Chocolate Cake

Last week I went to the town where R and I lived. It's always hard driving past the places where there are memories. Curiosity got a hold of me and I had to drive past our old house, or "the sad house" as my son calls it. This is where we used to live. Where we started out lives together, built a family. I have already said good-bye to the house over a year ago. But it has been vacant for a long time. Finally, someone bought it. There is life in that house again and I was suprised at how glad I was to see it that way. I assumed I would feel more possessive about someone living in "our house." But, no. I was not. I was relieved to see pink flowers hanging from the black iron on the front porch and someone's Volvo in the driveway. There is life in that house again, and that is a wonderful thing.
Afterwards, I went to the cemetery. I had a giant slice of chocolate cake leftover from my earlier lunch, so I decided I would sit on the bench at his gravesite and eat it. It was really a beautiful day. Very peaceful at the cemetery. I had some solitude, and some chocolate cake with R. I sat crossed-legged for a while and a leaf came down and smack-landed right on the center of my foot. Hello, R. 
Wait. Is that you? Maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe it's just a leaf falling. But why then does that happen everytime I come here? Ok. If it's you, then do it again. Nah. That's stupid. What am I doing. Just send me a sign if you are here. Still stupid! Shut-up S. 
I continued to indulge in my cake and not five minutes later a little darning needle came flitting about. This is not the first time this has happened. I saw him flying around my feet and smiled. Silly little thing. Then, SMACK another leaf hit me in the center of the foot. This may sound crazy to some- but these are the types of little games we play to keep our relationship going. He's still there. We still have a relationship, but it's different now.

Suicide: When It Hurts Too Much To Live | World of Psychology

Suicide: When It Hurts Too Much To Live | World of Psychology

Dirty Laundry

Everybody's got it.
Does anyone understand how straight up SPOOKY it is to be in the car having an argument with your fiance when suddenly the wedding song you danced to with your late husband comes on the radio? It was like he was trying to intervene, or maybe to tell me he's sill here for me.
When my heart is all twisted up and I get that pain in my chest, the pain of heart ache, I never know what to do with myself. Usually I find myself curled up in the fetal position crying on my bed or my couch. I don't know what to do anymore. It's overwhelming. That's when I start to think there is no way out of this mess. Ever. This is my moment of weakness. Everyone has them. Oprah has them, and that means everyone has them. I don't do well with changes. I move up to NC, and have a breakdown. Can hardly get through a day of classes for fear of failing- and that is exactly what happened. I worried about it and sent it out into the universe so much that it actually happened. Good job, S. Right now my head is going through verses of negative self-talk. You idiot. What were you thinking. This is all your fault. How did you think this was going to happen with  no family around? Just forget it. You can't do anything right. Part of this is stress and part or most of it relates to depression (I think). When you get to the edge of the well and you're standing there trying to decide whether or not to jump, merely putting a toe over the side can send you tumbling down the dark abyss. It's too easy to give up. That's not what I'm made of. I'm the one who will do over and over and over again until something makes me stop. My middle name is tenacious. Not really. It's Elizabeth. Or am I mistaking tenacity for stupidity? I don't know. Life and conviction has led me HERE for some reason. Here I am. What will you do with me, God?

Living With PTSD

This is what it's like to have a flashback, if it even does it any justice:
I'm sitting on the couch watching a cartoon with my son and I happen to look at the light coming in through the window. I notice the time on the clock. It's 6:35 pm, just about the time I got home with my son, just before we found R hanging in the garage. I haven't had a flashback in a month or so, and that is an improvement. I remember. I have visuals. Opening the door to the darkness and seeing him there. My stomach fills with butterflies and panic squeezes my chest. All of the panic I felt that day comes back. The not knowing. The confusion. The damned cell phone battery that had 10% left in it when this began right when I needed to make about a million phone calls. The feeling of isolation. I was there by myself with my young child. And until I called my parents, no one knew what was going on. Everyone was just going on about their daily lives, meanwhile mine was being turned upside down and inside out. Changed forever. I close my eyes in the hopes of making it go away. However, my therapist says I should let it come, and then let it go. So I do. I let the visuals come and then leave; I let the connected feelings come and then go. And then I have to get up and do something else to take my mind away from this horrible place. So I sit here and tell you about it, in the hopes that it may strike a chord with someone else, help in some way.

Walking Through Water

As I walk down the isle once again, my legs feel heavy like they are trudging through water knee-deep. This is where we were married, and now it is so still and dark. The silence is deafening. I remember how happy a day it was for everyone. Who could've known what was to come in such a short period of time. 

Oh Dread

Today the steam got blown out of me. I couldn't hold it in anymore. Tears, again. It's been a while. But there they were. At the end of the day when I can't take it anymore, that is a common time for me to cry. Alone. I'm not the kind of person who likes to cry in front of everyone. So, when I am alone that's when the tears come. It's funny how I knew this would happen. I would have a bit of a "let down" after all these good days. I start to feel out of control and my mind has dark thoughts. Like flashes of hurting myself. Not like I want to, but just a flash. What would it be like if everything I cared about today was just suddenly gone? Nothing would matter to me. Much like R's tragedy has completely changed my perspective on the many things and stressors of life. Priorities change. Material things mean almost nothing. They more a symbol than anything else. Crap, crap, and more crap we all want to have. It all means nothing. You cannot take it with you when you die. What can you take? Love. Faith. Relationships. 

Ghosts

Sometimes I want to go to his grave site, jump up and down on it and yell, "YOU.ARE.NOT.SUPPOSED.TO.BE.HERE!!!"  Over and over again until he comes back to life. You were so young, you idiot! You had your whole life to live!
But I just sit there under the huge oak tree, the breeze and the birds chirping. It's quiet.
When will he comeback? 
Any minute now? 
No.
Never.
He is gone.
Dead. 

A few nights ago I had a nightmare. I woke myself up from yelling and I was drenched in sweat. I had been screaming, "Get out!!! Get out of here!!! You are not allowed to be here!!!" Ghosts had invaded my house and would not leave. I have heard that you must do this if you want spirits to leave your premises. You have to tell them to leave, there is nothing for them where you are residing. I can guess that the house is my "new life" that I have been forced to find. And that I do not want these "ghosts" of grief to follow me or haunt me anymore. Unfortunately, they will linger. Maybe not be visible all the time. They will make themselves known sometimes. I do not want them to ruin my hopefulness. Stay away! Things in my life are feeling normal -whatever that means. I have a purpose. As each day passes it is further and further from that awful day and makes it less intense.

So I dream about Tornadoes and Ghosts. What do you dream about?

Forgiving

Can we forgive ourselves? Is that really possible if you are a Christian? I believe in the Lutheran doctrine which says that God is the only one who can forgive us. R's death was a choice he made, and I know that intellectually. But there is still guilt. And what to feel guilty of if I was not the one to kill him? Lots of things: simply being alive while he is gone, what could I have done to stop him? (answer: nothing), why wasn't I able to save him when I found him? (answer: it was too late), etc...the list goes on and on. Some of these things are logical and some are not. Through all of my reading I have learned that with any kind of death there is guilt. It seems to be a criteria for the grieving process. And so what do I forgive myself of? Or what do I ask God to forgive me of? Whatever I can; for instance, anything I ever did to hurt R, not being able to help in some way, being angry at R, all kinds of things. Anger is one of the biggest issues I have. I get angry for the littlest, stupidest things and it is sometimes intrusive and inconvenient. Example: the other day I was happily walking my son into the YMCA for his swim lesson. It was twilight and a huge firetruck sat in the front entrance with it's lights flashing around. As I walked past the firetruck I was instantly transported back to that horrible evening when R decided to kill himself. When we found him it was twilight, the sky was the same color, it was damn near the same exact time of day, and after I called 911 there was a huge firetruck, ambulance and 2 police cars sitting in my front yard with the soft light of evening in the background. I sat on my front steps praying in a panic and wondering what in the hell to do with  my son at this moment. How to protect him? You cannot. You cannot protect your children from everything in the world. I think I had good instincts in keeping him with me, and explaining to him in very simple language what was happening. And back to my anger: walking past a firetruck is a simple task, right? Normally one  might wonder, what happened here? Is everyone OK? But not me. I think about how we came home and found him hanging there - and proceed to think, You son of a bitch. I can't even walk past a firetruck without thinking of what you did. How could you do that?! How could you do that to your son?! 

However, this truly is a process. And each time I am reminded of his suicide, the cut hurts a little less and a little less and I am able to move past it. Deep wounds do heal. It just takes time and care, like healing from a heart surgery. My chest was opened and worked on, and sewn back up again, but the true healing takes much longer with special care for months and months and maybe even years afterwards.

Somber vs. Happy

I don't want to grieve anymore. I don't want to think about it anymore. I am tired of working on it. I want to work on something else. Grief is hard work. It is draining. My life outside of this tragedy is finally going pretty well. I'm happy and hopeful for the future; the door to a personal dream I have had all my life seems to be opening up to me. I want to remain happy and energized- I don't want to think about the death of my husband all the time. And I don't have to. Did you hear that? I don't have to! What a horrible way to live, thinking about death all of the time. R would never have wanted that for me. I'll say something quite controversial here: screw what R would have wanted for me. I am not living out his life or his dreams, I am living out my own. This is my life, my time table, and no one else has a say in the matter except for me. I will not apologize for being me, or for being happy. And THAT is what R wants for me.

The problem with being a widow, particularly a young one, is that you are carefully scrutinized. Our culture expects you to be somber all the time. Our culture does not accept non-traditional grieving, grieving without tears, too much or too little- if you don't do it the exact right way, something is "wrong."

Tragedy such as this opens you up and makes you vulnerable. There is no energy left over for putting on a facade. This has been one of the greatest gifts to me. I have finally become my own person. I found myself. I found connection to my own spirit I have never had before. I truly believe God has somehow turned a horrible thing into something good. As humans we can never understand how this is possible. But I don't question it, I just keep believing.

Feeling Crazy

When it has been a few days (since I have written on this subject) I become very antsy. I can hardly sit still until I can get something out again. Just now, before I sat down to my little netbook, you would have seen me literally pacing the length of my apartment in my sweatpants and bathrobe. If anyone saw me they might think I look either neurotic, disturbed or riddled with anxiety. I walk around doing little chores like giving the cats their nightly dry food, preparing the coffee maker for the morning, doing dishes, laundry and sometimes forgetting what I was going to do on the way. I pace trying to think of what I was doing when I got up out of my seat. Where was I going? What was I going to do? This behavior actually has a name: polyphasic behavior. I have read in Dr. Alan Wolfelt's book, Understanding Your Suicide Grief, that this is something that can make a grieving person feel like they are "crazy." He explains it as, "...you start doing something and then, right in the middle of it, you forget what you were doing and start doing something else." I cannot begin to count how often this has happened to me when I am at the grocery store. I would be there for a only a few items, and while walking around get so distracted that I could not remember what I came into the store to purchase. I have tried to get into the habit of writing a list before I go, otherwise I wander aimlessly from section to section trying to remember what I need and picking up things that I don't need. And there have been times when I have aborted the trip altogether while driving to the store. 

I have been doing these polyphasic behaviors since R died. For months I did not know what to do with myself, even though I had hours of nursing schoolwork to do. Every moment of my free time could have been filled with some kind of nursing schoolwork. School will be a sure-way to keep myself from thinking about what has happened. Going to school is the only way I can survive right now. I have to have a reason to get out of bed everyday. My son. I need to do this for my son. I need to go to school to show him that I can still function and not completely fall apart. I floated around my apartment doing a little here, stopping, and moving to something else. I just could not sit down and stay on task for more than about 15 minutes at a time. I would get up and continue my little chores: straightening up  the couch, cleaning up toys, the bathroom, my bedroom, and do some pacing in between. To an outsider I may have looked like a very busy person. I suppose that would be true. My mind was so busy sorting through things that I could not focus on any one thing for very long. I did not realize this until a few weeks ago. After all this time, and reading through the book so much, you would think I could recognize my own behavior. Nope. I have become a student of grief and specifically suicide grief, learning things about myself as my mind slowly returns back to what it was before this trauma happened. Perhaps my brain will never be the same. I am beginning to accept that. I am a new person now. I have undergone a transformation that was forced upon me, but transformed for the better, I think.