torment

Day 28

I have a lot of unread messages and a lot of comments I haven’t responded to, but I see them. I like to save them for nights and when I can’t sleep.

I am grateful for your overwhelming support, for the food, the gift cards, the cards, the encouraging messages, the comments, the phone calls. Thank you.

It’s hard to fathom we’re all here. It’s hard to accept. I wish so badly it wasn’t real — we all do. I am so sorry, I am so sorry for our loss. I am sorry you’re hurting so much, too.

My Mom had a beautiful and vast influence. She touched the hearts of many, and now the many mourn. I am sorry we’re all working through the weight of this quizzical grief.

I’m so sorry for my mom. I am so sad for her. I am endlessly sad for her. This is not what she would have wanted.

I am so haunted by answerless questions, and I know we all are. After Patrick died, one of my professors said “Knowing ‘why’ rarely helps,” and I have wholly believed that for years. Knowing why would never be enough — we would all think “we could have worked this out.”

I loved my Mom so much. I know we all did. I know that, in her right mind, she knew that too. I am devastated that she did not leave earth feeling that love. Maybe, maybe in her last few moments she did. Maybe she felt it all as she drew her last breath. Maybe she did, I hope she did.

When Patrick died, I had this vision of him entering heaven with tears pouring from his eyes while he said “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Jesus held him and said “It’s over, it’s over. You’re home now.”

I haven’t gotten a vision like that with my mom. Truthfully, I haven’t been able to picture her much at all… I think it is too painful for my mind to recollect at this point.

I am so sad her mind lied so cruelly, and I will forever be sad of that.

I wish so bad I could hold her hand one more time and remind her how much we love her. I wish so desperately she wasn’t gone. I would have loved more than anything to bear our burdens together. I know we all would.

I know this life will be good without my Mom, and I know too well how God brings grace and beauty from horror. But I hate that I have to say goodbye, and I hate that it will be good without my Mom. It reminds me so much of Tolkien’s famous words:

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.
Two Towers

I love you, Mommy. I’ll always love you.

Day 27

Heart pounding. Body trembling. Eyes crying. Terror, sheer terror, in the middle of the night. Can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking, can’t breathe.

It’s not like this every night, but it was like this last night.

We spent the past six years since my brother’s suicide saying: “Please, no one else do this. We’re going to make it. We can do this”

We said it regularly. We said it on anniversaries and at random. We said it again and again and again.

We didn’t make it. She didn’t make it. She smiled and shook her head affirmatively as she said it, and she didn’t make it.

When someone in one’s family dies by suicide, all family members instantly fear another suicide. It’s horrific. It’s horrifying — it’s so horrifying it will make you cry til you can’t breathe and scream until you can’t speak.

That was our reality, that was what my family lived through. That’s the pain we lived with for years, and the fear we lived with for six years. And then it happened, again.

Again and again and again we pleaded that none of us would do this. We encouraged honesty, we checked in on one another, we regularly had this discussion.

It had been six years. I thought we made it. I thought we were all safe. I thought my mom was safe. She said she was safe.

One third — one third of my family has died by suicide. That’s one out of three so far. Do you know how absolutely horrific that is? No, I get it, you “can’t even imagine that,” and I’m honestly grateful that you can’t. It’s a terrifying reality.

Now here we are again, and I am mortified. One in three… one in three… what does that mean? What does that mean for my nieces and nephews? What does that mean for we survivors?

The horror… the sheer horror.

My mother lived a beautiful life. Though she endured significant trauma, she overcame so much. She was excited about life. She had multitudes of plans and dreams. She loved her life, and she didn’t? How on earth am I supposed to reconcile that?

How horrible. With all the beautiful, wonderful, incredible things Mom had going for her… how horrific that she still desired to die more than to live. How absolutely terrifying that, in that vital moment, she could not see the beauty of life. She could not remember her beautiful plans. She could not feel how wonderful her life was. In that moment, she wanted to die more than she wanted all the amazing things she had to live for. I know she loved so much and she was looking forward to so much. I know that. But for some reason, none of that mattered in that moment.

That is absolutely horrifying, and, now, I can’t trust the rest of my family. I can’t trust the other survivors who say they’re not going to do it, because she said that too, and I believed her.

I believed her. I believed her. I believed her, and she’s gone.

I am in anguish. I believed her.

A Solemn Prologue

In the busyness of life, I nearly forgot my own. I nearly forgot my past – who I was, where I was, what life was like while I was there.

I nearly forgot the tears, the heartache, and the traumas. I nearly forgot that I was such a young girl dealing with such developed problems. I was such a child, scared, and hiding, yet mandated to make mature decisions.

I was 14 the first time I witnessed someone lose his mind to the brink of insanity.

What a child.

I was so young, enduring too much beyond my own comprehension.

Even now, colleagues marvel at what I went through, and yet I expect myself to be normal – to act like a person unacquainted with loss and torment.

Torment. Absolute torment. It was hell and I didn’t even know it, because hell had become normal.

Normal was hiding, wrapping clothes around me as a shelter to cry in peace. So much hiding. So much crying.

And I never could have imagined how much worse it could get. Oh, so much worse.

I can’t believe that was my normal. I can’t believe how much I hid from the world. Hide and hide and hide.

No wonder I have such difficulty grasping out of hiding.

I lived in Sheol. Abaddon was my home. I can’t believe I lived through it.

In some ways, I think I always knew someone would die. Maybe I knew, somehow, that something else would destroy me. Maybe. Maybe I knew that I needed to be destroyed. Maybe it was always there in the back of my mind, hiding safely behind the clothes of denial.

I loved. That is the crime that caused me so much pain. That’s the face I saw in the grave. A man so wounded, he forced gravity to take the life out of him. I was 21 years old when my brother stole his life from my arms, and I’m still trying to come to terms with that reality.

Exposed