I will

The silence of  a falling star

Lights up the purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome I could cry

Today is a cold wet day.  I got caught in the living room this morning when my '40's station was playing Hank Williams singing "I'm so lonesome I could cry". That's when my mood changed; it was just that quick.  My husband was cooking happily in the kitchen and I didn't want him to know I was going to crash so I have come upstairs and started to put the two freshly painted bedrooms back in order.  One room is the room Michael had when he moved in with us a few months before he died and it's piled full of books and pictures.  Moving things around I again found the copy I have of the very end of my son's letter of goodbye to his daughter.  It is signed I will love you always and forever, Love Daddy  and then the date he wrote the letter.  Today what I noticed in this was the "I will"....the addition of those two words hit home.  It means that from that day until the end of time my granddaughter will know that her Daddy loves her.  She will never ever have to wonder "if" Daddy loved or loves her. 

But then I started to imagine what Michael was thinking as he wrote that letter to his daughter and trying to imagine myself writing a letter to my children  to say goodbye.  How terribly sad and frightening that must have been. I don't believe many of us want to die.   Michael didn't want to die.  I know that because he told me. He was afraid of dying and he didn't want to leave the child he loved more than his own life.  But he couldn't get past his depression and that terrible illness took away his capability to cope with living. 

So, I've come back to my sad place this afternoon and I'm allowing myself to grieve for my lost child. 

I've said this before but I want to say again that the grief of losing someone to suicide is different to other grief.  All grief is terrible, but as suicide survivors we carry extra baggage.  Please don't think I'm saying our grief is worse than other's grief because we can never know another person's grief.  What I am saying is that only suicide survivor's can understand suicide survivor's grief.  For me one of the hardest parts is knowing what my son went through the last year of his life.  Those memories don't go.  It's like a slideshow that plays over and over.  The pictures aren't always the same but they are always accurate.  I have a collection of sad and frightening slideshows stored in my memory and very little control over when the "start button" is going to be clicked.  What I need, what we all need I think, is an emotional seat-belt, something that will help us feel safe and keep us safe when the path we're travelling gets rough. 

Today there were three clicks, Hank Williams song, seeing my son's handwriting, and reading those two little extra words "I will" always....

I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop and when I raise my head just a little I can see Michael smiling down at me from his picture on the armoire.  As I look at him and rememer that look on his face it gets a little harder to breathe and I can feel my heart beat.  Dear God, I miss my son.  Please take care of him for me and tell him that I will love him always and forever.

Did you ever see a robin weep

When leaves begin to fall

That means he's lost the will to live

I'm so lonesome I could cry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvW6_-TP5cs



I've been thinking my blog has about run its course because I am not accomplishing what I thought I would when I started.  I kind of thought my writing might be a bit of a road map for someone travelling this wretched road. If not a road map than perhaps something providing a few familiar markers, the kind of things I find in the books I read about suicide survival.  But my grief is the same as it was when I started.  My understanding of it is greater. Is that a help?  I don't think so.  Twenty months ago we were told "These are early days, give yourselves time".  Certainly, I knew that there would never come a time when I was okay again.  Well, "okay" is a relative term isn't it?  Do I mean there will never come a time when I will be completely happy again? I don't know what I mean. 

For me the reality is that I don't ever ever want to forget.  I don't want to not have the aching part of my soul because that's where Michael is.  The other side of that reality is the intense grief can make one ill, can and does make others uncomfortable, can become all-consuming.  Finding balance then is important to keeping some kind of sanity. 

Mikey's birthday is this month.  Always in our life November was kind of his birthday month...lots of anticipation of what we would do, what kind of cake, what special present...last year getting through his day was mostly about, well, getting through it.  This year I want to go back to doing something.  I'm thinking of buying Michael a goat or some rabbits or pigs through PlanCanada.ca/gifts of hope.  I think he will like this and it gives me something to think about and plan.  Michael really didn't like goats...I've always loved them.  I'm leaning toward the goats. 

I've said nothing tonight but I feel better for having said it.

Night Mikey.  xxx

Just living in different places

I fully intended to climb back into bed this morning after my husband left for work.  But it didn't rain last night and it seems like a waste of the morning to do so.  My cold is getting worse and I'm grumpy. I'm going to have to do something today to get rid of the grumpies.  I'm afraid the cold has a mind of it's own.  I've been looking a pictures of the kids when they were younger, and pictures taken since Michael died.  I hope he can look down from Heaven and see his beautiful daughter.  She looks so much like him but her little personality is a combination of her mom and her daddy.  I think back to what Michael was like when he was four and a half.  He was another beautiful child.  But that was a bad period in my life and I was struggling with life.  What difference would have been made in my children's lives had I been more emotionally stable I'll never know.  But gut feeling, the little voice I think is always right, says that was a crucial time for Michael.  That's not to read as self-incrimination but fact.  I did the best I could as a parent but the truth is I came up short at that time.  It has nothing to do with love.  My love for my children was and is unconditional.  It had to do with life circumstances and abilities and inabilities of coping.   It also had to do with what I now understand is a major mood disorder..then called manic depression..now called bipolar.  Periods of deep and intense sadness often followed by sort of bizarre behaviour..anything to get myself cheered up. 

I've included a link to a website about depression.  It's a Canadian Website but I know there are such helpful resources world wide.  Thoses of us who have lost someone to suicide have seen first hand the devestation that can be causes when the mind and soul's ability to cope with what life is giving them, has been surpassed. 

I have also joined the Mood Disorders Association of BC.  I hunger for a better understanding of the illness that took my son and affects millions of people.  I believe mood disorders need to be brought out into the open and understood. They are after all, illnesses.  No one chooses to suffer with depression, loneliness, manic behaviour, out of control rages, inappropriate behaviour.  We are still a very closed minded society in regard to mood dysregulation and suicide. 

It's almost 8:00 and I want to go out and finish the lawn and weedwhacking and then take my cold to bed and lay down with the baby blanket on my bed.   Today I pulled out Michael's baby blanket.  I remember crocheting it as I worked nights as the switchboard operator and the hotel I worked at when I was expecting him.  What a great day that was...the power had gone out so I packed wood from the garage and kept our little house warm with the fire and by leaving the oven on all day.  I felt like such a pioneer woman! I think my husband was scared because it took about three phone calls to get him to finally get home from work...I made him supper..can you believe it?  What was I thinking??? Contractions while I cooked peas, rice and chicken. We packed up our little '72 VW and got to the hospital just after 7:00 pm.  Mikey was born at 10:00.  He weighted 9 lbs 2 oz and was beautiful from the moment he was born.  Back then we got to stay in the hospital for a few days.  I was there three or four as Michael had to go under the lights for a couple of days.  That moment, the moment I heard him cry, my life became complete.  The piece of my puzzle that had been missing, had been found and life was perfect.  God had forgiven me anything I had done in my life and given me this beautiful child to love and protect.   

And I am grateful for the 375 months and 3 days and 21.5 hours I was allowed to have him with me here on earth.  He is still my son, he will always be my son.  We just have to live apart for awhile. 

Remembering

Standing upstairs ironing just now I was listening the radio, a station called "The Crooner's Lounge" from somewhere..and "I'll Remember You" came on.  Naturally I was thinking of Michael and it came to me that people shouldn't have to remember their children in the sense that those of us who have lost children remember them.  To me, remembering  means recalling from somewhere in our memory and I wonder if any of us every have a moment when we feel that our child is actually gone.   Remembering incidents, funny and sad things..that's different. My feeling is that the soul of our child is always with us, especially the mothers among us. 

On a different thought:  I don't read back through my posts to I don't know if I've done this already but here is a list of books I have found helpful over the past 16 months.

• Touched by Suicide, Hope and Healing After Loss, Michael F. Myers, M.D. and Carla Fine
• No Time to Say Goodbye, Carla Fine,
• Suicide Survivors Handbook, A guide for The Bereaved and Those Who Wish To Help Them, Trudy Carlson
• Healing After the Suicide of a Loved One, Ann Smolin, C.S.W. and John Guinan, Ph.D,
• Night Falls Fast, Understanding Suicide, Kay Redfield Jamison
• An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison, and
• A Brilliant Madness, Living With Manic-Depressive Illness, Patty Duke and Gloria Hochman.

Three books given to me by close friends, but ones I've not read yet are:

• Peace Begins With Me, Ted Kuntz, M. Ed
• Overcomers, Inc.  Lynne Klippel, and
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert.

In the first group above, the last two are specific to dealing with Manic Depressive Illness as well as some about Borderline Personality Disorder.  The first five deal with the aftermath left when a loved one chooses to end their life.  I still read them because at times when I question my sanity it helps to hear/read that these are thoughts many of us have. 

Last September just before the start of the Suicide Awareness gathering in Vancouver, we met a couple vacationing from the US.  We were wearing our t-shirts with Michael's picture and Suicide Prevention Week printed on them and they came up to us and asked if the picture on the t-shirt was our son and then asked when we had lost him. Then they told us they had lost their boy a few years ago. He had only been 12.  Only twelve years old..and they had been blindsided because they'd had no indication of the degree of his despair.  At my darkest times, I know that I was allowed to "prepare" myself for my son's death.  Although it made for years of worrying because it has  been my deepest fear for years, it also gave me a bit of an emotional overcoat I think.  Because of this I've never asked myself  "Why, where did this come from"..not in the true sense of the question.  I think I've asked myself "why MY boy....why no help?"...but those are different questions. 

Each of the books on suicide that I've listed above has a  comprehensive reading list and  support groups directory  There are many online support groups.  I have tried a couple but feel too disconnected from the ones I've tried.  Sadly, that is only because there are so many of us who have lost friends and family to suicide.  So very many. 

I'm working on finding meaning in Michael's suicide and in my own life.

If at first you don't succeed

Well, THAT didn't work.

Step one: open closet door;
Step two: run hands over shirts, hoodies, golf pullovers
Step three: breathe deeply;
Step four: bury face in brown hoodie;
Step five: breathe deeply:
Step six: Cry, and
Step seven: close closet door.

I will try another day.