The fog that settled in after my Mother had passed, was dense and banked in, and here to stay, for quite some time. Like any movement when you are in thick fog, there is always the risk of getting lost, or simply not finding your way. Until it lifts, you can wander aimlessly for a very long time, or hope that out of it, reaches a hand, to help you pass through. I've had many hands offered to me, each one helped me get back on the path and find my way into the sunshine. Just as each suicide can impact such a wide range of people in that person's life, so can a wide range, of small gestures of compassion, friendship, and encouragement.
Some of us are familiar with the phrase..."it takes a village". In the case of grief, and even more profoundly with grieving a suicide, it takes a village, and sometimes an entire community. Even with family surrounding you, a stranger can come along, and have more impact in one moment, than some people in a lifetime. Both hold great value, especially to me. Even if it didn't seem so at the time, I remember the help and the love. Those are the things that don't dull in time, like the pain. They are the things you recall, and hold close, to get you from grieving to healing. Or at least that is what worked for me, eventually. There is nothing more individually personal, than grief. There are some "basic" guidelines, that some could apply, to expected, unexpected, and typical forms of passing. When tragedy plays its part, there is a whole new set of sometimes profound, and even extreme circumstances, that take those guidelines, and toss them out the first open window. Like so many things in life, such as parenting for example, it simply doesn't come with a manual, or in this day and age, there just isn't an App for that.
There are some things I remember, walking around in my living nightmare, after she was gone. So many cliches, became my life, became me. I do NOT like cliches, have not liked cliches, but sometimes they just apply, like it or not. I remember my family was with me, my oldest of 2 younger brothers, "Joe"...was protectively never from my side, for what seemed like several weeks, but couldn't have been more than 2...or was it? I remember I lost weight and had to borrow clothes. I remember I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, not even a month later, with more family attending than normal. I remember I made it through my Mother's birthday, and managed to have a birthday part for my youngest son, shortly after. I remember going back to work eventually, and the challenges that presented as well.
You see, my Mother and I lived mere minutes apart, in my adult years she was with us. We also worked together, with myself as her supervisor, as if life needs more challenges. All of this in the same rural area, she raised me for the most part. So yes, shadows of her lurked everywhere, and I remember that too.
What I don't remember, is feeling. For a long time, there was only numbness. It was still my life, but everything was so surreal, almost out of reach. It reminds me of those commercials you see, where the person is almost virtually still, or moving with exact slowness, while everyone and everything around them, goes rushing by. It is the closest I have ever felt, to being invisible. You see, life goes on, after death. Everyone's life,seems to go back to where it was. Let's not be crass and say normal, there is no normal after such an event. Not for a very long time. Then you wait, watching and wondering, when do "I" go back to normal? You don't, or I didn't, for a very long time. I guess for me, I shut down most of myself. I was a Mother myself. A sister, a wife, a friend, and a co worker...people counted on me for things. So I trudged forward, and tried to find my way back to me, to be what everyone needed of me. But those roles had changed, something had changed, or everything had changed. It rattled me to my very core, and changed my course in life, or the course I thought I was on before it happened.
I know now, between family history of such, and my Mother's own experience with mental illness, the stigma and shame was more than she was ever willing to share. Eventually, it was more than she could bear. I forgave her for ending her own suffering, as I understood how deeply ran her fear, and pain of life events, that lead to that fateful day. I knew, that the fear and shame, were to forever hold her back from help, from healing, from forging ahead. Sometimes, I guess, a burden just becomes too heavy. And as much as my love for her, gave me insight and compassion, to forgive her taking her own life, I could never forget how she left, or forgive the repercussions, of being her oldest surviving daughter. The domino effect this would have on me, over a decade and a half, would recreate the turmoil and pain of her death, over and over and over...
Have I completely forgiven her now? I'd like to think so, I certainly hope so. This all reads like healing. It feels like healing. If you have ever had a close loss, or had to be the one left behind after a suicide, you know that just when you think you have it under control, it sneaks up behind you and says "uh uh, not yet you aren't". It's a long process (or has been for me), and one that I can move so far ahead of, and then find myself slipping back into. Back into the pain, the anger, the guilt, the regret...
Grief is an emotion, that comes with many siblings. Surviving suicide, stacks several more on top. Life itself, stacks a bit more, with work and family and just living. The problem with stacking things of course, is sometimes it's not even, and it crumbles. I crumbled. Many times. I may crumble again, who is to know for sure. The only difference, is time. A cliche right? What can you do...you can't live with them, you can't live without them. Sometimes they just apply whether you like it or not. With time, it does become more bearable, no matter how much you shake your head in disbelief when you hear it. Every cliche that could be applied, became to me like a mortal enemy. Just one more, and I was close to doomed, to coming unhinged and wreaking havoc..over a few words.
Well I've had time now. Is it easier? More than I could have imagined or hoped for. Can I remember her with joy? Very much so. I loved my Mother dearly. Did we disagree and argue? Very much so, but she raised me to be strong, independent, free willed, and never afraid to question anything or anyone. Created her own monster if you will, but she raised me to be strong, and I'm grateful every day for that. She was my Mother, my best friend, and even my co worker. Even if we spent the entire day working together, my day would start and end, with a phone call between us.
Now, I had a life to live without her. A job to work at, where she would never return. A community to live in, where she wouldn't participate any more. Brothers, two of them, to love and lean on, because now we were all we had. Worst of all, I had two son's to raise, that no longer had their grandmother. And I am saddened to say, for a large part, even their Mother that they knew, was gone, for a long time sometimes.
Nothing would ever be the same again. How could it be? How would anything be normal again, without my Mother? Well I have come to learn, that normal, is merely a setting on the dryer. Not my own words, but ones I have come to cherish, as her daughter left behind, and as a woman that would struggle with some of the same demons. I may still struggle yet, because life does go on, and somehow, I've managed to go on as well. I'm not saying I did a bang up great job, as you will read...quite the contrary, for quite some time.
Some things, changed for the worst. Over time, some changed for the better. I have lost many things in the time that has passed. I have lost people as well. Not to death, but to circumstance, and a lot of that, my own mental illness, and my knee jerk reflexive reactions, immediately after. Consequences for choices and actions. Some were short term loans on my dignity and pride, some..I am still paying for today.
I would say I'm healing. I would say I am much closer to being healed of this wound I was left with. I would not say that it is behind me, for good. It will always lurk near my own shadow, and wait to come back in, the pain and hurt and confusion. But with time, I've learned to live with it, and I will only continue to learn, so long as I don't give up. And a huge hoorah to everyone and anyone, that shared the last 15 years with me, no matter how long or how short. All of you that were, or are in my life, your prayers and love and support, was never completely in vain, even if it took me a while to see that. Thank you.
I will always miss her. I will always miss the people that such an event, concurring with my own emotional and physical maladies, has cost me over the years. But I can finally say, with more conviction than ever, that I am finally done mourning. As you read along, know that I heal, more every day. For the first time in almost 15 years...I feel like I have a grip, a purpose and a life that is my own to lead, without regret, pain, guilt or the crippling grief and anger, that has so long been not just who I am, but what I was.
"If I am my anger, and my anger is me, without them both, would I cease to be?" (written by Sherry H.)
