OVERWHELMED WITH PAIN AND SORROW

Yesterday, it was officially eleven weeks since Christina took her life and it is not getting much easier. True, I've had some days that felt almost normal; but just below the surface, the pain remains. And, without warning, the images of That Day re-emerge. My mind may forget - for small chunks of time - but my body remembers.

I've been thinking about that a lot these past few weeks - about how the body remembers, even when the mind is otherwise occupied. The memory of this trauma, I've come to realize, is stored primarily in my face, throat, arms, and chest. I know why: as we struggled to take her down, I wanted to scream, but could not. I knew that for the sake of the kids we had to act quickly and quietly. So the screams within my were trapped in my throat. Then, in our physical efforts to take her down, I held her up to take the tension off her neck so that the cord could be loosened and removed. In the process of holding her, I felt the weight of her body in my arms. I held my breath, perhaps because I knew she could not breathe (had she any life left in her), but perhaps also just because of the physical effort. I held her - and my breath - until my chest hurt. And there, the memory of the trauma remains. I fear I will always remember, physically, what it felt like to take her down from that beam. And when those body-based memories surface, I feel it again, almost like re-living the experience, and I fear I will be forever haunted by it.

And so, even while Life goes on, there remains a part of me that is stuck in those moments of struggling so urgently, so desperately, and so overwhelmed with pain and sorrow, as we hurried to release her. Those moments of shock, disbelief, and yet stark realization that my daughter had killed herself - that paradox - remains forever embedded in my mind, body, and soul.

Is it any wonder then that I would suddenly begin to cry, without warning? Can I truly expect to be free of the trauma?? Nothing - nothing has ever traumatized me so greatly and so deeply. I now, as a direct result, fear losing another loved one. I fear tragedy. I know now that anything can happen. I know now that Life can turn quickly to death, happiness to pain. Anything can happen. BAD things can happen - without warning. And even if there IS warning, it can go unrecognized.

Some have said that Christina would not want me to suffer endlessly like this; but I wonder. She resented me so deeply. Was this revenge? Did she do this to me, intentionally, in anger and hatred? Did she laugh to herself before taking that final step off the couch as she envisioned the pain she would inflict upon me for the rest of my life? Or was she simply not thinking at all? Was she thinking only of ending her own misery, as others have concluded? I'll never know. I'll never be quite certain. And in the uncertainty comes more pain.

I want desperately to resolve this. I want to be able to evaluate what has happened, picking it apart, and creating an explanation that I can live with and that will allow me to close that chapter and move on; but I have not been successful in that endeavor. Every time I think I have satisfactorily synthsized all of the events leading up to her action, and subsequently resolved the aftermath, I unearth another aspect of the trauma that I must confront and come to terms with. Most recently, it has been my regret (oh, how I despise regret) for calling 911. We should have instead allowed ourselves time with her right here at home. There was nothing the paramedics could have done. And the police were an unwelcome intrusion. What she did was not a crime. A tragedy, yes. But not a crime.

And so I have felt overwhelmed - not so much by what happened eleven weeks ago, but with Life intruding upon my ability to process what happened on That Day. I resent that Life goes on. I resent that I feel as if Life has not afforded me the opportunity to fully process her death before moving on to yet another day, another week, another month. Time is having its way with me. And I resent Time's intrusion.

FOREVER CHANGED

It's been less than six weeks since Christina's been gone. I'm still at the beginning of the grieving process, and still assimilating her absence. So many thoughts race through my mind every conscious moment of each day about what this all means in the Big Scheme of Things.

I wish I believed in Heaven. What a comfort that would be to trust that there was a God that would bring me to Heaven upon dying where I would one day be reunited with my daughter. But I don't. I can't. I want to, but I can't. For all I know, we simply cease to exist upon death. But how much nicer it would feel to be comforted by a belief that I'd see her again. So I am desperately seeking answers about the afterlife; I've become obsessed with the paranormal. Can I communicate with her and her with me? Will it help if I create an altar in her honor and light a candle? If I sit by her gravesite, will she know I am there? Does she "see" all of us? Is she aware of how deeply and profoundly she is missed? Is that really her speaking through the Tarot cards? Was that unexpected chilly breeze I felt on my back while doing the dishes her? Or, when Michelle and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking about her and the light began to flicker and the bulb suddenly burnt out - was THAT her??

Then there are the thoughts about how this has changed me. I am not who I was when I woke up on May 18th. I was, that morning, thrust into a new identity: A mother who has lost a child, a suicide survivor, a grief-stricken individual. How can I ever be who I was prior to her leaving: she took part of me with her.

Some say I will become stronger as a result of this trauma. I believe that is likely. But I may also become somehow less than I once was, since part of me is forever gone. I certainly FEEL like less. A part of me is missing. I feel distant from Life right now, as if part of me is truly there, on the Other Side, with her. Part of me died with her. If she had only known...

Some say I will be able to help others as a result of this experience. I believe that is likely too: as a grief counselor, as a crisis counselor, as the founder and facilitator of a grief/suicide survivor support group, as an author of a book...all of those are potentials. But it's hard to be excited about those opportunities because they are not worth losing Christina. Still, if I can save just one life as a result, Christina will have indirectly been the reason.

I am forever changed because I am now so painfully aware of just how devastating a suicide can be. There was a time when I felt it was a human right to take one's own life. But now...now I am not so convinced. Sure, those who are terminally ill seem to deserve the right to a dignified death (Dr. Kevorkian-style). But that is not really the same as suicide...is it??

I am frightened by the statistics:
* There is one suicide every 15 minutes in the United States.
* It's the 11th leading cause of death.
* Slightly more than HALF of all U.S. suicides are done with firearms.
* Some say there are about 25 attempted suicides for every suicide death.
* There are an estimated 6 survivors for every completed suicide, which means that in the U.S., there are currently about 4.6 million people who have lost a loved one to a suicidal death.

- Taken from the American Association of Suicidology (http://www.suicidology.org/) -

So yes, I am forever changed, with part of me forever deleted, and with a new facet to my identity. I want to survive. I want to feel joy and happiness again some day. I want to reach out and help others, some day, in honor of my daughter. But for right now, I am just a grief-stricken mom, overcome by morbid intruding images of that last day with her, and forcing myself to smile and interact with my still-present grown children and grandchildren. I am forcing myself to get out of my bed and into the sunshine of the day. I am forcing myself to face each day, one moment at a time. In fact, I am forcing myself to behave as if I am alive, because regardless of feeling like losing her has killed me, it has not; I am very much alive - but still very much in pain. I am forever changed.