Now available as a book

 

 

A Field Guide to Grief: If you've lost your partner to suicide

Available in paperback, or Kindle
by Kate Johnson
Link:http://amzn.com/1511433442

 

Losing a partner or spouse to suicide is shattering. This small book speaks directly to the survivor, starting from the beginning of the grief journey. Offering compassion and acknowledgment, survival tools and suggestions, these are kind and wise words from someone who's been there.

"if you have lost a partner to suicide, you will find a new friend named kate in these pages. out of the hard-won wisdom of her own loss, she offers you this field guide. a field guide, truly, as the pages feel like a field... breathable, open, + paradoxically peaceful. the rhythm of it all works beautifully between the ebb of uncluttered white space + flow of helpful words... a needed + good book for anyone walking through this heart-rending loss." --rachel awes, psychologist, author, + art playgroundist rachelawes.com

"...a lovely resource for folks who are fresh into big pain. I'll be happy to recommend this [book] to my clients." --Dr. Martha Jo Atkins honors the deeply spiritual experience of death by providing compassionate witness to the dying, and support for healing transformation to the bereaved. marthaatkins.com

 

***

My note to you: This is a difficult book. A sad book. A real book informed by love and understanding that in grief, there is no time to sift through case studies and anecdotes. I get right down to the core. It is about acute grief and navigating the immediate experience of loss. It is about living with grief and living with loss and the loss of identity. It is about self protection and permission. It is about survival. My own experience was one of breath-by-breath choices, to keep moving forward, to not lose myself, to choose to heal and go on, over and over and over again. If you need this book, I am so sorry. But if you need this book, I am so glad you have found your way here, and I hope beyond hope that my words offer you solace.

 

If you are not in grief and want to support me by buying a book, please do (and thank you!). Please consider donating it to an organization or individual who works with folks in acute grief. A funeral home, for example... I could have used this book the second day if not the first. Someone else may too.

suicide prevention month

here we are in the middle of suicide prevention month
which seems so ludicrous.
a month.
just one month.
every moment should be about this, not in a big ads-on-billboards sort of way, but in our awareness of the possibility, our openness to starting and staying in difficult conversations

i do not know how many suicides can actually be prevented
once the decision is made

but i do know this:
there is time before.

and i do know this:
i wish i had done more before time ran out.

ten years

the day before, i sat on a chair in my sister's yard, as she cut 10" off my hair. it was like today- sunny, blue sky, breezy. i remember the smell of the air, and the sounds of summer happening all around me. my heart so heavy, wanting so desperately to feel lighter.
i did not know this was your last day
and i have wondered a million million times what i would have done if i'd known.

i know from your letter that you knew.
and that makes my heart break all the more. knowing it was not an accident, a crime of passion, impulsive anything.
it makes me feel as if i had just known what to say, just known what to do, somehow i could have interrupted the spiral that landed you there
and me
here

i do know this: if love was magical, truly, in the ways i wish it were, you'd be here still. flying planes in alaska. you'd send me a note once a year or so, with a photo of you standing on the float of a de havilland beaver, your plane, smiling maybe. in the background there'd be mountains, and enough space for you to be ever adventuring.

and me, yeah, i'd send you photos of my daughter, and send you love, just happy knowing you were there.

intentions, illusions and integration

nine years.
nine years of holding memory as if it is the only thing connecting us.
nine years of worrying memories one after another like beads
this year i am trying something different
this year i am trying to make something out of this month, this day
this year i am trying to allow myself to heal in some of the places i have not even dared acknowledge
this year i am trying to create a space for movement

i have no illusions about closure
but i have illusions about possibility, and the possibility of transformation
i cannot make this not have happened
i cannot un-lose you
but i can choose to remember differently
instead of thinking first of all of the things that cause me pain, i can try like hell to get myself out of that loop and think of something else, something that is not about you or me, but instead about a moment when we laughed until we cried, a surprise for both of us, something somehow outside of us that connected us more deeply than so many scripted moments

i can try like hell just to love you, to send love to you over all these miles and days
to send the pure light of love to you
but this time, instead of wishing and wanting that love to somehow heal you
this time, i will try to be open to the possibility that the very fact of that love may begin to heal those places that are still so raw and filled with disbelief, that are still so raw with regret, still so heavy with responsibility and powerlessness

today marks the 9th anniversary of your last full evening alive.
and maybe, it marks the moment when i finally decide that it is time to welcome home some of the fearful and wounded parts of myself, held so carefully and so closely and so secretly for such a long long time.

admitting there is still so much healing to do is daunting and makes me feel small and vulnerable.
but admitting that there is still so much healing to do is freeing too.
it is hard to keep such a big secret. it takes effort, even if that effort is one i hardly notice for what it is anymore. i know i trip myself up with it over and over and over again, disguised maybe as fear of failure. fear of making mistakes. fear of connecting. fear of hope.

so today, i will try to open my heart to the wounded parts of myself. those i have been shoving down and ignoring with such fervor, with such an intense desire to make them just go away. all of those pieces i have wished were no longer broken, but are. those that are still filled with shame. those that are filled with regret.

mosaic

if you are here because you have lost someone to suicide,
i want to say this:
you are not alone.

processing this, surviving this, happens one breath at a time.

at first you will not mark time, you will be trying to breathe
your body shuts down
you need to go into self protective mode, and your body takes care of that with shock that wears off very slowly
soon you may find you mark the time, most literally, looking at the clock each day thinking "now, now is when" and your heart will be bruised and broken with the thought
and then, it will be days-- one day since, two days since,  three days since...
and then it will be a week, and every sunday you will think of them
and then it will turn to months, where every 11th comes with grief laden anticipation
and then, somehow, a year will pass, and you will not believe it could be possible

i want to say this about grief:
grief stays more raw than you will like, but the waves will come less frequently... over time you will feel this. but it stays close, and things will trigger you when you least expect it.
it is very hard to be out in the world, feeling so broken, and looking, well, astonishingly normal.  it is impossible to imagine you can look normal, that you can act normal, that you can, for all intents and purposes, be normal for stretches of time.
tears will come when they are least welcome.  look up at the ceiling with your eyes only, breathe out forcefully, using your belly, if your mind is playing horrible video tapes, right outloud stay Stop.... i lived through whole days that way, eyes turned upwards, blinking fast, blowing breath, saying Stop.

i want to say this about surviving:
we are stronger than we could ever imagine.
a loved one's suicide is not something simple. it goes against everything we know to be true in ourselves (the absolute ground truth of wanting to do anything possible to ensure our own survival), and it shakes our confidence. what if we're not as strong as we thought?
we are. we're stronger even. we are more resilient than we can believe.  your job, now, is survival.  understanding may not ever come. acceptance is intermittent.   yes, this is our truth... but it is not the whole truth.
remember every day that the good memories are real.  that the good parts of your days now are real.  that the good feelings we have are real.  that all of this complex mosaic is our truth.  the shit and the bliss.

hold yourself gently and with deep compassion. return to this self-compassion as often as you can.
ask for help. ask again.
breathe, blink, blow breath, and know that you are not alone.

3159

jeff was born on 3-1-59.
i only saw a few baby photos, but those big brown eyes, so direct, so intense even then.
i cannot help but to think of that innocence, that beginning, that moment when he arrived out here in the world. i cannot help but think of all of the paths his life could have taken. all of that talent. all of that intellect. all of that intensity. all of that idealism. all that passion.

i never could know who he had been, and never could know, truly, his path, his struggles, his brokenness.

once he died, i questioned whether i ever even knew him at all. it was a struggle to come to grips with the difference between this immense capability and all of the good i saw and the deep pain that he felt, just being in the world.

i realize now that i knew parts of him. some great parts. some devastating. some devastated. some so great: we laughed until we cried over an article in scientific american. some so romantic. some so focused. some so wonderful. and so much broken.

jeff would have turned 53 today.

dreams

you come to me in dreams
after years and years of absence
i see the side of your face as you turn away, your profile as familiar as my skin
and i reach out sometimes
but i am always too late, you always go
and i wake wondering what would have happened if only you'd stayed.

12 years

12 years ago on september 11th, a very different kate married a person that could not exist, hope set on a horizon that would never be reached, set on a love that was not possible.

i mourn for that kate now,

that kate who wanted so desperately for everything to be fine. to be as fine as it seemed. to be as fine as anyone could imagine just by looking.

10 years ago jeff and i were in pittsburg new hampshire. it was morning, and instead of fishing, we set out looking for a new place to share our anniversary dinner. we were carefully going through the motions of what it meant to be married, what it meant to celebrate our marriage, what it meant to push through and be as present as we dared be within our very complicated fiction. i remember how careful i felt, how incredibly careful.

we walked into a lodge we'd never been in, and a TV was on, a movie i thought. it was early morning still, and no one else was there but someone at the desk, stunned to tell us about the plane, the tower. we stood and watched as the second plane hit, thought it was a re-run of the first, and then realized we were watching it happen right then.

the immensity and complexity of what we saw was not something i could comprehend in that moment (and perhaps ever after), it was too big, too much, with too much loss.

sometimes when i am already mired in my own sadness, my own trauma, it is as if there is no more room. grieving, there is no more room for grief. it is not gone or set aside, instead it is as if it is paid forward, and only in looking back i can see what i could not see then. my own crumbling life eclipsed my immediate emotional reaction to the towers falling. i could not grok it. it was too much on top of too much.

i feel selfish admitting that, even now, even here. i can be compassionate to that kate, but i also realize that since i was not able to process even one little bit of the trade tower catastrophe, i had to process it later. i have had to process it since. i still cannot see images, protect myself from my own memories of bodies falling. i cannot hold that level of horror.

there is no law of conservation of horror

or conservation of grief

or conservation of loss

mine does not lessen yours

yours does not lessen mine

and both, it seems, move forward with raw stinging tenderness, unhealed, unhealable.

so on this day, this year, i consciously honor all of us

here's to the people we were before

and here's to the people we are after

and the raw tender hope that pushes up in spite of all we've known and all we've lost

hair, vanity and the echos of a birthday missed

this is a post about hair. a vain post.

once upon a time, just after jeff died, i was living in a small cabin with a tiny bathroom. the bathroom had a white linoleum floor. each day after i showered, i would clear a big wad of hair from the drain. and after drying my hair, i would use the dryer as a whiskbroom and blow all of the many shed hairs into a corner so i could gather them up and throw them away.

more hair fell out

and more

and more and more and more

until i could no longer be unconscious

i could see my scalp, developed a very bald spot in the back

and it just felt like one more thing that was falling apart

the doctor told me it was from the intense stress, and would likely grow back

and, over time, much did but far from all. one by one they'd poke through, then spend months as tiny hairs that stuck straight up.

i still had thin spots, but could mostly ignore them by not looking

or when i couldn't there was always the option for a pony tail.

i'd lost hair before-- two rounds of accutane in my youth had cut my insanely thick hair down by half

and earlier stress had caused some localized loss, and the regrowth had been so jaggedy, i would unconsciously pull them making a bad thing worse

ok

so here i am, hair falling out in alarming quantities

wads and gobs and hairs everywhere everywhere

i know it is expected, 3 months post partum, but it sucks to have it happening right now (no good time, really) when it feels like one more thing falling apart.

me, specifically.

i'm fine really

amazingly great in the obvious and miraculous ways of della and doug

but more than a wee bit stressed about the myriad transitions and potential ramifications of this,that and the other thing.

doug told me he would still love me if i go bald, but i think this is all about me

coincidental echoes from a very difficult time

that began with job issues, house issues and then all came apart.

yesterday jeff would have turned 52.

11 years

the day begins with orion rising just before the sun

and the cloudless sky is the deepest blue

and the sun is hot and the shade feels like liquid

and i remember standing on the bluff with you

11 years ago yesterday

you, me, the sky and the sea

and what felt like forever stretched out in front of us

i promised you my heart, and to stand by your side

and in that moment i told the truth

it was only later that i realized some promises cannot be kept

because, me? i chose to go on living.

and each day

i break the same promise

and

i do.

one thing

then someday you wake up and it is somehow 7 years later. it is not truly 7 years, since so much comes with you that it is as if it were brand new. dreams come and crush you with a glimpse of a profile, or a brief conversation, and you wake feeling completely dislocated and alone.

one thing that does not diminish is grief. yes, it becomes less frequent. but when it comes, it comes and sits and eats with its fingers from your plate, and picks at your clothing, and reaches in and tugs at heart and lungs and bowels. it steals sleep, breaks things at random, leaves with you in disarray, tucked around your tender heart. and you know, as you sweep up, as you straighten the fanned piles and eat bland food, that it will come again. creating order, gathering up, surviving, these are temporary. soon, the door will blow open with a gust of wind, and knock everything down again. but you take care, attend to the pieces.

one thing that does not diminish is guilt. it feels like heavy clay on thick soled boots. it makes you walk differently, deliberately, each step an effort. you feel you are moving forward but really, guilt is directionless, for guilt there is no "forward", but there is motion. i encourage you to walk, to remember how to move, since it is so easy to get stuck. so easy to be still and feel it suck you down into nowhere. there is no solution for this that i've found but movement. just keep moving.

one thing that does not diminish is sadness. the feeling of loss is always there. it cannot be undone. there is no un-losing.

interconnectedness

sometimes when you think you have it together, you realize you do not. or you did, and it falls apart again. unresolved grief surfaces, bubbles up or floods in.
i learned that kit died this weekend. jeff's beloved dog, a dog named so specifically for hope-kitai--a beautiful loving fluffy-butted blue merle collie with a runway length nose, and a heart of gold.
i imagine her standing at the edge of our yard, looking back over her shoulder just before her nose lifted the latch to the back gate and she vanished into the neighbor's forest.

when jeff died, my friend tammy came to the house to take care of the dog, and took her home. as i learned of jeff's death, i realized immediately i was in no shape to handle caring for a dog, especially not one so entangled and entwined with jeff and the struggle we had in trying to keep him alive- this dog, this one was rescued from a shelter in western new york, driven to new hampshire in hopes of giving jeff something to live for. this dog that jeff slept next to, arm over her furry side, every single night until he died.

when tammy took kit and i thought, i hoped, i expected, that i would find a home that allowed dogs and kit would come and live with me. and while the idea filled me with terror (such a reminder in every moment of what i had had, and what was lost), i felt it was the right thing, and pushed myself to make that true. then, finally, i had a house, i bought a dog bowl, a new leash, and the crushing realization that i just could not imagine living with the grief.

each time i had visited tammy, i would hug the dog and cry. i felt like a bad mom, like i had abandoned her, and yet, some of the worst sadness came from seeing her and knowing she was the last creature to see him alive. each time i saw her, each time i looked into her eyes i saw that. yes, of course, i saw her beauty and love, yes, of course i saw her spirit and silliness, yes, i stroked her long fur and kissed her long nose and rubbed her belly and smelled her popcorn feet, but my heart felt the connection with jeff, and with that the loss of jeff, and the immensity of the grief would overwhelm me.

so i did the only thing i could, i asked tammy if she could keep kit, told her that i just could not do it. and she said yes. more than 6 years now of love and treats and dog filled chaos at tammy's house. 6 years of painstaking grooming and sleeping on the sofa. 6 years of sneaking out of the fence and running for miles and miles only to be brought home from towns away, fur filled with burrs and sticks and mud.

yes i knew she was getting old, 14 at least maybe older. but i tried to ignore that. since as long as she lived, i had a connection to jeff, a tangible one, a shared one. granted, not one i could get close to since the pain was too acute, but i knew she was there, and there was such solace in that.
and now, with her loss, along with my very real grief for her.... comes the grief for my choices and powerlessness and, oh, the immensity of my regrets come flooding in. and what can i do? i can stand in the midst of it and flounder which is what this feels like now. wave after wave comes, rises, hits me behind the knees, knocks me reeling. it uncovered raw places, some anyway, those places that i try not to deal with. the ongoing unresolved grief.

a year

it is almost a year since she died.
you know it by the feel of the air, the smell of the leaves, the woodsmoke, the frost that lies in the valleys. you know it in your bones, in the center of your heart, in the back of your mind, in the middle of your throat. you know it in the clenched hands, in the dreams that turn stones and find bottles of pills, and you walk by and touch a blanket you know she touched, and you imagine the last few hours of her life even if you do not want to.
you will be flooded with this, even if you think you won't be. it is not a curse of the damned, just the tide coming in, it will come in, flood the lowlands, sweep away all safe places to step and leave slippery mud that holds footprints. you may not even know it, you may find yourself retreating, or picking fights, or walking into doorways. you may have trouble tying your shoes, or when you bend over to pick up a pencil, your eyes will fill with tears. there is no right way through this, there is only through. love may have found you in a million ways. walls might have been torn down and news ones erected, floors laid, windows repositioned, but it is still the same house. it is impossible to change anything enough.

i have no secret to survival, it is just that i survive. it is what i do with each choice i make or don't make, it is in waking in the middle of the night with my heart on fire with aching and learning to look at the moon.
the first year lasted forever, i was not sure how i would get through it. but i did. you did. you have. you will. this is the only time you will ever need to make it through the first year.
they say the first year is the hardest, and in some ways that is true, but i cannot promise it gets easier. it just gets different. acuity is replaced by ache. guilt and memory remain and haunt. i wish i could say otherwise. but there are a billion unanswered questions of what if and if only, and no matter how many years pass, those answers just do not come. they just can't.

advice? mark the occasion but safely and not in-the-moment. allow yourself to be busy or elsewhere or with friends. mark the occasion by standing by the stream, tasting maple syrup from a spoon, talking to her about how you actually feel. there is no need to be nice or not nice. go ahead and be honest. i think it helps to be angry even in the midst of sadness. this is not a simple grief, it is complex no matter how many amazing wonderful things may have happened since. but you may not be angry. you may no longer be sad. whatever you are and wherever you are, you are.

my path is just that: mine. yours is yours. i wish i could write to you to let you know that i am thinking of you, and holding you gently in my heart. hoping you will be gentle with your own. but this opens my own wounds--brings up all the festering sadness that lurks, for me, just below the surface. for me, and perhaps for many, this remains such an interior wound, and just because it is not visible does not mean it is not there.

anniversary

so today would have been my 10th wedding anniversary, i guess it is anyway. it is. i guess it is.
i think back on that kate, that hopeful open hearted kate, and wish her not foresight, no, not really. i just wish she could have had her dream a little longer. no, that's not true. i wish she could have had her dream.

i wished even then and most of all for jeff to make other choices, to have been able to stay present, to feel joy, to take pleasure in life and in our life, and in me. i wish this all could have been different. i wished and wish that love was somehow more powerful than that.
sometimes i used to wish for clairvoyance, the kind that would have had me make other choices, choices that would allow me to avoid falling apart, having my heart so broken, having and causing so much pain. and that makes sense. it does.

and now i also realize that some of my sadness comes because i just miss who i used to be-- that person who said with such a open heart "forever", and meant it. and i think that is where some of the pain comes from, from meaning it. from meaning it with all my heart and losing anyway.

as i move forward through life, i find myself avoiding forevers, disbelieving that they are possible or safe. and i miss the person i used to be so badly it aches almost as much as missing the man i married and the relationship i thought i might have, and the dreams i had for our future. oh how i miss that kate.

it was such a beautiful day, filled with clear light of early autumn and a blue sky and puffy clouds.
we stood on a bluff over looking the ocean, and i remember how my heart felt when i said forever. my heart was open, it felt like it was true.

where we were standing

in this season, i wake most mornings blue and heavy and with my throat knotted.

today is an anniversary, the day of the week, not the day of the month

the day where jeff killed himself.

and i cannot believe how sharp the pain is 6 years later. how acute the memories are of how i spent that day, down at my sister's, the wind blowing, the air clear, sunshine and clouds. she cut my hair in the back yard... and the little pieces just blew away.

the weather that day was like the day we were married, and days like that still pull my heart with their beauty and half wildness and the sadness that comes up faster than i can talk it down.

memory comes so fast, faster than i can react, and emotions just seep and well and flood and i am stumbling around half here, half there.

trying so hard to stay present and failing failing failing.

i circle around and around and around to the last time i saw him, i remember where we were standing. i remember what he was wearing, the awkward kiss we shared. the sound of his voice. how he smelled. the overwhelming love i felt and the deep and twisted pain of everything we had been going through. and oh god how tired i was, so tired of fighting so hard to keep hold of something that in so many ways was already gone.

time

time passes, but it is marked by a million incremental anniversaries.

for me every night at around 11 i would think of jeff dying. each sunday night. each monday day i would hear the echo of my own voice from those first moments. each 10th. each 11th.  i ached at the light of each nearly full moon. then after a long while, time started becoming more normal. finally a sunday could pass without the brusing slap of recognition. but the moon, the moon dogged me for over a year-- i could barely stand to look at it, as if somehow it was the moon's fault it was there and i wasn't, and somehow it was the moon's fault that it was a reminder that if i had been there, maybe i could have stopped it.  

then there are the other things- holidays that feel broken and aimless and surreal. 

wedding anniversaries that almost cannot be contemplated. that do not seem possible. who were those people? 

 

and then there are birthdays

today jeff would have turned 50. my heart has been inside out since before i opened my eyes. since before i remembered. bodies hold memory perhaps better than minds do. i have staggered through the day raw and tender and cringing against the upwelling.

goddamn it. i did not miss this acuity, this sharp ache, this fucking powerless grief.

one morning

there will be a morning when you wake up and you do not think of this first.
you will be astonished.
and then, you may feel a tidalwave of guilt.

it may be because time has passed and the complexity of life is starting to reassert itself. you may be thinking of where you may want to live, you may be looking at houses or apartments or spending time imagining what it would be like to be somewhere else, imagining moving, starting again somewhere far away.

it may be because something else has happened. witnessing a car accident did it for me. the next morning when i woke up, i thought of that first. the intensity of being the first one on the scene. the words i kept saying as i ran forward please be alive please be alive please be alive. and somehow, somehow he was.
that next morning, i thought of him first.
then i thought of jeff.
my stomach clenched with guilt as if i had been somehow untrue.

this is just life happening. and you are ok. and it does not mean you do not care. that you are not grieving. that you are not honoring the person you lost.
it does not feel as if this is true but it is.

identity

sometimes you may feel as if you do not know what to do with yourself. you do your days the old way, go to work, come home, eat... but you are no longer the you that you were. people treat you like you are normal, no one stops and stares at the grocery. but you are going through your days like a paper bag of broken glass.

it is the oddest thing ever to rediscover and rediscover and rediscover the loss, like a tongue worrying the hole where a tooth has fallen out....

you will find that pieces of your old self are in that bag-- that some of the things that mattered still matter. but there are a lot of unfamiliar pieces too. maybe some days you will also look in the mirror and wonder who you are. you are no longer the person you were, you are no longer the person this had not happened to...

you wake up each day
day after day
this is the first thing you think about

you may not even remember when you were worried about other things, your job maybe, or getting enough exercise. now much of life may seem to be on automatic pilot- you get up, brush your teeth, go to work, interact as if you are normal, come home, eat, sleep.
but this is always with you. sometimes you look in the mirror and cannot believe there is not a gaping hole in your chest.

there is such loneliness in this. no one else is you. it is not as if someone else grieving with you would make you feel less alone. of course, lots of other people are grieving too. it is just that no one can lessen the load of it for anyone else. at night, when you close your eyes, it's just you.

try to be gentle with yourself. a few months in, when the funeral is well over and people have returned to their lives, you will find yourself alone in a different way. you may need to seek out friends, they may no longer be seeking you out.

i used to go driving. or to a bookstore. somewhere where i was away, but around people, but not needing to interact.

but one of the haunting things, one of the things i worried most about, was who i was, who i was becoming. and oh, missing the person i had been. it is nested grieving. the loss of your loved one, your friend, your partner. and the loss of the you that you were.

crying

you may not even recognize yourself these days. your numbness might come and go. tears may push through when you are driving or when you wake in the middle of the night or when you go to the bathroom at work. you may cry so hard that tears and snot and spit just spill from your face onto the ground and there is nothing you can do to stop it until it is good and done and over. you may not be eating what you should. or you may be eating more than you did before, trying to fill up the hole that sits raw edged and throbbing in the center of your chest.

you may not be able to be with other people without them bringing it up, or pointedly not, you may not know what to say, or know if it is ok to laugh. or what happens if you start to cry?

about crying, if you breathe out, a forceful breath blown through your mouth like you are exasperated.... and if you look up without moving your head and blink a lot-- you can sometimes push through the immediate need to cry. sometimes. tell yourself you will let yourself cry as soon as you can. but the blowing, and the looking up and blinking saved me a million times, even if it only bought me the 30 seconds i needed to turn away, or close the door, or to pull off the road.

crying comes and goes. times it will flood in and pin you down and other times days will pass. as times goes on, this pattern will repeat- times of big grief, and times of relative calm. things will remind you of her, things you may not expect. with jeff, it is a tractor for sale by the side of the road. or a trout stream running high in spring time. or any dodge power wagon.

sometimes so innocently you'll catch yourself thinking there is something you want to tell her, or something you'll show her next time you drive by... and then you'll realize, re-realize, and you need to be gentle with yourself with what happens next. it may be laughter. or crying. or fury. or disbelief as you rediscover your circumstances. you may feel like an idiot for forgetting-- how can you possibly forget? but remember, this may be huge, the most huge thing ever, but it is not who you are. it is just one big honking piece of your experience. however big, it is not everything and will not be everything. and in any given moment, the thing that we are doing is surviving. that is what we do. we survive. we drive our cars carefully. we go to work. we eat. we sleep. we dream. we see a hawk overhead and think of the person we have lost, tell ourselves we will tell them when we get home. and then we realize that it is not going to happen like that.

new year's

so we are coming up on new year's eve
and times like these can be particularly tough.

but here is something to consider:
this new year? this new year is a year in which this did not happen.

self protection

be self protective

you do not owe anyone information or an explanation or details or anything else that you don't want to share. i found i told people too much in the beginning, shared too much as i was flailing my way through those amazingly difficult first days...

people will ask you things that you cannot believe they will ask

how she did it, did you find her, did she leave a note, if you knew she was going to do it....

my sister gave me the best advice-- come up with a simple line or two that is non-negotiable. memorize it. use it to give yourself time to decide what you want to share and what you don't and with whom.

"i am sure you'll understand that this is just too painful for me to talk about"

Waking

you may wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning or in the afternoon. there may be a lull, a moment, a quiet peacefulness. and then there is the crushing feeling as you remember. when you realize it was not a dream. when you realize that you have lost so many precious things, including the ability to go back and un-do whatever you feel you have done that led to this moment.

if it is night, you may lie there and systematically torture yourself with thoughts of what might have been, if only. you may play the death in your head as you imagine it. you may play the finding, the losing, the horrible first moments over and over and over.

tell yourself to stop. if you can't stop, get up. if you can sleep, do. let yourself sleep if you possibly can.

if you wake up and it is morning, there may be things you have to do. decisions you have to make. where the body needs to go. what to do. you may have to talk with the police again. talk with the medical examiner. talk with the funeral home. cremation? burial? obituary?

some of these choices you will need to make quickly. others can wait.
you can and will make these choices. there is no wrong way to do this.

things will cost more than you can imagine. order more death certificates than you think you need. the funeral director is someone who may be able to help in more than one way- may be able to offer insight and solace as someone who has been with death, including suicides, before. very few of us have. none of us should have to. but they can offer this: that it is not about love or the failure of love to perform miracles. it is about the person who has killed themselves. they made the choice. no matter how much they may have felt there was no choice, there was.

And if

if you have children or pets, make sure they are cared for. i know this seems obvious, but in these first days, you are in survival mode. and sometimes things even really important things get forgotten.

make sure someone calls your work and lets them know if they do not already know. make sure someone calls your family if they do not already know.

there may be people around you trying to help, so tell them what you need if you have the faintest idea what that is-- if you need them to make calls for you, ask them. if you need space and silence, say so. if you need a movie, a hug, a pizza, say so. everyone feels powerless in this situation. everyone. people are truly wanting to help. if you do not know what you need or want, say so. or say you want water. or tea. or something.

eat anyway. eat even if you cannot imagine eating. eat something that matters-- something with calories. peanut butter. chocolate. cheese. if you cannot swallow past the lump, try a milkshake, a smoothie, a yogurt.

I suggest you do not listen to music that you love, you may forever associate it with this time. so if you listen to music, branch out. try something new.

Night

your first night, if you need to be alone, make sure you are safe. make sure you are not getting rid of your own lifelines by isolating yourself. consider staying in one room while a friend or family member stays nearby-- a different room, the sofa...

you may sleep or you may not. you may spend time remembering or you may not. memories of that night may remain clear or they may blur into something much less than dreamlike.

you may find your mind circling around and around and around, imagining what happened, why, and what it might have been like for your loved one. you may find that you are swamped with regret- that you remember the last things you said and wish you had said something else, wish you had done something else. if you left, you may find that you wish you had stayed.

you may find yourself crying so hard you are afraid you may never stop. or you may just lie there with a lump in your throat the size of texas. or you may be numb. or any of a million things. whatever you are is just exactly where you need to be. but if you find that you are feeling at all suicidal, please call for help, do not hesitate, do not worry about being a bother or crying wolf or not wanting to worry people- just get help. call 911. call a suicide hot line. call even if you are just starting to think that somehow that ending it through suicide makes the most sense.

in this moment, making the pain stop feels like the most important thing- but decisions you make right now may not be truly in your best interest, or in the interest of those you need to care for.

if you need a sleep aid, try to use one that is not a depressant. ask your doctor for one-- avoid over the counter "PM" formulations. they may make you more sad, and feel less able to cope.

hold yourself gently. know you are doing the best you can. if you find yourself thinking self-damaging thoughts, use the word Stop. use it out loud if you need to. each time you return to the thought, Stop. think of a book you loved when you were younger. try to remember each page. how it felt to hold it. or remember a walk you took. bring yourself away from the troubling thoughts each time, gently. you may sleep. you may not. you may dream. you may not. allowing yourself to sleep does not mean you are not grieving. or sad. or scared. or aware of how horrible things are.

sleep is a momentary escape, and it is also a place of healing. let yourself sleep if you can.

Right away

you feel as if you are drowning. as if somehow nothing will ever be ok again. that this is impossible. that it is unimaginable. that you would do ANYTHING anything anything to make the feelings stop.

there can be crying or madness or feelings of near insanity. you may want to pound on the table or scream or collapse. you may find yourself falling backwards into quiet. there is no right way. whatever is, is. there can be dizziness and disorientation. there can be noises you cannot believe you are making. there can be a million hands on you, arms around you, but you are the kind of alone that feels so intense that you are not sure you will ever come back.

somehow you get home or to a safe place. somehow you hear people offering sympathies and astonishment for something you don't believe has happened. somehow your body shuts down against auxiliary sources of input, you go deeper inside. there is the beginning of numb. there is an odd quiet.

soon there will be questions from people in authority. you talk with the police. possibly the hospital. the medical examiner. you have conversations that feel impossible too. what is this life that you are living where you need to talk to these people? but you may. and you do. and they will ask hard questions. and you may or may not know the answers. but be truthful. this is not a good time to try to be anything other than what you are. and if you are worried that you are numb and that somehow this means something bad about you, it doesn't. this feeling of numb, as you will see, is a gift. it is your self protecting itself from the intensity.

right now the most important thing to do is breathe. and see if you can sleep. see if you can help yourself into the comfort that shock unwittingly provides. do not feel as if you are not doing this right. there is no right. there is just doing this. and you have no choice, you are doing this.