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.
