On the 7th Anniversary of Your Death

Friday, July 31, 2020

I'm really struggling this year. 

The times when I feel I just can't accept the reality of your death are more frequent this year, and right now I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn't grieving for you, and for myself. I want to crawl out of my own skin at the unfairness of it, at the grief that permeates every aspect of my life, at the pain of missing you every minute of every day. I can't stop crying, and this is the first time since the year following your death that I had to take time off work because I couldn't function at a high enough level to fake it through the day. 

The constant ache that represents your passing, along with the current state of the union and the isolation resulting from the COVID pandemic has pushed me into a full-blown depressive episode. I'm not sleeping, I can't concentrate, my aphasia is back. My desire to do anything, no matter how small, is nonexistent. 

I just don't understand. Why? Why couldn't you have come to someone, anyone, who loved you to tell them how bad you felt, how hopeless? Why couldn't you let us help you to find a way out of the darkness? When you weren't sick, I know you knew how much I loved you, how I would have done anything, LITERALLY ANYTHING, to save you, to defend you, including giving up my own life to save yours. Why didn't you tell me? 

I know depression lies, it lies like a motherfucker, and I know it was lying to you. I know you felt you were weak, that you just couldn't cut it as an adult, and I know you felt you were out of options. And I know that none of those things were true. I know that with the appropriate help, you could have gotten better, and lived your life as you were meant to live it, making the world better with your intellect, your passion, your drive. But depression robbed you of that future, robbed the world of your gifts, and robbed me of a daughter for whom I would have stormed the gates of hell armed with nothing more than my love for you and the ferocity that comes with being a mama bear. 

And I am so fucking angry. I'm angry that you were the one who had to struggle with mental illness to the point where your despair overtook you. I'm angry that you died alone and scared in an anonymous hotel room with a bag over your head, without those who loved you to comfort you and reassure you of our love. I'm angry that you didn't come to the end of a long, long life with your own family and friends surrounding you, celebrating a life well-lived, and a legacy anyone would be proud to have. I'm angry that I didn't see your pain, and your hopelessness, and your inability to see the truth about yourself and your own struggle. And I'm angry, so angry, that of all the families in the all world, losing a child to suicide is something that happened to us.

But I'm still not angry at you. I understand in my heart how much pain your were in, how hard you fought to hang on for the sake of those who loved you, how you just couldn't bear living anymore. Every day, my heart breaks for you in your final, hopeless days, knowing now what I didn't see then, and my heart breaks for me, robbed of my chance to save my baby girl from herself in the darkest days of her life. I know these things, and I know that the grief that is losing someone you love to mental illness is an equal opportunity tragedy, that every family and any family is at risk. 

But I still rail at the unfairness of it all. 

It's unfair that you're gone from my life, from the lives of everyone who loved you. It's unfair that you'll never know romantic love, the experience of sharing decades of your life with someone who is on your side, no matter what. It's unfair that you'll never know the love, the joy, the crushing responsibility, the pride that is parenthood. It's unfair that you'll never find your life's work, or have the chance to dedicate your life to a vocation, or experience the pride that comes from being at the top of your field. It's unfair that I'll never meet your partner, your children, your grandchildren. It's unfair that I'll never be whole again, that I will spend the rest of my life being broken by the grief that is the result of your illness. 

I love you. I'll love you every day for the rest of my life, with a grief so crushing that some days it takes my breath away and narrows my world to a tiny dot of pain that burns with the heat of a thousand suns. 

I miss you. I miss you so much sometimes I feel like it's killing me by inches. My baby girl, who I couldn't save, and whose loss I can't accept. 

4 comments:

mom in northern said...

What can I say or do to "Kiss and make it better"? I am in fear and trembling watching you fall into that same bottomless well of despair in order to follow Moe.
All of your arguments and comments are understandable and true; but please know you must not follow her. That would be the very last thing she would have wanted and would only heap more grief and despair on those you would leave behind. Please, PLEASE ask for someone qualified to help you with this battle...
Remember we all love you and need you in our lives.

Janiece said...

Mom, I'm not suicidal, nor do I have suicidal ideations. While I do suffer from depression, my brain just isn't wired that way. And because no one is the best judge of their own mental health, Terry and the Sisters keep a close eye on me when I'm in a trough, and let me know when they think it's time for me to go back to my head doctor. One of the ways I manage my depression is by trusting them, and by following their direction when my judgement is suspect I wish Moe had had a management plan like that when she was feeling her worst.

It's just been the shittiest of weeks for me, and yesterday, when I wrote this, was my lowest point in many years. There's a pattern to my grief journey, and I'm lucky enough to have people around me that know my pattern, and are ready to step in when it's necessary. And since I asked them to do this, I trust them, literally with my life, although it's never come to that.

I feel less raw today, and a bit lighter, having articulated my feelings in my writing. Journaling my grief is what has allowed me to manage it thus far. I'm sorry I scared you, that was not my intent. Those feelings have to go somewhere, and putting them into the world lightens my load.

mom in northern said...

Understand...big hugs..

Te Necessary said...

This year is so hard, but one of it's dangerous sirens is that...with everyone becoming a concept of something far away, it's easy for our brains to just forget that people aren't there anymore. I haven't seen anyone in months, so maybe my heart wants to pretend for a minute that is why, and then it hurts so much more to rip back to reality.

We are all sending out love, folded over infinite times, to you and everyone there. I hope for a brief second it can hold you tight.