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.