Last month, a man whose sister had just lost a young adult child to suicide asked me, "How long? How long will she be like this? When will she be ok?"
"A long time, " I said.
"But how long until she's kind of normal?"
"Umm, I don't know," I said. "Everyone is so different. For me, maybe three years until I could get through most days in some kind of fashion resembling normal."
"Oh my God," he said.
Silence.
"She's going back to work," he said.
"Well, yes, you go back to work. People don't necessarily know. That you've stopped sleeping and that you cry in bathroom stalls. Or that you don't. Whatever."
It changes, doesn't it? In the last year, I have realized that I often sleep through the night now. I laugh for real. I roll my eyes again. I no longer feel murderous toward people who are living the lives we all expected to live. I am finding genuine joy in the triumphs of my surviving children.
I've "met" a woman on FB who lost her son only a few weeks ago. She is a marvel and I am in awe of her resiliency, her capacity for faith. I myself still wonder where God went. A couple of years ago, my friend Michelle sent me a book of Kilian McDonnell's poetry entitled God Drops and Loses Things. Umm-hmm.
A few days ago, a friend sent me this essay. The young woman who died of suicide was a twin, like my son. I always wonder that, too; why wasn't it enough? How could it not be enough that there was someone with whom you shared a womb? It's been ten years and her father writes that "it's getting better now."
Time is a strange thing. Not, I would say, a healing balm to all wounds. But it creates space. You take all of your pieces and lay them out, like shells laid out on a battered bench after a day on the beach, and you re-arrange them.
Into new patterns. That's all you can do, really.
Each person I know is reassembling their lives..never the same. I learned recently that my mother tried to take her own life when I was about ten or eleven. I have no memory of this, my aunt (who was living with us at the time) told me. My life was not easy but it could have been much more altered than it was if she had died....reassembling my own reality with this new info.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. As we learn these "secrets," they shed so much light on the actual families we had as opposed to the ones we thought we had.
DeleteYour posts are so helpful, Robin... I thank you!
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm glad. I usually think these wallowing reflections shouldn't be post -- but sometimes that doesn't stop me!
DeleteRobin, you are so very correct when you write that time does not heal all wounds but "it creates space" - such a beautiful way to express what happens over time. Also, I appreciate Terri's expression "reassembling my own reality" as we are faced with doing just that periodically in our lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you, as always.
Yes, I like that word "reassemble" as well.
DeleteDitto to all of the above, and a thank you for continuing to write out this process. What a welcome place of refuge your blog has become.
ReplyDeleteI think your HOME is the place of refuge!
DeleteYour characterization of time as something that creates space rather than healing is very helpful. I'm always trying to understand what other bereaved parents do to restore some sense of meaning and purpose to their lives.
ReplyDeleteThanks, also, for the link to the essay. I've added it to my website so even more people can read it.
That's a good post question: What do we do to restore meaning and purpose to our lives? Maybe you should create a little blog-around and ask folks to respond. I'm already thinking about it.
Delete