TOSSED OVERBOARD...AND LEARNING TO SWIM

With all that has happened - losing Christina - I feel like I have been thrown into my worst nightmare of being tossed into a black, churning pool of water and cannot swim. Drowning. My worst fear. Just when I come up for air and feel like I just might make it, I find myself pulled under. I cannot see and cannot tell which way is up. That is what grief has been like for me. I am out of my element and worry that I will not be able to save myself.

But perhaps...maybe...I am learning to swim through the grief, pain, regret, guilt, and sorrow. I've been reading a lot and that always helps me. But I still find myself shocked that I must become knowledgeable about the grieving process and losing someone to suicide. Although I've always worried about losing a child of mine in a tragic way, and although I had often worried about Christina killing herself because of her chronic struggle with her emotions, even then...even when I worried, I never truly thought something like this would really happen. Or perhaps, I never allowed myself to believe it. Every mother's nightmare, to have to bury her own child.

Yet, here I am, learning, reading, processing, assimilating. Sometimes what frightens me the most is just how prevalent suicide really is. Knowing that I am not alone offers some comfort, but also adds to my pain: empathic pain. Pain on behalf of all the other moms and dads, siblings and children who have lost a loved one this way.

I've been through many, many rough spots in my life. I have dealt with having my heart broken, living in poverty, and losing my home. I have survived being sexually abused as an adolescent and finding out that two of my six children were sexually abused.  I have mourned the loss of my hometown, my youth, and have survived two broken marriages. I have wrestled with child abuse, toxic faith, and depression. And yet, every time I was reduced to being nothing more than a wounded puddle on the floor, I somehow found the will and determination to pick myself up and try again.

Yet, in spite of all the previous traumas, nothing seems to compare to this. I will never, ever be able to remove that image from my memory of her lifeless body, still warm, but clearly void, hanging in her room. And I wonder: Can I do it yet again? Can I find the willpower and determination to overcome, to heal, to rise above, to accomplish restoration, and to move forward? Honestly, I believe I can, and I will. Somehow. I remind myself that I have five other children - and ten grandchildren - even though right now, the only one I can think of is Christina. I remind myself that I am at the threshold of starting to work on my master's degree and have vocational dreams to pursue. I remind myself that Life IS worth living, even while wishing Christina could've felt the same way. Somehow, in spite of being tossed overboard, I am learning to swim and am struggling defiantly to stay afloat. If I can survive this, surely there will be nothing left that I cannot do. Surely there will be no roadblock that I cannot plough through. Surely there will never be a wall to high for me to climb.

And so I continue to make my attempts to surface and take a life-saving breath. Yes, I still plunge into the depths of despair from time to time (as I did Sunday); but they are temporary submersions. As I continue to read and consult with other parents who have lost children via suicide, I get support and encouragement that although this is hard - very, very hard - it is not impossible.

Look: I see the shoreline. I will be there soon.