AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

September 5, 2014

Is that true? does the truth always set you free?  

But I ask you this, what happens when everything that you thought was Truth turns out not be the truth at all.  What happens when the Truth suddenly appears and slaps you hard across the face?  What happens when theTruth turns your world upside down and inside out?

I was not set free by learning the truth.  And oddly I was not devastated by it either.  After 4  1/2 years I feel I am once again floating in a bubble - a protective but dark bubble.  Within my bubble is a void.  I am locked in there alone but it protects me from further pain, further attacks upon my psyche.  It is my protective armor against life.  At times I think I am only half alive. 

I have become numb.  It is Natures way of protecting us from those things that we cannot handle otherwise.  It is the same numbness I felt immediately after learning that I had lost my son to suicide.  When I was hit with the crushing reality that in my lifetime, I would never again see the light in his eyes or hold him or hear his joyous and sometimes mischievous laughter.  Never again would he tease me or hug me or share tender moments with me.

I thought I knew everything I needed to know about why my son choose to end his life.  Our conversations were honest and at times even brutal in their honesty.  I lived those last two years with him as he battled depression and suicide attempts. I was not spared from the hell of his mental and emotional decline.  I felt his frustration, his anger; and at times I was the victim of that anger. If I could have taken his burdens and placed them upon myself, I would have done so.  So great was my love for him.  I wanted to protect him and make everything better for him and I tried.  I tried so hard but it was not to be.

So on that day, that morning that he placed the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, I thought I had all or least most of the answers to the whys.  And since that day I have been struggling to find peace with those answers.  And to a degree I have.

In the grieving process things happen in degrees.  By degrees we get stronger.

I was not able to go through Christian’s personal papers or read this journals until last week.  My growth and my strength were slow in coming.  I thought that my understanding of what happened was complete.  If Christian was living, I would not have read this personal papers or his journals and in death I still did not want to violate his privacy.

So what happened to change that you might ask.  It was not intentional.  I was looking through the buffet drawer for something entirely different. 

 His things had been placed almost randomly in that drawer.  I suppose, if I am to be entirely “truthful”, that I was afraid of what I might find within the pages of his papers and journals.  I did not want to read the words written in his own hand about the people in his life that had betrayed him, hurt him, destroyed him.  I didn’t want his words to turn me angry and bitter.

So while I was shuffling through things in the drawer, I came upon an envelope addressed to me.  I held it in my hands for a while staring down at the word “Mom” written on it by my son.  Then I carried it into my studio, sit down, stared at it a while longer, and finally almost timidly I opened it.   

The letter was beautifully written.  In it he explained his philosophy of life.  He told of his love for the Lord, of life,  and his appreciation of the beauty of the earth.  His words painted beautiful pictures of sunrises and sunsets.  He spoke of his love for his family and friends.  And of how he had lived life so large - “like a rock star”.  I smiled. “Like a rock star”  - words he had spoken to me on another occasion and written in a different letter.

In this, his last real letter to me, he explained why he had chosen to leave this earth and move on to another.  It was peaceful in its content.  He apologized for the pain that he knew he would be causing those that loved him but explained with conviction, certainty, and clarity that leaving was the only answer left for him.  

He said that he knew we wouldn’t be able to understand it but to try and accept it because he was at peace with his decision. He needed for the pain to end. He ask that we watch over his two sons.  He explained the life lessons that he wanted them to learn but mostly he wanted them to know how much he loved them. 

The date on the letter told me that it was written six months before his death. 

After reading the letter, crying through the letter - no, sobbing through the letter, I thought I was strong enough to  go through the rest of his papers and possibly even read through his journals.  This proved to be the opening of Pandora’s box.

This is where I found the Truth.  I found the things that he had hidden from me. Things too painful for him to share.  I discovered true evil.

That is not to say that I didn’t know she was wicked and hurtful.  I knew that.  I had seen it, heard it but never did I know the extent of her evil.  And now here it was in front of me in her own words.  Emails that  they had exchanged and that Christian had copied and saved.

On the day following Christian’s death, she called me.  She told me that he had died because of her, that she had talked him into it.  Taken out of context that might sound like statements of remorse but instead she spoke with such pride in herself.  She had taken the great Christian down.  The popular Christian, the greatly loved Christian.  She sounded so sick, so demented.  My daughter came and took the phone from me.

The next day she called again and said to me that she had done nothing wrong - that he wanted to died, she had just helped him along.  I ask that she never call or try to contact me again.  She laughed and said that if I tried to stop her she was going to call the police and tell them that “he had laid hands on me”.  She stopped suddenly realizing her mistake.  I said nothing but just hung up.  I have never spoken to her again.

I had thought that because she was the last one to speak to Christian before he ended his life that she was telling me that on the day of his death she had talked him into it.  As hurtful as her words were, in my mind I thought she was grandstanding and feeding her overblown ego. After all I knew that he had been so depressed and had tried to end his life on several different occasions. 

 I had no doubt that she had done exactly what she told me she had done but I never thought that she was the only reason or the main reason as she seem to think.  I heard from several people that she was bragging to anyone that would listen that Christian had killed himself over her.  Reasoning that mentally she was not well, I put her out of my mind as best I could.  Her words, however, I could not dismiss or forget.

I will not go into what the emails or the journals said.  I did not read all the emails and just a small portion of one of the journals before I had to stop.  

When she said that she had talked him into taking his life,  that is exactly what she did. After learning of his venerability, she entered into a six month long campaign to tear him down and push him into suicide.  He pleaded with her to stop and she only got worse.  To me it was the worse type of bullying because it was done by someone that he thought loved him and for reasons I do not understand he loved.  It was done by someone that knew how to inflict the most painful emotional damage.

I have online friends in my suicide support groups that have lost children because of bullying.  I thought I understood their pain and their anger but I didn’t.  Theirs is a pain that only a parent whose child has been murdered can understand.  I am glad that the law is moving in the direction of prosecuting those that commit these acts against others and that some of these perpetrators have been prosecuted.  

I don’t know if this girl could be prosecuted.  I don’t even know if what she did was legally a crime but in my heart she murdered my son, my precious child.  And eventually she will be judged and God will decide her fate.

So does the Truth set you free?  The facts and truth of what happened does not set me free.  It cripples me.  The only way I can be set free is to turn this over to God knowing that in His wisdom things will be as they should be.  That is my Truth.

AFTER LOSING A CHILD, GRIEF BECOMES A LIFELONG CONDITION

Today I was looking through my Document File and found this poem written by my friend Shari Soklow.  It is as meaningful today as the day I received it from Shari.  Indeed, it is more meaningful  than when I first read it. 

I received it during a time when my grief was still new and my emotions raw.  I received it during a time when I was still numb with shock and disbelief.  I received it during a time when I did not fully know what losing a child meant.  I received it during a time when my mind could not accept that my son was not only gone but gone forever. I received it before I realized how permanent death was.

The words that Shari has written don't just apply to the first week of a loss or the first few months or even the first year.  There is a lifetime worth of wisdom and experiences written here. She is right when our child dies a part of us dies too. The hurt and pain and sorrow never ends. It just goes on and on and on.  

Its been four years since Christian left us and truthfully I don't think about his passing as constantly as I did in the beginning.  Thoughts of him are always there.  Its just that my thoughts turn more to the good times we spent together.  The happy times. I have to do that to survive. I have to do that to push the nightmare of that last day away.  But try as I will some days the pain is as intense as it was on the day my son took his life.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us Shari.  Thank you for stating what we as grieving parents feel and can't express as eloquently or as clearly as you have.

Shari Soklow

"Unless"

Unless you've lost a child.......then 

Don't ask us if we are over it yet. We'll never be over it.

A part of us died with our child. 

Don't tell us they are in a better place. 

They are not here with us, where they belong. 

Don't say at least they are not suffering. 

We haven't come to terms with why they suffered at all. 

Don't tell us at least we have other children. 

Which of your children would you have sacrificed? 

Don't ask us if we feel better. 

Bereavement isn't a condition that clears up. 

Don't force your beliefs on us. 

Not all of us have the same faith. 

Don't tell us at least we had our child for so many years. 

What year would you choose for your child to die? 

Don't tell us God never gives us more than we can bear. 

Right now we don't feel we can handle anything else. 

Don't avoid us. We don't have a contagious disease, just unbearable pain. 

Don't tell us you know how we feel, unless you have lost a child. 

No other loss can compare to losing a child. It's not the natural order of things. 

Don't take our anger personally. 

We don't know who we are angry at or why and lash out at those closest to us. 

Don't whisper behind us when we enter a room. 

We are in pain, but not deaf. 

Don't stop calling us after the initial loss. 

Our grief does not stop there and we need to know others are thinking of us. 

Don't be offended when we don't return calls right away. 

We take each moment as it comes and some are worse than others. 

Don't tell us to get on with our lives.

We each grieve differently and in our own time frame. 

Grief can not be governed by any clock or calendar. 

Do say you are sorry. We're sorry, too, and you saying 

that you share our sorrow is far better than saying any of those 

tired cliches you don't really mean anyway. Just say you're sorry. 

Do put your arms around us and hold us. 

We need your strength to get us through each day. 

Do say you remember our child, if you do. 

Memories are all we have left and we cherish them.

Do let us talk about our child. 

Our child lived and still lives on in our hearts, forever. 

Do mention our child's name. It will not make us sad or hurt our feelings. 

Do let us cry. Crying is an important part of the grief process. 

Cry with us if you want to. 

Do remember us on special dates.

Our child's birth date, death date and holidays are 

a very lonely and difficult time for us without our child. 

Do send us cards on those dates saying you remember our child. 

We do. 

Do show our family that you care. 

Sometimes we forget to do that in our own pain. 

Do be thankful for children. 

Nothing hurts us worse than seeing other people in pain

SOMETIMES I AM ANGRY

The thing I want people to know is this:  Sometimes I am angry.  Sometimes I strike out. Sometimes I am too numb and too hurt to care.  This unpredictable anger surprises even me and yet I have come, through time, to know why its there and where it comes from. When it will appear and to whom it will be directed is the surprising part.

Within me there is a hole, a void, a chasm - whatever you would like to call it and within that dark place there is so much anger.  Some times without warning - kind of like a volcano - it just boils up and explodes into the sky, raining down on anyone that happens to be in its path.  

Now usually I am a gentle, soft-spoken soul but as time has shown - time being the last four years - not always.  Do others understand the whys of my anger? do they understand where it comes from? Oh my, no!  I don't know in advance what I will say and seem to have no control over what suddenly boils forth; and while I don't like it, I do understand it. It comes from a part of me that is horribly and terribly broken. A part of me that can't be fixed.  A part of me where grief and sorrow has etched on my soul a wound that cannot be healed.

When my son Christian by choice left us - not just me but us, it left me so empty.  To understand that emptiness, you must understand who he was and what he meant to so many of us left behind. He was such a bright light.  He lit up the room with his presence, his laughter, his sense of humor, his caring ways. HE MADE YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE WHEN YOU WERE WITH HIM.  There was never a question about his love. He felt it, he showed it. When that type of light is extinguished, the world becomes very dark. Pitch Black. Almost without air.

And in that black, dark place there is anger. All kinds of anger. Not just anger that he is gone but anger about the why and the who.  Toss in a huge helping of guilt - reasonable or unreasonable -  and you've got a recipe for explosive, unpredictable anger.

This type of anger isn't directed at anyone.  Although the unfortunate person in my presence at the time will never think that since my words seem to be directed at them.  It is an anger directed at the universe. This is an anger so deep that totally unrelated things can set it off without warning and without fairness to the recipient. And for that I am sorry. Really, really, really sorry.

I wish people could understand it.  I wish it wasn't so.  I wish things were different. I wish things had been different.  I don't like this part of the "new" me.

Dean Koontz wrote in his book Odd Thomas the following:

"Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me."

I cannot expect that those I know will be able to accept this part of me and love me in spite of it.  I can only hope that they can and that they will.  To avoid this part of myself, I avoid life.  I avoid people. This part of the journey is so difficult and so lonely.