Chris' Birthday

December 9, 2013  Another level of good-bye to my son Christopher. 

December 6, 2013 would have been his 39th birthday.  There are waves, depths, seasons of feeling the pain of losing a child.  There are waves, depths, and explosions of grief relating to the act of suicide.

Thoughts of  "what if's"  seize me, and shake me like a wild animal rips its prey. My body, and my mind are either frozen, or fired with the hot emotions of shock and pain, or both. I can't believe it, and yet, I can.

Today, it is a pile of ashes, when I want desperately to remember life.

I try to read to comfort myself, but  my eyes cannot focus, and my heart is full of expressions I cannot possibly identify.

People ask "what can I do?"  I have no idea.  I want the life around me to go away-- I want people to go away-- and yet, I want them to come in.

I grapple with trying to lift myself up every morning under a terrifying oppression, a restlessness I can't satisfy, and a hope I can't find.  Tears fill my body, but they won't come--they stand poised in ice, waiting for me to melt.

But I'm angry instead.   It's not an anger I have experienced before--it is a quiet, smoldering anger, ready to lash out, but burning deep in my soul, and there is no focus.  I'm feeling unsteady, uncertain, unready to relate to any circumstance, or to any person.  Mostly, I just want to protect myself and stay in bed.

This is not the way it was supposed to be. This is not where I want to be.  I can only know that, with God's help, somehow, some way,

I can move on.