We made it through another Christmas Eve and Day. It was the most peace-filled Christmas we've had in a number of years as Christmas was a difficult time for Michael his last few years. But we are all so aware of the missing face, the angels hanging on the tree in his memory. This year being our second without him was a little easier than last year's.

I was more aware this year of doing things Michael would have done. I am sponsoring a little boy in Ghana. I hope to be allowed to continue to do this until this child becomes the doctor he wants to be. Some of our gift giving was done through The Peanut Butter project. Those little things allowed me to concentrate a little more on the wonderful feeling we get from sharing a bit of what we have so much of. And that feeling helped offset my sadness.

I carried a picture of Michael in a Christmas ornament every day of my holiday and I felt he was close to me.


SO. We were fortunate this year. But last year I read a book dealing with grief and it reminded me that the day itself is just one day. If it looks like it is going to be too difficult, keep yourself out of harms way and get through the day in the way easiest for you. God will understand no tree, no presents....those are our rules..not His.

I wish my son had not taken his life. I wish he had been able to see hope in his life...but he couldn't do it. I accepted that the night he died here at home. I understood the depths of his despairs but was so afraid of losing him that I worked at convincing him that as long as he was alive....there was hope.

Tonight at this moment, I believe that to be true. I don't know what I will believe next week or next month.

I do know that in order to keep our loved ones from committing suicide we must help them find hope. Hope for medical help, hope for understanding, hope for tolerance and hope that all those who love them will continue to stand by them during their difficult times.

I love you Michael. I can feel strength from you tonite. thank you. Xxx

Christmas trees

It's been a long time between writings.  Too much going on in the lives of others for me to feel okay about writing but this evening as I'm taking a break in decorating the tree I feel like jotting down a few thoughts.  Today is the 17th of December.  It's the latest we've ever put a tree up. I always used to put my trees up on December 1st because I liked the house to be decorated for my students...this is going back a lot of years.  When we moved to the big house we put up two big trees, one all home made decorations: cookies, popcorn strings, that kind of thing, and one with decorations purchased since our first Christmas together.  Then when we sold the big house and moved into our little town house I gave away the two big artificial trees (they had to be artificial because they were up at least 6 weeks).  The first Christmas in this home we bought the saddest little tree I had ever seen.  It was so sad in fact that twice it through itself out of it's bucket in the middle of the night. That was the Christmas Michael had had to sell and move out of his house and he was staying here with us.  Tonight as I look at the pretty (again artificial) tree I've put up I wish this had been the tree he had seen his last Christmas on earth instead of that pathetic little one we had.  The last pictures I have of Michael and his little girl are taken in front of the poor relative of a Charlie Brown.

This is also the first year I have put out all the decorations.  I have all Michael's decorations, the ones we bought him over the years, hanging up.  I don't think I did that last year because although last year's tree was an improvement over the "little ugly", it was still very small and it was our first Christmas without our son and I just couldn't do it.  this year I can and it's taking me hours to decorate because each ornament has such special memories.  Christmas was Michael's favourite time of the year, even as an adult.

I won't write much more because as you can imagine, it's really a sad time of year for us as well...but today I felt that Mikey was watching me decorate our tree and was glad that I was hanging his decorations and hanging them on a pretty tree.  He knows he is missed and loved and we will keep Christmas the way we would if he were here with us.  And he is here with us..I feel so close to him lately as he spends his second Christmas in Heaven. 

I love you Mikey.  Such beautiful memories. 

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



Only Time

This past weekend was another tough weekend. Sunday in particular was a particularly emotional day.  I take these days as they come.  There no longer is the expectation that the pain will lessen.  But today was a better day so I want to look back and see if I can find out what happened and when to cause that wave to come and knock my off balance.  It might be because the other day I started to write about plans for Michael's birthday.  All it took on Sunday was to have our minister ask us to name who we wished could be there with us at Church.  My son was not a church goer but he is who I wanted.  The tears started and kept up all day.   This line is from "Finding Your Way After the Suicide of Someone you Love" and it seems to say what I feel perfectly. 
      
       "I felt like my cycle of pain...would continue year after year, and that was what I would call 'life' from now on"

     
These are the days I believe that I will never laugh with true happiness, rather than laughing out of politeness, and that I will never feel truly happy again.  I want to find a way to be happy with my life without dishonouring or being disloyal to my son and this is what I can't figure out how to do. 

In the book I'm reading the questions are posed," Will it always be this way?  Will it ever be possible to do more than just barely survive each day?"  Sometimes not.  But, sometimes.  And I hold onto that "Sometimes".  Right now I have no idea what it will be like to be a suicide survivor because I'm still in the process of taking the baby steps necessary to move towards some place of peace, some place of being able to deal with the overwhelming guilt, the unbearable pain of losing my beautiful boy and the internal struggle to keep myself in that pit of despair. 

I'm not there yet. Not by a long long way.  Only time will let me know if when I'm there. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NoHN1TU5I

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

Music

Dear Mikey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3_85GXsKqk&feature=share

from your big sister.

20 months.

18: 46  At this time, twenty months ago, I had seen my son alive for the last time, but I didn't know it.  I was out and he had made his decision and unknown to me or to hid Dad upstairs, was just finishing things up by making his last few phone calls.  In the time that it will take me to write this, on that night, he will have taken himself away from the pain and desperate unhappiness with which he could no longer cope. 

As I type I glance down in the right hand corner of my laptop and watch the time pass and am acutely aware that as each second passes I am that much closer to that time.  I feel the panic starting to build as it always does as I allow myself to go to the sad place.  It's almost like even now, all these months later, there is still time for me to do something to head off Michael's suicide.  18:49

Today I've been reading back through comments I've been sent and I realize that many I've not responded to.  I think part of the reason for this is that writing about suicide, surviving suicide (not the attempt but the loss caused by), the loss of my son, mood disorders, leave me emotionally drained afterwards.  Please understand that for me this is a good thing.  But one of the comments I read today was one I had read before in response to something I had written about reducing the medication I take.  Although the comment was anonymous I knew right away who had written it and I trust this person completely and value their opinion.  The writer reminded me that having known me both on and off prescribed meds, their opinion was that I did much better on them than off. 

I do.  That doesn't mean I like to take them.  Meds have side affects and for me when I'm starting to feel better that part of my brain that wants to be like everyone else says "you're doing okay..you don't need the meds"..it happens every time!  Now, imagine someone with a more severe mood dysregulation and possibly stronger medication going through the same process.  The results can be terrible.  Normal emotional roller coaster rides are made far far far worse. Withdrawal, if unsupervised can have devastating physical side effects.  I'm bringing this up right now only because today was a beautiful day and although it is the 20-month anniversary of Michael's death I actually thought earlier this morning...."Hey. I'm doing okay..maybe today is a good day to start to cut back on medication x"....I'm a pretty smart woman, so what part of me just doesn't get it, even now???

Mikey really fought the whole idea of meds and he took strong medication that left him, at some times, in a fog.  He couldn't keep food down, his beautiful thick hair was falling out, he lost so much weight, his hands shook, and still he couldn't cope and couldn't get help and at the end he just quit taking everything.  19:09...slow deep breaths...I can feel it coming...in twenty minutes I will go and stand out on my patio where I found my boy. 

I am grateful that I have a support network to remind me that I do better by staying on the regime my doctor has me on for now.   Easier for me.  I'm a woman..(people are for more accepting of women taking mood regulation meds, than they are of men)  Does it come down to this??....I know of two men who will openly talk about the importance of them staying on their prescribed medication for mood dysregulation.  Two!  You guys are my heros!   Coming out of the "medication closet".  It shouldn't be an issue..but it is and it's part of the reason we lose people to suicide.  That's not to say that everyone taking meds for depression, or bipolar, or borderline, or any number of illnesses would end up committing suicide but we would lose fewer if there wasn't a stigma attached to mental disorders.  19:18......watching pictures of Michael on the digital frame. 

So...will go and place a pill under my tongue and go out onto the patio and light a candle for my boy. 
Michael, I love you.  I wish you could have stayed here with us.  We miss you so.

19:22.  Good night.