say, or would I have just said hello, pretended I didn't know and keep going, or worse, would I have crossed the street to avoid them because I didn't know what to say.  It's been more than 8 months and I still need to hear people say "I'm sorry".  No one really does anymore.  And when they don't I become afraid that my boy will be forgotten.  My son, whose great great great grandparents were pioneers in this town cannot be forgotten.  A life, so full of hope and promise, ended far too early.  But we won't let him just fade into people's memories.  Somehow he will be remembered.  We are going to dedicate and plant a tree for him in the park uptown.  There will a plaque with his name on it and his daugther will be able to go to Daddy's tree when she is older.  But we need to find another way to keep him alive in spirit. 

I miss him so much.  My special child.  Yes, he was a grown man, but in my heart, he will always be my baby boy.