Walking Home

Is it difficult for a mother to watch their child living a life they feel is not best for them?

Does a mom always know what’s best for their child?

My mom enters my memories every single day. I think my mom always knew what was best for me even when I put up walls between us. My mom was a force. She was not a coddler. I often refer to growing up with her as Sandra’s hard school of knocks. Her soul was gentle, her heart was helpful, her parenting was fierce.

I was an emotional child. Likely could have been classified as over emotional and probably had and still do have a sensory processing disorder. I cried over everything. My moms solution to that was – go to your room. I was never shamed for crying, just don’t be interrupting everyone else’s day with it. She told me in later years that she wasn’t able to offer me comfort or attention because when she did, I always fell apart more. It was her instinct to leave me alone and let me process my feelings alone. Right or wrong….. I see this as a gift from her. Because the road ahead for me was going to be full of a few big knocks and the feeling of processing my own emotions was going to be integral to my own survival.

I am 3 years older than my mom was when my brother took his life. When I think of this, time slows to a stand still. It is emotional and it is hard to catch my breath. I definitely can not put my feet in her shoes, no matter how I try to, they just don’t fit. Or is it mostly because I don’t want to put them on?

Whenever I had worry as a young mother, she always said to me – you already know what to do, just trust yourself.

Mothers always seem to know when something isn’t quite right with their child.

A feeling of discontent

A feeling in your gut that something is off

An urge to reach out, to check in

We can read their ups and downs, feel their excitement, happiness, and sadness. Without any words being said.

A heart wrenching part of mothering is knowing of unsettling emotions and watching the child figure out how to tackle those emotions. No matter what age that child is.

It has been said that as mothers our job is to teach the child to fly and watch them soar. What if you taught all you could and they don’t fly?

A mother has to let their adult child find their own way and write their own story. It’s the role in walking them home.

I wonder how long my mom had a heavy heart knowing my brother was not well, not living his best life.

I think about how difficult it would have been for her to endure this. But I also think about how very brave she was to let him write his own story.

❤️❤️🙏🏼

Sometimes a song just hits you. Your whole self can connect to it when you hear it for the first time.

There was a song released a couple years ago. Before you go by Lewis Capaldi. The song is about the aftermath of suicide, including how you can feel responsible for the death.

When I heard it the first time, it sent waves of emotion through me. My body knew what it was about even though my mind didn’t know the words.

“Now that you are gone all I hear are the words that’s I needed to say.

When you hurt under the surface like troubled water running cold

Time can heal but this won’t.

So before you go, was there something I could have said to make your heart beat better?

If only I had known you had a storm to weather.”

You should give the song a listen if you haven’t heard it. It is pain and healing wrapped into one.

Suicide survivors guilt (for lack of a better term)

This is a huge one. You ask yourself hard questions when you loose someone close to you to suicide.

Why didn’t I see the signs? Or Did I see the signs? Could I have prevented this ending or rerouted it somehow?

Loss by suicide is its own mental burden. Each memory you have, you question it. Was he really happy in that picture? Was he really good? Did he really enjoy sports? What was real about him and what was a performance? Who was he?

At times I thought he was selfish for doing this to us. Then I had guilt about thinking that.

My mom said “well at least he didn’t have a wife and children that have to suffer loosing him too”. I sided with her on this one. Then I had guilt about feeling good that he didn’t have anyone but us to suffer his loss.

At times I was so angry with him. I hated him and I hated how I felt because of his choice, because of him. I hated that I was now care taking for my parents. Then I had guilt about being angry.

A memory of driving with my dad pops up. We are talking about the loss of another young man close to us who was in a car accident. We talk about blame and hate for the person who caused that accident and about that heavy burden. Then I tell my dad that we don’t have anyone to hate or blame except for Kevin and in time we will see this as a blessing. I don’t really believe my words at the time, but they are the words he needed to hear. Then I have guilt for telling untruths even if they were meant to be of help.

Everyones greif journey is different.

For a very long time, I had extreme guilt for having happiness. Specifically true happiness in my parents presence.

Survivors guilt steals your joy. I could feel happiness but then had immediate shame for feeling it. So I learned to tuck it away for a long time.

As I write for you and for me, my thoughts drift to people who may be going through this right now. You are in hell, but you are not alone. Reach out when you can and you will find the right ears to hear you.

Survivors guilt has made me who I am today. You can overcome it or repurpose it with time but I don’t think it ever goes fully away. It changes who you were.

My guilt has given me sensitivity and the ability to feel extreme compassion for others. I didn’t just wake up and decide this for myself one day. It happened slowly over time, as I emptied the survivors guilt bucket and left room for something else to enter.

What a waste of a life

The words have been said.

I heard them more than once in the time following my brothers suicide. And I have heard them in my presence while others with the same fate were being spoken about.

I used to wonder if there was any truth to the words. What it taught me is that there is no life that is a waste.

People who use these words believe them. Everyone has their own perception of a situation. These words used to upset me. Now when I hear something like this, it still bites a bit but I try to turn it around in my head and say to myself – I am happy you do not understand the weight of your words, that you have never had to feel how heavy they are.

You were always the good one, you would never do anything like this.

The words have been said . To me. I can feel this persons hug, I can see the color green, I can remember thinking – what the f#}^! do you mean?

What does that mean to the person who said it? Do they perceive that good ones don’t take their own life?

I think that the dark place of depression can happen to anyone at anytime. I think if you don’t understand that then I am happy that you don’t.

It used to be preached that suicide was a sin and those who parish in this way do not go to heaven. Imagine the extra weight a person who was raised in this belief carries if they find themselves in this dark space. My best friend growing up was raised in the Catholic Church. She felt this burden of weight when she heard of my brothers passing, I remember her telling me she had to go to talk to her priest about his suicide.

She found comfort in sharing to me that he would go to heaven.

The words have been said.

But I already knew he was going there. He was a good one.

That last summer, the 3 of us sat together in one of the common area rooms at City Hospital making small talk about our day. It was a beautiful day outside and my dad wasn’t allowed to leave the floor so we sat in here instead.

My brother had told us he was working at the golf dome picking up golf balls and at a shell station. My dad was talking about trying to break out of the hospital and how he would likely bleed to death from a cut finger because his warfarin wasn’t yet regulated.

The colors that flash to me when I think of this day – white, red, green.

My brother asks me for money… again. And I ask him when he will get his first paycheque from his next job. He says he doesn’t know, and I respond why? He says “you don’t understand. “

When I think of this moment – I see no light and no sun, only darkness. I make good eye contact and I say harshly “No it’s you who doesn’t understand”

The tone is set. The color black.

I was upset with him because I was overwhelmed. Dad was sick, mom had to work to pay their bills, and I took as many days off as I could to be in the hospital with dad because his anxiety about dying and being in there sick was acute.

Depression can take many faces. And for those who aren’t in it, it can be difficult to see it. A person who has depression is often seen as lazy, unwilling, entitled and maybe even selfish to the outside eyes this disease has not reached. In children the disease can be seen as bad or rebellious behaviour. An adult in a low can say they don’t want to go somewhere or rnr your message and it is accepted. A child doesn’t even know why they don’t want to go to school or to their aunties house. They just know their body doesn’t want to, their body can feel heavy and just unable to be moved easily by them.

Mental illness is difficult for the family and it can be frustrating and down right exhausting. Imagine tho for a minute what it is like in that persons eyes.

It is hard for the two eyes to see each other because what’s in the two minds is not the same. You can get there though by building trust and listening.

I thought my brother didn’t understand that our load was heavy and he needed to do his part to help, to get a job and at least look after himself.

In 1996 it turns out it was me who didn’t understand.

When you loose someone to suicide you have so many questions. At the time My inner being needed to know and understand his thought process.

I am reminded of the card my Auntie Marilyn gave me when my brother died. It was a poem called the plan of the master weaver. I can recite this poem from memory. When I first read it, I was drawn to it. 25 years later, I have relied on this poem for peace and strength many times.

While we walk each other home, we are often too busy doing life to see the walk. For anything to happen in this life for us, a number of things have to be happening for other people too. Timing is everything and I don’t think we are in control of it. Maybe it’s God, maybe it’s energy, or just maybe your path is the one you chose for yourself before arriving here on this earth.

In my family There is a shift. A change of roles. My brothers death has shattered my parents. It has shattered me too, but I am capable of piecing us back together. They are not. I now become the worrier, the checker, the caregiver. My dad continues to make soup, my mom continues to work and I begin to parent my parents because everyone in our world is too broken. It’s the role I needed then, if it wasn’t then it wouldn’t have been mine. It kept me focused and moving forward.

When I say we are walking each other home, it is happening constantly if you take the time to see it. People and information come to you but you may not even see them or hear the information until you are ready to. Recently a friend shares with me that she has a difficult relationship with her mom. My friend has lost a sibling too, her mom has lost a child.

As my friend shares these feelings with me, I think of my own mother and all kinds of memories flash back to me of my life after my brothers death with my mom and I say this…….

Moms who loose children, they carry a different kind of hate for the living and I think they always feel like they are underwater. Like they are drowning and living at the same time. It changes who they were.