HELLO DEAR ONE: A TIME TO LISTEN

I was looking through an old notebook tonight and found this.  An exchange between my daughter and me.  It isn't dated but must have taken place in early or mid 2010.

"Hello, welcome dear one,

Come in and lets sit a while.
Its been so long,
we never had a change to talk.

You needed time.  I understand.
Your pain is still so great.

I listen to your words
As the pain pours out
And watch as tears flow down your cheeks.
I silently listen and hold your hand.

In your pain you still want to place blame.
Why didn't he do this?
Why didn't he do that?
And why, why, why did he do this?

I know buried beneath your words
You're feeling guilt. I feel guilt.
But you of all people have no reason for guilt.
You couldn't fix what you didn't see.  No one could.
As he said himself, he was the great trickster.

I'd like to help you but don't know how.
I can't help myself either.

You want to talk but you don't want to listen.
Your feelings are still so raw.

Your words say:
I care.
I understand.
And next everything in you screams:
I don't understand!

When I start to explain my pain
Your name is called and you walk away
Not knowing this would be the only time I would try.
My feelings I keep buried deep, deep inside.
Those gentle words I would have said to you
Will never be spoken.

You return.

Your face says I don't want to hear.
I need to live in this world filled
with hurt and pain a while longer.
This I understand.  I am there too.

Dark emptiness boils up from within.
I feel sick and heartbroken watching you suffer.
I must put my own feelings aside.
This time, this moment must be about you
And how to help ease you through the pain
Because I love you and I do understand
what it feels like when sorrow and despair
calls out your name
And won't let go.

You are spent.  So instead of talking about things
that tear your heart
I'll put on the kettle and we'll have a cup of tea.

I AM A MOTHER

I am a mother that has lost a child and that loss has carved a permanent hollow in my being.  We who have faced such a loss seek to fill that gaping hole - that enormous empty place - that place that once was filled with the warmth of our living child.  As human beings we long for wholeness, completeness in our lives.

There are those that think that we choose to perpetuate that loss and hold onto that emptiness like a puppy that refuses to let go of a blanket that is being pulled away. They think that we hold on with an unreasonable fierceness of spirit and if we’d just make up our minds to do so, we’d let go of the grief that holds us prisoner.

Let me tell you that it is not so.  In the beginning it might be true.  Our grieving hearts reason that to let go of pain and grief is to let go of our child.  We do hold on tight because that is all we have left.

Christian's Memorial Garden

Eventually when we are able we look beyond our aching, hurting selves,  we want more.  We want our child’s life to have meaning to more than just us.  We want to fill that awful empty void with understanding and good works.  We want the sunshine, and moonlight, and starlight, and the magic and wonder of life to fill us and rekindle the zeal for life we once knew.

We don’t want to be sad and depressed.  We want what we once had.  I wonder at times what my life would now be like if my son had not taken his life.  I wonder if in reality it would be much different on the outside than it is now.  (That secret inner part of me will remain forever broken.)

My husband’s life has changed because of serious health issues and mine has changed in response to his needs.  My children and their children’s lives go on as they mature and grow and crave out their futures.

As for me because my son’s earthly life with me has ended, I have had to climb mountains I never knew I could climb, I have survived swelling waves of grief that I thought I would drown in.  I have been knocked down by pain, and grief, and depression and I have struggled back to my feet.  

And most importantly I have been blessed with a richness of friendships that I would never have known otherwise.  And I have learned from these friends and loving family members what love and caring and support really means.  When I have felt crushed, they have lifted me up and helped to put me back together again with their understanding and kind words.  Had my son not died, I might never have known what true compassion was.  As much as I long to have him back with me, I have at long last accepted the realization that will never be so I hold tight to the knowledge that someday we will be together again.  And my heart rejoices.

This has been a long, long journey and I have changed and grown and overcome much.  There are still days that I am overcome with grief and longing but those hard, difficult days are now separated by days filled with sunshine and hope.  

I look back to that first and even second and third years when I didn’t think that would be possible.  I remember thinking when other survivors told me that it would eventually get better and easier that it was impossible.  It would never happen.  I thought my world would forever be gray and filled with shadows.  Thank goodness I was wrong.  It may take a while but one morning you will wake up and you will once again hear the bird’s songs and feel the warmth of the sun on your face.  It may not happen everyday but that one day is all we need to know we have survived.

CHRISTIAN'S SIXTH HEAVENLY ANNIVERSARY

Six years today and I’m lost. I don’t even know how to feel anymore. It seems that I’ve said everything there is to say, felt everything there is to feel. Today all I feel is empty. I’ve used up all the self talk I can to try and make this day better.

 I thought that if I could pull from my head all the good memories of you that I have stored there that it would brighten my mood and lift my spirits. In an attempt to do that I have settled myself in and I’m going to think of all the good things that you are.

 I envision you with your soft bald head (where curly light brownish red hair once had been before you shaved it all off). In my vision I look into your cornflower blue eyes twinkling with mischief and delight. I see your beautiful smile and the dimples in your cheeks. I think about how soft I thought your lips were when you kissed me on the cheek. I remember your laughter and quick wit. I love how you use to make me laugh when you teased me or told me one of your stories. I remember how you use to entertain all of us with tales of your adventures - told in the funniest of ways. When you were with us, when we gathered as a family, you filled not just the room but the entire house with your presence. You were the star.

 As much as the memories of January 18, 2010, try to force their way into my conscious mind, I push them away. I want today to only be about the richness of your life and how you enriched ours. I want to pretend that you’re still here. I want so badly to hear your voice and feel your tight, warm hug. I want to hold on and never let you leave. I want you to be happy again. I want all the bad things to never have happened. I want you once again to be “living life large”. I want for you all the things that once made you happy and successful. I want so badly for this day six years ago to never have happened.

 But then again I would never wish to keep you here in your unhappiness, in your desperation, and in your depression. I would never want for you to have to endure that pain for one more minute, one more second. Where life was once so great, the fall is so much harder to bear.

I am thankful that you shared almost every difficult moment with me. It makes it so much easier to understand your decision and accept it. That doesn’t make the pain of losing you any easier but it does help in understanding. There are so many others that never have the knowledge of knowing the “why”. Sometimes when I read or hear about the pain that friends in my suicide support groups are suffering because they didn’t see the loss of their loved one coming and must face each day without answers, I feel guilty.

 Guilty because I did see it coming. I didn’t want it to happen but I feared in the depths of my heart that some day it would. I prayed it wouldn’t. Guilty because I failed to be able to fix those things in your life that made it unbearable. Guilty because I got to speak to you by phone several times that last morning when so many others never got to say good bye.  Guilty because I got to hear you say that you loved me and I got to repeat it back to you.

 Guilty because I heard the peace in your voice. Guilty because I didn’t beg you not to do it. Guilty because I accepted your decision - because at that moment you convinced me and I believed it was okay. If you were going to leave me, I wanted your passing to be without guilt or conflict. I wanted there to be only love between us. I expect no one to understand this but our last conversation felt like a warm hug. And then you were gone.

 I’m not only to dwell this day on all the whys and all the people that hurt you. This year has been an exceedingly hard year for me. For reasons unknown to me, this year all the anger that I’ve kept at bay pushed its way into my thoughts and I’ve felt anger and disappointment and even hate for those that hurt you and in my mind I feel contributed to your decision to take your life. I really, really tried to work past it and not think about it. And for most of the five years since you left, I was able to do that.

So what made this year different I don’t know. But having worked through all those negative feelings and thoughts, I’m feeling better and they no longer have a hold on my heart. I’m thinking that it was time to purge myself of all that negative energy even though I thought I was doing the right thing by burying it. Letting myself feel it, experience it, think about it, and silently rage over it has been liberating.  Freeing.

 Today, January 18, 2016, is your 6th Heavenly Anniversary. It doesn’t seem possible that that much time has passed. My memories are still so vivid.

 You told me that if ever I needed you, you would be here. I believe that. During 2015 I needed you a lot; and you never failed to show that you were close during those times I was terribly distressed. Thank you for the heart-shaped rock I found on the bed in the nursery. Thank you for the brightly colored feather I found on my bed. And thank you for all the white feathers you’ve placed before me. 

And I especially thank you for sharing with Kristen - who then shared with both Brandon and me - what your Heavenly life is like and what your responsibilities in your new life are. I like thinking about you greeting new Heavenly arrivals and helping ease them through the transition into their new life. The perfect job for you.

 Oddly I don’t want this day to end. I don’t want another year to begin. I want instead to just sit here and think of nothing but you. I want to remain in this moment when the house is quiet and we are together once again in my memories. I love you now and forever my wonderful, incredible son. You are my sun in the morning and the moon and stars in my evening.