Read this lyric and see if it speaks to you. It is written by Garth Brooks.
The Dance
Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared beneath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known you'd ever say goodbye
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance
Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn't I the king
But if I'd only known how the king would fall
Hey who's to say you know I might have changed it all
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance
Yes my life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain but I'd of had to miss the dance
I can't listen to that song without thinking of his life and his death. The line "I'd have missed the pain but I'd have had to miss the dance" says it all.
Ken was a funny brother. He had deep dimples and green eyes and he was a genius underachiever. He had a photographic memory, which I think made him hang on to past hurts more than others might have. He was facinating and infuriating and boyish and wise and clueless. He was the guy who knew what it felt like to hear our dad's heavy feet coming out way and knowing we were in deep trouble. He knew the difficulty of living in the childhood home we shared with troubled parents and he knew he could talk to me about anything...but in the end he didn't.
I would rather have had the pain than miss the dance of life with him.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Chuck said...
A few days after Ken's suicide a guy we had gone to school with came to my house. He had lost his brother to suicide a decade earlier. Chuck walked up to me, gave me a tight hug and spoke these words...
"If my brother was able to be here right now I would give him the biggest hug and then I would punch him right in the nose."
Those words meant everything because Chuck knew how I felt and he validated those feelings. I had heard a thousand I'm so sorries and if there is anything I can do call me. This was the first thing anyone had said that touched me. I was angry. I was seething with anger but far more sad and lonely and lost. Somewhere under all of that grief was the anger. Acknowledging that seemed wrong until Chuck put it into that simple sentence.
Being left behind intentionally by someone's suicide is something like having someone pull up to the curb, open the door, smile a warm smile and then speed away. You are left standing on the street, feeling like a fool for believing they wanted you to get in and share the trip. I was left standing on the curb thinking we were only halfway through our journey. He was forty nine and I was fifty one. Now what?
Being a survivor admits you to a club you never wanted to belong to. You recognize fellow members in books and movies and among those you meet in life. The club is too big. I wish they could close the membership and no one ever again join the ranks. As a survivor I feel like I owe it to others to help them make it through because I know how close I came to giving in to the desire to just quit. I can't not offer my hand. Who am I if I'm not willing to say "I made it. It will hurt like hell but you will make it too."
"If my brother was able to be here right now I would give him the biggest hug and then I would punch him right in the nose."
Those words meant everything because Chuck knew how I felt and he validated those feelings. I had heard a thousand I'm so sorries and if there is anything I can do call me. This was the first thing anyone had said that touched me. I was angry. I was seething with anger but far more sad and lonely and lost. Somewhere under all of that grief was the anger. Acknowledging that seemed wrong until Chuck put it into that simple sentence.
Being left behind intentionally by someone's suicide is something like having someone pull up to the curb, open the door, smile a warm smile and then speed away. You are left standing on the street, feeling like a fool for believing they wanted you to get in and share the trip. I was left standing on the curb thinking we were only halfway through our journey. He was forty nine and I was fifty one. Now what?
Being a survivor admits you to a club you never wanted to belong to. You recognize fellow members in books and movies and among those you meet in life. The club is too big. I wish they could close the membership and no one ever again join the ranks. As a survivor I feel like I owe it to others to help them make it through because I know how close I came to giving in to the desire to just quit. I can't not offer my hand. Who am I if I'm not willing to say "I made it. It will hurt like hell but you will make it too."
Who am I without him?
I was a bicycle with one wheel. My childhood, which was archived in black and white photos of the two of us didn't seem real anymore. I was a sister and more than that I was a sister who protected him and tried to raise his spirits when he was down. Who was I now?
I was still a sister but my surviving brother hadn't shared our childhood. We were teenagers when he was born so he didn't know us as children. He was raised like an only child. I was still a wife and mother and grandmother but none of those titles meant anything at the time. I didn't want to be any of those things. I just wanted to go and be with him and protect him from what had already taken him. I wanted time to move backward and if given that impossible trick I would do better. I would be the best protective sister ever. He would never be so impossibly sad that he would feel death was better than life. Like the mermaids calling to the sailors his death called to me and I wanted to go.
Our father had passed away several months before Ken's suicide. Our mother had suffered two unimaginable losses but her illness (borderline personality disorder) prevented her from seeing that I was coming apart. As is the nature of her illness she saw it only as it pertained to her. After several very bad experiences being the target of her rage I moved away. The move probably saved my life.
Every square inch of my home had held a memory. The front door ws where he had said his last "goodbye". The swimming pool was a place he spent a lot of time that last visit. There was no escape from the sadness until I put miles between me and the house.
In 2008 we moved and I reinvented myself. I got back to my artwork and found that there was joy in my heart. Ken was still in my heart as well but not in a way that brought tears. I had brought him along with me to this new place and together we had left behind the yearning to relive the last phone call, the last swim, the last time he walked out of my door. We, the two of us, had a new beginning and we were free.
A few years later I moved back to the area where I had lived when he died. Time had changed me. I was stronger. The distance had taught me how to be in the presense of our mother without taking her moods personally. A healthier, more balanced me had emerged from the wreckage. It had taken ten years to get to that point.
1. Do you fear forgetting your loved one? Are there things you can write about that will help keep their memory strong in your mind?
2. Have you found it difficult to define who you are without the person you have lost?
3.Can you imagine coming out of the other end feeling stronger than ever before? What lessons are you learning that may help you redefine who you are without them?
I was still a sister but my surviving brother hadn't shared our childhood. We were teenagers when he was born so he didn't know us as children. He was raised like an only child. I was still a wife and mother and grandmother but none of those titles meant anything at the time. I didn't want to be any of those things. I just wanted to go and be with him and protect him from what had already taken him. I wanted time to move backward and if given that impossible trick I would do better. I would be the best protective sister ever. He would never be so impossibly sad that he would feel death was better than life. Like the mermaids calling to the sailors his death called to me and I wanted to go.
Our father had passed away several months before Ken's suicide. Our mother had suffered two unimaginable losses but her illness (borderline personality disorder) prevented her from seeing that I was coming apart. As is the nature of her illness she saw it only as it pertained to her. After several very bad experiences being the target of her rage I moved away. The move probably saved my life.
Every square inch of my home had held a memory. The front door ws where he had said his last "goodbye". The swimming pool was a place he spent a lot of time that last visit. There was no escape from the sadness until I put miles between me and the house.
In 2008 we moved and I reinvented myself. I got back to my artwork and found that there was joy in my heart. Ken was still in my heart as well but not in a way that brought tears. I had brought him along with me to this new place and together we had left behind the yearning to relive the last phone call, the last swim, the last time he walked out of my door. We, the two of us, had a new beginning and we were free.
A few years later I moved back to the area where I had lived when he died. Time had changed me. I was stronger. The distance had taught me how to be in the presense of our mother without taking her moods personally. A healthier, more balanced me had emerged from the wreckage. It had taken ten years to get to that point.
1. Do you fear forgetting your loved one? Are there things you can write about that will help keep their memory strong in your mind?
2. Have you found it difficult to define who you are without the person you have lost?
3.Can you imagine coming out of the other end feeling stronger than ever before? What lessons are you learning that may help you redefine who you are without them?
The things you cannot explain.
The things you cannot explain.
In the days and months after he died I opened myself up to watch for signs that he was still with me. The first thing I noticed was butterflies. They were everywhere and they came so close to me. Then I realized birds were nearly landing on me. I felt comfort from these signs. Immediately after he died I couldn't feel him in my world and that is how I knew he was already gone. Now he was back, in a differrent way. I would catch a scent in the air and hear his voice in my head. The memory of him was not fading as I had feared. His life had so entwined mine that he couldn't be separated from me even if I had wanted him to be.
In the spring, almost four months after he died I had a call from the funeral director. He told me Ken's final affects had arrived. I had not expected anything else, beyond the three boxes of his belongings which we had divided up in January. I rushed to retrieve the box. Inside I found the most mundane things which had been in his pockets. His car keys, chapstick, ink pen and wallet were there. Something I had hoped to find, a silver ring he always wore was not there. I wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up in my world someday.
The Christmas before he died Ken had come home. We had a wonderful time playing with my grandchildren and daughters. Ken had always stayed a kid at heart and he loved buying toys for all five of the grandkids. I had given him a Timex Indiglo watch and he wore it as proudly as if it were a Rolex. He loved to light up the dial and ask "Do you know what time it is?" In the bottom of the box was his watch. The band was broken so I put it under my pillow and listened to the ticking as if it were his heartbeat. The last thing I did every night was light up the dial because I knew that would have been the last thing he would have done too.
After a week of sleeping with the watch I decided to take it to a place to have a small band put on it. I wanted to wear it and have him near me. I took the watch to a local drug store where I knew the watch technician. She told me it would take about five minutes to fix. When I came back to the counter she looked sad. She said the metal was broken and a band could not be put on it. I looked at the watch and saw the time on the lighted dial. It was 9:30. I walked a few feet to my car and looked at the time. The watch face read 5:25 and it would not light. I closed my eyes and let my mind wait for the first thought. This was the thought that filled my mind...."You have to let me go." As clearly as if Ken had spoken into my ear I knew they were his words. "You have to let me go." That was the moment I let go of his legs and let him go to God. It was step one in my very long walk beside his suicide.
To this day I remember that moment and those words and I know there is no way to explain how the watch went forward or backward to that point but I firmly believe it reads the time he passed away. It was either dawn or dusk at the time in the desert in December. Now I had the comfort of knowing when he passed.
In the days and months after he died I opened myself up to watch for signs that he was still with me. The first thing I noticed was butterflies. They were everywhere and they came so close to me. Then I realized birds were nearly landing on me. I felt comfort from these signs. Immediately after he died I couldn't feel him in my world and that is how I knew he was already gone. Now he was back, in a differrent way. I would catch a scent in the air and hear his voice in my head. The memory of him was not fading as I had feared. His life had so entwined mine that he couldn't be separated from me even if I had wanted him to be.
In the spring, almost four months after he died I had a call from the funeral director. He told me Ken's final affects had arrived. I had not expected anything else, beyond the three boxes of his belongings which we had divided up in January. I rushed to retrieve the box. Inside I found the most mundane things which had been in his pockets. His car keys, chapstick, ink pen and wallet were there. Something I had hoped to find, a silver ring he always wore was not there. I wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up in my world someday.
The Christmas before he died Ken had come home. We had a wonderful time playing with my grandchildren and daughters. Ken had always stayed a kid at heart and he loved buying toys for all five of the grandkids. I had given him a Timex Indiglo watch and he wore it as proudly as if it were a Rolex. He loved to light up the dial and ask "Do you know what time it is?" In the bottom of the box was his watch. The band was broken so I put it under my pillow and listened to the ticking as if it were his heartbeat. The last thing I did every night was light up the dial because I knew that would have been the last thing he would have done too.
After a week of sleeping with the watch I decided to take it to a place to have a small band put on it. I wanted to wear it and have him near me. I took the watch to a local drug store where I knew the watch technician. She told me it would take about five minutes to fix. When I came back to the counter she looked sad. She said the metal was broken and a band could not be put on it. I looked at the watch and saw the time on the lighted dial. It was 9:30. I walked a few feet to my car and looked at the time. The watch face read 5:25 and it would not light. I closed my eyes and let my mind wait for the first thought. This was the thought that filled my mind...."You have to let me go." As clearly as if Ken had spoken into my ear I knew they were his words. "You have to let me go." That was the moment I let go of his legs and let him go to God. It was step one in my very long walk beside his suicide.
To this day I remember that moment and those words and I know there is no way to explain how the watch went forward or backward to that point but I firmly believe it reads the time he passed away. It was either dawn or dusk at the time in the desert in December. Now I had the comfort of knowing when he passed.
What was I doing when he left this earth.
What was I doing when he left this earth?
In the days after Ken died I was obsessed with what I had been doing on those days when he was contemplating suicide. What was so important in my day to day activity that I had not called him? I looked back over my schedule and found that nothing important was going on. The fact was I wouldn't have been calling him unless I was aware that he was in trouble.
Ken lived 1200 miles away and while we did enjoy long telephone chats those chats were several months apart. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him not calling. Within two days I would have called because he took his life two days before Christmas. That fact, perhaps more than any other, made dealing with his suicide extremely painful.
On the days before he died I had been very busy preparing for the holiday. I looked back and found lists of things to do and gifts to buy. He had been invited to come home but declined. The day he died I had been busy with all of the normal things you do when expecting company. My five grandchildren and daughters would be in town and there was a lot to get done. I had gone to bed early and shaken awake by the call that would change the rest of my life.
Knowing that while I was preparing for my favorite time of the year he was pawning anything worth money so he could buy enough drugs to end his life just killed me. In my mind's eye I pictured him frantically grabbing things from his apartment and rushing them to pawn shops. We found the reciepts after his death. I poured over a photo of his kitchen and the note he left behind. The cereal bowl and spoon in his sink was like a clue I couldn't figure out. It took me years to accept that not every detail had meaning.
1. What were you doing on the day your loved one took their life?
2. Do you blame yourself for not "knowing" what was about to happen?
3. Do you revisit the days before their suicide looking for something you may have missed?
4. Have you been able to let go of the feeling that you can turn back the clock and undo it?
5. Have you accepted that there was nothing you could have done to change what happened?
In the days after Ken died I was obsessed with what I had been doing on those days when he was contemplating suicide. What was so important in my day to day activity that I had not called him? I looked back over my schedule and found that nothing important was going on. The fact was I wouldn't have been calling him unless I was aware that he was in trouble.
Ken lived 1200 miles away and while we did enjoy long telephone chats those chats were several months apart. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him not calling. Within two days I would have called because he took his life two days before Christmas. That fact, perhaps more than any other, made dealing with his suicide extremely painful.
On the days before he died I had been very busy preparing for the holiday. I looked back and found lists of things to do and gifts to buy. He had been invited to come home but declined. The day he died I had been busy with all of the normal things you do when expecting company. My five grandchildren and daughters would be in town and there was a lot to get done. I had gone to bed early and shaken awake by the call that would change the rest of my life.
Knowing that while I was preparing for my favorite time of the year he was pawning anything worth money so he could buy enough drugs to end his life just killed me. In my mind's eye I pictured him frantically grabbing things from his apartment and rushing them to pawn shops. We found the reciepts after his death. I poured over a photo of his kitchen and the note he left behind. The cereal bowl and spoon in his sink was like a clue I couldn't figure out. It took me years to accept that not every detail had meaning.
1. What were you doing on the day your loved one took their life?
2. Do you blame yourself for not "knowing" what was about to happen?
3. Do you revisit the days before their suicide looking for something you may have missed?
4. Have you been able to let go of the feeling that you can turn back the clock and undo it?
5. Have you accepted that there was nothing you could have done to change what happened?
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Why?
Why?
The one word question that I asked myself and God and anyone who would listen was "why?" It took me all of these years to answer that question and the answer is "I don't know and I never will know." Not having an answer is very hard but getting past the point of racking my brain for a reason was much harder.
Ken's last face to face words to me were "My life just never really worked out." It was only in hindsight that I realized he was talking about himself in past tense. I didn't pick up on that at the time and you probably already know we grab on to any possibility that we could have done something to stop them. I replayed that conversation a million times and each time I would think "why didn't you see it? Why didn't you sit him down and talk about it?" I simply didn't see it and I can't blame myself for that anymore. If he meant it to be a hint he failed to convey it.
It is a fact that my brother had talked about suicide for at least 25 years. As early as grade school he spoke of his desire to end it all. As I said in my previous post our childhood was awful. Our father was a small man with a quick temper. Our mother was a master munipulator and suffered from borderline personality disorder. The combination of the two of them was gasoline and fire. When stressed out from being munipulated by her our father would beat us and berate us. Ken got the worst of it. It was as if he had hated him from the day he was born. I think deep down my father did love me but I am just as sure that he did not love Ken. Again, I do not have the answer to "why?"
Ken was correct when he said his life had not worked out but I think it could have if he had tried a different way. He had suffered from an autoimmune disease which was painful and added to his insecurities about his appearance. In his eyes he was ugly. In truth he was a very good looking. All of the years of growing up in a house where you are told you are stupid and lazy and a loser take their toll and he had internatized every insult. As he entered his teen years he experiemented with drugs. He continued to self medicate his physical and emotional pain until the end. It would be easy to blame the drugs and claim a quick answer to "why". I don't think the reason someone takes their life is ever that simple.
If you have lost someone to suicide you may find yourself going back over every conversation you can remember having with them and second guessing the meaning of every comment. You may try to reconstuct their last days, weeks or months. I did that too. I even used mapquest to see the roads he would have driven to get from his apartment to the spot where he was found and I looked at that road on a map every day for a long time. It was as if I was trying to turn the clock back and make what happened not happen.
I'm sure I will be talking about the "why" question many times as this blog goes on.
The one word question that I asked myself and God and anyone who would listen was "why?" It took me all of these years to answer that question and the answer is "I don't know and I never will know." Not having an answer is very hard but getting past the point of racking my brain for a reason was much harder.
Ken's last face to face words to me were "My life just never really worked out." It was only in hindsight that I realized he was talking about himself in past tense. I didn't pick up on that at the time and you probably already know we grab on to any possibility that we could have done something to stop them. I replayed that conversation a million times and each time I would think "why didn't you see it? Why didn't you sit him down and talk about it?" I simply didn't see it and I can't blame myself for that anymore. If he meant it to be a hint he failed to convey it.
It is a fact that my brother had talked about suicide for at least 25 years. As early as grade school he spoke of his desire to end it all. As I said in my previous post our childhood was awful. Our father was a small man with a quick temper. Our mother was a master munipulator and suffered from borderline personality disorder. The combination of the two of them was gasoline and fire. When stressed out from being munipulated by her our father would beat us and berate us. Ken got the worst of it. It was as if he had hated him from the day he was born. I think deep down my father did love me but I am just as sure that he did not love Ken. Again, I do not have the answer to "why?"
Ken was correct when he said his life had not worked out but I think it could have if he had tried a different way. He had suffered from an autoimmune disease which was painful and added to his insecurities about his appearance. In his eyes he was ugly. In truth he was a very good looking. All of the years of growing up in a house where you are told you are stupid and lazy and a loser take their toll and he had internatized every insult. As he entered his teen years he experiemented with drugs. He continued to self medicate his physical and emotional pain until the end. It would be easy to blame the drugs and claim a quick answer to "why". I don't think the reason someone takes their life is ever that simple.
If you have lost someone to suicide you may find yourself going back over every conversation you can remember having with them and second guessing the meaning of every comment. You may try to reconstuct their last days, weeks or months. I did that too. I even used mapquest to see the roads he would have driven to get from his apartment to the spot where he was found and I looked at that road on a map every day for a long time. It was as if I was trying to turn the clock back and make what happened not happen.
I'm sure I will be talking about the "why" question many times as this blog goes on.
Where to begin to rebuild your life?
Ten years ago I died. My life stopped, my belief in what I knew to be true was forever altered. I was dead inside because my brother had taken his own life. Not only was I "dead", I was thankful to be dead. Life without my younger brother was not something I wished to participate in.
My brother Ken and I grew up in an abusive home. It was as if we were veteran's of the same war and as such we understood each other's fears, hopes and dreams. I was three years older and his protector. My first memory was the day he came home from the hospital. That is the day I began my first job. I was his mother at the age of three.
When a phone call woke me up that December night I assumed it was him. When I heard a stranger's voice asking if he was on a trip away from his home I knew he had committed suicide. How could I know? Because I was like his twin spirit and I couldn't feel him alive any more. His flame had gone out and I was immediately aware of it's absense.
Ken had walked out into a national part and shot himself, facts that would only come to light in the days after his death. There was the initial search for him, a time when our mother believed he would be found alive. She had not been in the war with us. She had been on the other side of the fight and much of the reason he had left this earth was in defiance of her.
Through this blog I hope to help anyone who is trying to come to grips with a loved ones's suicide. It has been the hardest thing I have ever known and it has taken me ten years to be able to say that I have healed enough to write about it. I hope you will contribute to the dialouge and in your own way help me help others to survive what is almost too painful to take in.
My brother Ken and I grew up in an abusive home. It was as if we were veteran's of the same war and as such we understood each other's fears, hopes and dreams. I was three years older and his protector. My first memory was the day he came home from the hospital. That is the day I began my first job. I was his mother at the age of three.
When a phone call woke me up that December night I assumed it was him. When I heard a stranger's voice asking if he was on a trip away from his home I knew he had committed suicide. How could I know? Because I was like his twin spirit and I couldn't feel him alive any more. His flame had gone out and I was immediately aware of it's absense.
Ken had walked out into a national part and shot himself, facts that would only come to light in the days after his death. There was the initial search for him, a time when our mother believed he would be found alive. She had not been in the war with us. She had been on the other side of the fight and much of the reason he had left this earth was in defiance of her.
Through this blog I hope to help anyone who is trying to come to grips with a loved ones's suicide. It has been the hardest thing I have ever known and it has taken me ten years to be able to say that I have healed enough to write about it. I hope you will contribute to the dialouge and in your own way help me help others to survive what is almost too painful to take in.
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