Day by day, more people leave, and tomorrow our last visitors will travel home. My nuclear family, all that remains, will experience one week together before some return home to North Carolina.
Then the “new normal” will really start to settle as we grasp for new routines.
My mind strives to protect me by covering me mainly in denial. Most of the time, reality feels miles away. I dream constantly of my Mother: dreams telling her why she shouldn’t leave, dreams of me finding her in witness protection, dreams that continue to deny reality. A properly-working mind knows when one has the capacity to wake up to reality, but for now my mind operates mainly from shock and denial.
I am anxious for when my mind will allow me to feel everything it must, for “pain demands to be felt,” and thus it’s only a matter of time.
Today, I am simply grateful again for everyone’s phenomenal support.
Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
The less decisions a person in mourning needs to make, the better. Mourning requires an enormous amount of mental energy, and helping make a decision alleviates a bit of mental fatigue.
July 1, 2026
My Momma was so excited about the mug pictured above. I got it for either Mother’s Day or her birthday 🩷. She eventually gave me one, too.
Gosh, I remember the intense denial. It was such a surreal feeling.
I remember the car ride down to the place that she died, moments after finding out, repeating “Scott, I can’t lose my Momma. I can’t lose my Momma too. Please God, not my Momma,” but it was too late.
I dreamed vividly, restlessly, for weeks. She was always just out of reach. My poor mind was working so hard to comprehend what happened to my Momma.
The only way that time heals, I believe, is through the new memories we make. The more memories we make without our loved one, the less our brain automatically looks for them in everything. The Grieving Brain comments that it takes an average of three years for the brain to process that someone is no longer a part of one’s life, and this is considered one of the only ways that time heals.
It softens the loss because, after about three years, the brain no longer assumes one’s loved one will be there. It takes a small piece of the mental load of grief and allows one’s mind to rest.
I do not dream everyday anymore, but I still often dream of my Momma.
Our second church service since Mom left us filled me with encouragement once more. A healthy amount of tears dripped from my sore eyes onto my pallid cheeks as we sang of God’s good plans, his faithfulness, and his constance. All of which I believe, and I mean really believe.
However, I mentioned the dissonance between faith and desperate circumstances during Mom’s Celebration of Life, and I want to share more of what exactly that looks like. Suffering forces people to confront their inmost beliefs, and that is completely healthy and can become beautiful. My Mom loved Jesus with her entire being: the cacophony of confusion left in her wake prompts intense introspection and deconstruction.
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:9-13, CSB
Now, please understand, I’m not looking for answers and I do not plan to provide any at this time, but I do want to share the questions clamoring in my mind. Thoughts that, perhaps, cloud your mind as well. Maybe sharing my thoughts will help those echoing the same to feel less alone and less afraid, because two thoughts can be true at the same time: one can trust God and be utterly confused and skeptical at the same time. Thus, my questions:
• Good fathers are supposed to protect their family. Why don’t you [God] protect mine?
• If Jesus is the abundant life, how could my mom die? She loved him.
• If he [God] knew what Mom needed, why weren’t her needs met?
I’ve said this so many times — I believe that God can do all things, but I fear what he will allow to happen. This is precisely why: I have now experienced twice how despair and hopelessness kill those whom I love, and those who legitimately love Jesus.
Today, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the generosity and the care from mine and Scott’s small group. They ensured our current needs were met and provided provisions for our future needs. My family has experienced such incredible and support from people being the hands and feet of Jesus, and, because of them, right now my faith remains strong. I wrestle through these complex questions, but it is abundantly clear that we have our daily bread, that God is providing and caring for us, and that we will get through this. I cannot thank our community enough for all they have done. You have eclipsed this horribly dark and tragic time with light and love and I am amazed and humbled at all of this. Thank you.
Tips for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
Acknowledging the situation is better than avoiding the topic altogether. It may be awkward to speak up, but a simple “I see you,” goes a long way 💙
June 30, 2026
God is faithful. His faithful love endures forever.
I’ve grown through the year — not that suffering is meant for one to grow, but that God can bring the blessing of growth and new perspective despite suffering. I reject the notion that anyone “needs” suffering to glean a cosmic understanding, but I acknowledge that committing to healing and renewed life can provide a beautiful glimpse into ethereal understanding.
It is better when people dwell in unity, and I miss the moments when I perceived my mother’s church as a safe place to attend. Maybe that safety was real, maybe it was an illusion. Maybe catastrophic loss changed things for the worse or perhaps it revealed a truth that was always there.
This particular Sunday was one of the most influential in my memory because of the sweet group of friends that continued to meet my family exactly where we were at. Their profound generosity and kindness shines brightly in my otherwise darkened memory: they provided for us for months. They gave sweet notes and gift cards that lasted until I returned back to work. The profound sadness and stress of losing my Momma was/is horrific to bear, but they eased that burden by ensuring that I did not need to worry about returning to work. I did not need to worry about what we would eat or how we would make it — they met those needs in the most incredible ways.
I think some supporters can feel an element of guilt because they are not sure how to support, nor do they feel that their support is enough, but support as detailed above enables more healing than supporters can imagine. People who acknowledge the loss, empathize with a griever’s perspective, and provide physical support for things we grievers can barely think about are earnest. There is nothing to be guilty about here, in fact, it’s something a griever cannot “repay.”
To a supporter, it may seem trivial that they had one honest and empathetic conversation or provided money towards a gift card or a meal while expecting nothing in return, but to a survivor this is the bread of life. This is the kindness that kept us from sinking, this is the provision that kept us eating, this is the support that allowed our mind to focus on healing from the loss instead of focusing on how we are going to afford to survive.
Kindness, compassion, and love change the world.
Kindness, compassion, and love nurture healing.
Above all, God is love.
* * * *
A deluge of questions barraged my mind back then. What was a flood dwindled to a trickle of ever-present drops of questions, much less intense but nevertheless constant. Healing harvests new worldviews, and these are my new perspectives on those old questions:
• Good fathers are supposed to protect their family. Why don’t you [God] protect mine? God is love. Love protects, but love cannot control all outcomes. My perspective on the idea that God “allows” certain outcomes was most challenged by Thomas Jay Oord’s book God Can’t, as I have previously mentioned. I believe that God gave people free will, and that people harm one another. In this specific case, it was my Momma who harmed our family [not God]. Individuals are accountable for their actions because of their free will. God is love, and love protects. If God could protect from this harm, He would.
• If Jesus is the abundant life, how could my mom die? She loved him. How much we love God and/or others does not cure, manage, or heal mental illness. People who love Jesus can be suicidal. People who love Jesus can be delusional. One’s love for God and other people is simply not enough to keep him or her alive. There is no relationship between theological beliefs and mental illness — belief or love of Jesus does not fix mental illness at all. In fact, people can put their entire hope and joy in heaven and begin to loathe this beautiful life they were given. I call this idea Christian Escapism: the belief that one’s life is altogether terrible and it would be better to unite with Christ in one’s idealized imagined heaven. Life is always a gift, life is always a blessing. We were not given the gift of life simply to die.
• If he [God] knew what Mom needed, why weren’t her needs met? Mom’s needs could have been met. She was an educated white woman in America, with more friends and connections that most people have in their lifetime. She had the resources available. She had the support available. She was capable of having her needs, whatever they were, met. Mental illness creates delusions — delusions that choices are limited, that life is altogether horrible, that our pain will always be all-consuming. It isn’t God’s fault that my Mother did not pursue life and healing, and I believe that it is as tragic to God as it is to us.
I do not fear what God allows anymore. I fear what man is capable of, and what man will choose to do with his or her freedom. I fear what people will do with their brokenness and hurt. I fear what people will do with their anger and frustration. Emotions offer so much insight into who we are as individuals: they reveal what is important to us and help us experience the fullness of life in its brevity and elation. They are a gift, but a gift that requires nurturing and tending. I fear what people will do when they do not tend to their emotions and when they do not pursue healing.
Funeral preparations cease but a few friends and family members from out of town remain close. Reality slowly creeps in as the whispers of finding a “new normal” lingers just around the corner. In a matter of days, most of the world will return to work while we begin to reorganize our lives.
My Daddy, of course, will have the most significant adjustment for his day-to-day life. Already, he sleeps without my Mom, but he has not had to experience a “typical” day without her. They were partners, they were friends, and they were lovers. I always thought they really would be that couple from The Notebook: I never thought this could happen.
Their relationship was an anchor in my life. They endured and overcame agonizing trauma together again and again and again, and they were the best of friends. Growing up, I always wanted a marriage like theirs. Since getting married, I still wanted a relationship like theirs! My marvelous husband and I watched their love for one another with reverence and admiration. They were such an amazing team. They loved being together and they loved each other well. It’s difficult not to be really angry with my mom when I think of their truly inspirational marriage… and then it’s really, really, really sad.
As my brother Luke reminded, my siblings and I had never known a world without Mom until eight days ago.
Rehabilitation — that’s the word that keeps bustling through my mind. Learning to live without Mom feels like rehabilitating back into normal society: walking, driving, talking, biking, writing, smiling, and so much more, feels so foreign and unnatural. I feel as though I can barely hold a thought or concept in my mind.
Denial persists more than anything right now, a dull ache thumps within me at all times, but most of the time I can’t believe my Mom’s gone and I can’t believe my mom left me feels like a distant thought and not an annihilating reality. My Momma, I still mumble in shock. Moments of mayhem pierce me to the core, preparing me for when the shock wears off and when I’ll have to truly face this menacing reality.
My Mom grounded and anchored my life, creating stability and safety. What now?
Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
I have provided many things not to say — all of which from comments multiple people have made, not just one-off comments as to not single anyone out — but there are so many good things people say as well.
“I’m sorry” feels like such a weak thing to say, but it encompasses a tremendous amount of emotion and care. The short phrase empathizes with the mourners and often creates an understanding between two hurting people.
Future Ways to Help
Small tasks are incredibly helpful — doing a load of laundry, wiping down a counter, calling to set up a dental appointment. Sometimes it’s hard for me to even remember to put a pair of shoes on – it’s invaluable to notice those little things that may be neglected and to help one another out.
We’re a grieving community, and we’ve got this 💙
June 29, 2026
What happens when you lose an anchor in your life?
You simply keep living, limping, breaking every day.
My parents had a beautiful marriage, and facing the world without their partnership in it is strange and unnerving.
I’m not sure if “new normal” ever actually arrives. There is nothing normal about my life and there never will be.
Losses like this aren’t normal. They are tragic. They take people’s breath away. No, I don’t believe “new normal” ever arrives. I think I simply keep on living in the liminal spaces, mind and heart forever fixated on what is and what was.
Two things can be true: I had a mother who loved me, and I had a mother who did the most unloving thing imaginable. She murdered. She killed. Not only herself, but her entire family unit.
My dad lost his wife. My siblings lost our mother. Our family, as we knew it, ceased to exist because she murdered it.
A year later, and most of the shock has worn off.
* * * *
It dawns on me how few people truly have compassion.
Everyone pities the griever, until he or she does something they disagree with.
Everyone claims to support, claims to be there, claims to honor, claims to befriend the griever… until the griever does something they cannot understand.
After that, other people’s feelings somehow become the griever’s fault.
It’s the griever who has to consider them.
It’s the griever who should have anticipated someone else else’s thought.
It’s the griever who should have considered everyone else before they choose to live their life.
We survivors have one responsibility: to survive. For suicide survivors, specifically, the risk of survival far outweighs the likelihood of their own suicide. In my family — with double suicides — we are more likely to kill ourselves than we are to life a full life and die a natural death.
When we choose to keep living, when we begin to find new life and try to start moving on, we are met with an anger. We are met with calloused behaviors if we aren’t moving on fast enough, and simultaneously we are met with silence and judgment when we dare to build a new life.
It’s impossible to be a griever. It’s impossible to be a supporter, too. Everyone gets it wrong. It’s such a sensitive area that both grievers and their supporters often unintentionally hurt each other and lack the grace and compassion to reach to the other side. This perpetuates immense pain and creates situations that grievers and supporters would not have seen coming.
My responsibility — and my father’s and my brother’s responsibility — is to live. My responsibility is to survive. My responsibility is to find new joy in life and to attempt to create a life that’s worth living, because the life that I was dealt by someone else’s choices isn’t worth it. The life my mother handed down to me, full of anguish and pain, isn’t worth living. It’s the life I dare to create and in wake of her decision that makes life worth living.
We are punished for grieving, and then we are punished for living.
We are punished if we do not seek healing, and then we are punished when our healing manifests in new ways that others were not ready to accept.
Supporting survivors requires more courage, more compassion, and more grace than many are even to provide. I do not fault anyone for their limits, but I do not understand when people choose to judge me or my family members for daring to live.
Life should be celebrated. Newness should be celebrated. Daring to live should be celebrated.
This surreal week will haunt me for the rest of my life, and yet I’ll remember your kindness vividly in the days to come.
Love permeates everything and its warmth reaches my deep wounds. Tonight, I remember that the New Testament word “Salvation” is the same Greek/Hebrew word for “Healing”. Jehova-Rapha: The God who Heals, written throughout the Old Testament. The God who heals broken hearts and broken minds. The God who binds our wounds and holds us up. El Roi: The God who Sees. The God who sees me — who sees us in our pain.
I live amongst a community of mourners: I know you’re hurting too. I know you loved her, and I know it’s so hard to fathom life without her. She was such a light, such a joy, and so… “sparkly” as my Grandpa, my mom’s dad, described. I love it – she was so sparkly.
Life is so confusing right now. It still doesn’t feel real, until it hits and it hurts excruciatingly. I don’t want it to feel real, I don’t want it to be real. None of us do.
Thank you for being here, for watching, for reading. For holding my hand, playing with my hair, and hugging me. Thank you for loving my mom.
Be well tonight and get some rest 💙 Live loved.
June 27, 2026
The mind works restlessly to comprehend catastrophic loss. In early days and weeks — perhaps even months — after Mom died, I vividly dreamed of her but could not reach her. I knew she was dead during each dream, then I would wake up after a fitful hour or two of sleep and blankly stare into the darkness
Those memories haunt.
We became a community of mourners that day, ever changed by a choice we were powerless control.
Kindness powerfully redeems and heals wounded hearts and minds, but individuals must take ownership of their healing.
Admitting sadness isn’t enough. Admitting depression and anxiety isn’t enough. Admitting isolation isn’t enough. It’s a massive step in the right direction, as many [like my Momma] refuse to admit or acknowledge it to begin with, but saying it aloud isn’t enough to heal someone.
Coming to terms with the reality of one’s own mental fragility can be incredibly painful, vulnerable, dark, and frightening. Yet it is in this darkness that seeds of healing begin to grow when watered with kindness and compassion.
I have been amazed at people’s kindness and cruelty amidst this horror, but I believe that there have been far more kind actions than actions meant to harm. It’s unfortunate that the cruel actions cause such rippling dramas, but it is the compassion that acts as a raft to carry us through.
He is the God who heals and the God who sees, and this healing and seeing often comes from people who peer into our lives to offer compassion.
Thank you for joining me on this lonely and isolating journey, and making me feel less alone 💙
I’m 27 years old: I thought my family was supposed to be growing at this point in my life, not shrinking, but I’ve lost a brother, a mother, and we can’t get pregnant. We’ve been “trying” for two years now, for all you well-intended people that keep telling us we need to have kids. I don’t like to talk about it, it’s deeply personal. But today? It’s just another wound in a long list of hurts.
It’s hard to trust God in times like these — life can be so cruel, and this feels devastatingly horrific. I see the support of God in the provision for my family, in the food at our table, in our ability to have my remaining living family here, in the friends that hold us, clean for us, and provide for us. The support is palpable, but it’s still hard to trust God. I so often say “I know God can do anything, but I am also vividly aware of what he will allow.” Here we are again, harrowing in what God will allow.
Our table felt so small after Patrick died. Our immediate family of six became a family of five, and now our family of five becomes a family of four. Oh but wait! “They’re always with you!” No, there’re not in the empty chair. It’s still just as painful without them in it. When I was a child, I used to think families of four were so little. Family of four? We had four kids in ours! And it was loud. Now, it’s so quiet. So somber. So mournful. It should be — we loved our Mommy.
It’s so tense and so stressful and so sad. A myriad of emotions waiting to burst from our eyes or escape from our lips.
Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
Just… be so gracious. As you can read, I’m a little snippy today. I need a lot of grace. Don’t be surprised if someone deep in mourning gets a little snippy with you. It’s not you, it’s all we’ve got going on.
I know many of you reading this are likewise deep in mourning — be gracious with yourself and with your family. I’m sorry if those around you haven’t experienced much grief — it’s incredibly hard to fathom a grieving mind if you haven’t experienced a deep personal loss.
Future Ways to Help
Lawncare: My parents’ have a beautiful lawn, with gorgeous trees and plants. A lawncare service would be very helpful. Beyond a lawncare service, weeds grow so fast here — if you drop by, maybe scan the lawn before coming inside and pick some weeds if you are willing and able to.
Gift cards: Right now we have plenty of food, but in a few months, making dinner every night will feel overwhelming.
Any little act of service helps. All those small little normal tasks feel like such monstrous feats when your heart is hurting.
If you can’t physically help but still want to do something, please consider the GoFund Me: https://gofund.me/6617c101
Thank you, immensely, for everyone who has shown up to help, who has given, and who has prayed. Every little bit helps 💙
June 26, 2026
I’ve pretty much given up hope that our family will grow.
I think many people dream of a family to heal the wounds they inherited from their family of origin. I dream of being a mother who watches her children grow old with my husband, and a mother whose children grow up and live full lives — my dream is the bare minimum — I just want everyone to live. But thus far, it isn’t possible for me to create life, let alone sustain it.
* * * *
My mindset about what God “allows” significantly shifted after reading Thomas Jay Oord’s God Can’t. Christians often acknowledge God’s limits (ie: he cannot sin, lie, manipulate, etc), but seldom do many apply this to what God can and cannot allow. Man cannothave free choice if all his actions are predetermined by an outside source.
I believe that God gave life, life in abundance, and life in fullness. What some have done with life is heartbreaking, but I do not blame God for that anymore — I blame people.
People, in need of desperate grace. People, in need of radical compassion. People, in need of healing.
My mind is… occupied. Lots of people coming into town, lots of arrangements to be made, lots of logistics to coordinate, lots of thoughts to think.
I started to get snippy today and short-tempered. I don’t like that, but thankfully I have a lot of wonderfully gracious people to talk things out with.
There are so many details in death. I feel so much older than I am.
Be in the youngest in my family, I will likely be involved in the funeral planning of the majority of my family, so I guess I am really learning how to do this by myself one day. I just hope it’s not anytime soon.
Anxiety starts to mature within me. Who’s next? I ponder as I look around our table. It’s scary.
I’ve been here before — it provides a nice kind of structure of what I think the mourning process will be like over the next few months, but it also brings a sickening dread — How much will it all hurt when everyone leaves and life goes back to “normal”?
I miss my mom. Sometimes it’s a searing pain, sometimes it’s a dull ache. It will be like that forever.
Thank you to everyone who has reached out — I have an abundance of messages I cannot keep up with, but I do enjoy reading them and appreciate your encouragement and support. I read them in small doses when I want a distraction.
Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
Saying “Your mom is always with you,” is not helpful. Perhaps it will be in the future, but in the first few days it’s more of a reminder of the chasm between my life and my mom’s death.
June 25, 2026
I’ve mostly accepted the fact that my youth died ages ago. I don’t ever remember feeling young, but these deaths make me feel half a century older than I am.
I remember watching Patrick [high] in a hospital bed, crying alone and thinking how much that had aged me. I felt much closer to fifty than to twenty-one.
Then Mom died, and I feel older and older and older.
I’ve never been “young and full of energy.”
It feels like I never experienced youth, and now I’m starting to age out of it anyway.
My sweet friend Lauren left me this basked on June 25 last year. She flew into town immediately, and she and our friends Gabi and Laura Kate provided the gifts.
There is no sweeter gift than showing up for one’s friend, physically or emotionally, during crisis and suffering. These little things imprint on one’s heart and ease the endless ache.
I’m always amazed how much pain people can endure when faced with suffering.
I woke to notes of encouragement, sorrow, and prayer. My breathing fails, my eyes swarm with tears, and my body heaves with the weight of my mind.
“My Momma. My Momma. My Momma. I loved my Momma,” I chant in a voice choked by emotions and tears — words barely able to escape my mind and reach the outside world.
My Momma is gone, and she’s not coming back. My Daddy, my Daddy. My Daddy☹️ I can barely move. I don’t know how to function, “My Momma. My Momma. My Momma,” I mumble.
How do I reconcile this? It doesn’t make any sense. I know I’ll be angry with God for that sometime later, but today I’m just trying to survive. All I want to do is be with my Daddy and my brothers.
I can’t walk 20 steps without sobbing: “My momma, my Momma, my Momma.”
All I want is my Momma.
One Year Later
June 21, 2026
Photographs poured in from across the globe, beginning the day after she died. It was loud back then, with the whole world feeling ripples from the explosion that was the epicenter of my family’s universe.
It’s quiet today and still: we live among the ashes.
Interestingly, I did not become angry with God like I had predicted one year ago. That surprises me — I was very angry with him after Patrick died — but I suppose I outgrew that perspective.
This time, anger at God was not a battle I needed to wrestle through. I haven’t written much about God, but I’ve talked about him with many.
I’ve come to view God as far more compassionate and loving, and remembered Christ as he was known — as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. God as the savior who heals, God as the creator who gave abundant life, Christ who came to demonstrate a greater way to live on earth.
This life — my beautiful, tragical, emotional, unforgettable life — is such a gift. My family is everything, my relationships are everything, my experiences are everything.
I sat by one of my nieces this week and allowed a tender tear to grace my cheek, simply in awe of the fact that this precious little life loves me simply for being in her life. It’s an overwhelming amount of love. The joy and the beauty of simply being together, surrounded by my sweet family, thinking how wonderful it is to love them and to be loved by them.
I cannot imagine walking out of my nieces and nephews lives like my mother, aunt, and grandparents walked out of ours. They’re withholding and missing out on so much love.
That’s not God’s fault, it’s theirs.
We each have choices of whether to harm one another or to love one another, and unhealthy thought patterns ultimately lead to death in one sense or another. We are free to make our choices, for better or for worse.
Now, I’ve walked miles without sobbing “My momma, my Momma, my Momma.” I knew it was possible back then, but it was incomprehensible at that time.
It is astounding how much pain people can endure; it’s unbelievable how much pain I have endured. People often try to comfort or maybe explain [I think??] by saying “She [Momma] was in so much pain,” but her pain didn’t end: it transferred to we who survive, giving us a trauma she did not have to live through.
Love is eternal, and so is loss.
Perhaps there is a grand reunion in the afterlife, but we living will carry Momma’s loss until we too take our final breath.
Her love endures. Her loss endures. In some ways, she endures too, her blood coursing through our veins.
Her loss is irreconcilable, and it isn’t meant to be. Mommas aren’t supposed to leave their babies. People aren’t supposed to choose their deaths.
Life is hard, but our endurance should be celebrated. Our lives should be celebrated.
One year later, glimpses of life flutter from ground zero. All that is gray and dark does not last forever.
My mom turned fifty one 21 days before she killed herself…. How sick, to murder oneself. Ugh. It’s so… abrasive.
Fifty one — we called it “Fifty Fun.” I coined the term, but Mom thought Scott made it up. Scott & I laughed about that at the time. She just adored Scott; he reminded him a lot of herself, with his optimism and lighthearted demeanor. Now these similarities scare me about Scott sometimes… Isn’t that sad?
“She was supposed to be ‘fifty fun’ not ‘ fifty done,’”I’ve often repeated to myself this year.
Grief rips apart one’s sense of time and space. It’s been almost a year since my mom died, but it feels like it’s been a decade. Others think the year went by fast. It’s seemed like an eternity. Pieces of me feel like I never had a Mom — I feel so far from her, it’s like she was part of someone else’s life. It couldn’t possibly been my life.
The sun and the moon and the tides testify to time’s reality, but it’s simultaneously a construct. A way to measure our days, with seasons to mark the harvests and the plentiful and the droughts.
Time moves quickly when we enjoy our lives, slowly when we’re bored, and halts when we’re suffering.
Suffering refines and illuminates what matters, while healing ensures one concludes with the right perspective.
It seems as though nothing matters when one’s suffering. For example — from my skewed and insecure perspective — nothing I’ve done matters.
It didn’t matter that I loved Patrick.
It didn’t matter that I loved my Momma.
It doesn’t matter that I love my grandparents.
It doesn’t matter that I loved my former pastors.
My kindness and my love, in the end, didn’t matter to any of them. They’re still gone. They’re still dead, in one way or another.
The letters I wrote them didn’t matter. My forgiveness doesn’t matter. My kindness doesn’t matter.
I can do all the “right” things and remain punished by others’ decisions. In a sense, nothing I do matters.
Nothing I did matters.
They chose this, they did this, and nothing I did deserved that.
So… nothing I do matters.
* * * *
And yet… it all matters. Maybe it didn’t matter to them, maybe it did in some ways, but ultimately it didn’t.
Healing reminds me that it all mattered — it all matters.
I’ve experienced how much kindness matters. Again and again and again, people extend kindness and grace and support, and others’ actions matters. If others’ kindness and cruelty matter, mine does too.
Many have said that my words matter. Sometimes it’s difficult to see how one’s actions matter when he or she experiences so much pain because of another’s actions.
Sorrow rips apart time and space, too. How hard it is, then, to see one’s importance and brilliance in a world clouded with such potent pains.
* * * *
She was beautiful, she was real, she was my Momma.
She loved me, but that didn’t matter either. It did and it didn’t.
It’s incommunicable how much life grief takes from you.
It’s the life itself.
It’s the relationship.
Then, it’s all relationships.
It’s the griever’s energy.
It’s the griever’s social capacity.
It’s the griever’s concentration.
It’s the griever’s loss of clarity.
It’s the griever’s loss of stability.
It’s the griever’s loss of comfort.
It’s — The list never stops.
Every single survivor is affected holistically, and it’s impossible to communicate. It’s impossible for outsiders to understand, it’s impossible for outsiders to see, and perhaps it’s impossible for outsiders to believe.
It’s impossible for survivors and observers to fathom.
So much life gone with the loss of one individual’s life. It takes everything. She took everything from me.
She took everything from me. There is not a corner of my life unaffected by her decision.
Some people try their hardest to beautifully ease the burden she left, some people intentionally add to that burden.
Nearly a year ago, volunteers from the Women’s Ministry at my mother’s church joined together to create a beautiful atmosphere after her funeral. They provided nourishment and filled a room with flowers, honoring my mother and my family. I often think of the beauty they created, and the tenderness they wanted to continue towards me and my family, with gratitude and kindness. They eased the burden.
Our small group raised a small fortune to help support me and Scott and Sawyer when we were out of work, and they even made a sweet basket for my dad.
Dozens made and brought food to our families. Some sent packages, some gave books, some brought flowers.
Some still do.
There’s so much loss in this life after death, it’s as if the acres of my life have burnt to the ground. The fire of her death consumed everything, and every bit pained me to death, too.
Life on every acre ceased that day, but the ground of my life remained. I lived.
I live, this empty, decimated, desolate life, but life returns after all wildfires. Maybe at first it’s just grass, and then wildflowers, and then one day maybe trees will grow and roots will return to this ground that’s covered in ash.
So much life destroyed with the death of one so beloved.
There’s an ache in my chest that reminds me you’re gone.
It sits with me all through the day and greets me at dawn.
Birthdays pose a conundrum when people die. How strange and liminal they feel… there’s naught to celebrate, but it was once such an important day.
Many adults hate their birthdays — I’ve always resented that — because our society tantalizes the fear of aging, as if growing old is not something miraculous. As if living a full life is not something to celebrate, as if gray hair and wrinkles aren’t something beautiful that we earn as we triumph through this tumultuous life.
I often tell people that birthdays — just like weddings — aren’t really about the individual. They are, and they’re not. They’re really a chance for others to celebrate one’s life: other people love your birthday, other people love celebrating you, because they love you. It’s a chance for others to gather around you and demonstrate their love.
Once they die, however, birthdays become solemn days. What is there to celebrate, if not the one to celebrate?
My mom sometimes made a cake on Patrick’s birthday, and that felt odd, but what else is one to do?
Last spring, she was with her parents’ in an allegedly great trip. But oh, we can’t contact them because they decided to try to sue us. So loving of them, right? how nice for your grandparents and aunt to try to sue you after your mom dies.
Her church threw her a cute Hawaiian-themed party at work, but not once did her pastor reach out to us after she died. And it’s not safe to contact them, either, because they’ve been in constant communication with my grandparents… who tried [are trying??] to sue us. The two executives who did reach out to us? Ah yes, had dinner with one and never heard from them again. Had dinner with another, and that individual told me that they needed to read my blogs before I post them because they don’t like the phone calls they get when I do mention something about them. I laughed. Oh, and apparently they didn’t appreciate the guest speakers at my Mom’s funeral. We chose the wrong people, I guess, just a couple days after my Mom died.
No mom, no grandparents, no church. Oh, how different this year looks from last.
Like I wrote a few weeks back, if they can treat me this poorly, what did they do to her?
Happy Birthday, Mom. Thanks for all this. I am sorry for whatever they did to you, because what they’ve done to us is horrific, and I’m sick of keeping their secrets. Lies and secrets kill people.
