Happy New Year

Hi All,

Today is Monday and it's January 6. I've had trouble getting to my computer to write lately. I guess to be more accurate I just haven't wanted to get to my computer to write. I don't know why exactly. Maybe I just got sick of examining my grief or my life. As someone who is a compulsive examiner this is...new? concerning? both? neither? I honestly don't know. I've tried to be honest in my writing in this blog. I've tried to write how I feel and not consider how my feelings sound or seem to anyone except myself. So, that said, I think I got sick of my feelings for a while. I felt bad when I wasn't writing because I worried maybe there are people who read this to see if I am ok and wonder when I don't post but then I realized that I cant write for anyone except me. I seem to be selfish like that.

Anyway, that said, I seem to want to hear myself again or examine myself. The anniversary of my Dad's death was monumental in my healing it seems and in some strange ways closed a door that I couldn't quite shut before then. I don't really know what the door was. I don't know what the door meant. I don't know if will open again either. It is a new door and it is a mystery door. I know that for sure. My new mystery door is a trap door, a sliding door, a screen door, a rock solid wooden door, a glass door, a hidden door, and sometimes, maybe, a locked door. I have tried my best to learn all about this door. I have tried to lock it. I have tried to figure out how to unlock it. Truth be told, I cant seem to do either predictably. Sometimes I think the door is gone and then something happens, I hear a song, and the door is swung wide open.

Where does my door lead me? Does it move me forward or backward if I go inside and follow it. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter because every time the door opens I find myself propelled inside of it, sometimes falling, sometimes walking, sometimes skipping, and sometimes, feeling my way around looking for light a light switch and hoping I don't get hurt before I find it.

The times I have felt closest to my Dad over the holidays were when I was doing things that I felt he would be proud of or enjoy too. During these times he was just my Dad and I didn't have his death right there in front. I just had him in front. These are good times. Good doors that I am happy to enter.Other times when I'm reminded of his death, when people talk about suicide, or when I cross bridges, or when something else triggers that idea. That is the trap door. I have fallen down it so many times that it is no longer that scary. I guess even trap doors get predictable once you fall down them enough.

Really, I guess that's the magic in healing. Not that the doors to pain or sadness disappear but that we learn where they are and we learn where they go. We learn that we can survive the fall because we do. We learn that we can walk inside and not break because we do walk inside and we don't break. It's painful falling. It hurts and it is scary and, trust me when I tell you that I understand how you might want to avoid it so much that you don't even go inside yourself anymore because you are too scared. The problem is that we have to go inside ourselves or we get lost. If we don't live inside of ourselves where then do we live? We live only on the outside of ourselves then. We live superficially, externally, and we begin...slowly to lose ourselves and then to lose everyone else too. So, I guess, I'm just here reporting back from my journey to say that I'm here and I'm ok.
xxK

 

There is no magic here

Hi All,

Well, 11/22/13 came and went. I didn't work. I kept busy, sort of. Spent time talking about my favorite topic: my kids and tried to find the balance between honoring my Dad's life on this first anniversary of his death and still functioning as a sane person. Mostly, I foud I just thought about doing a lot of different things. Here are the things I thought about doing most (not in this order necessarily): buying a bottle of Jack Daniels and drinking all of it while painting my nails black and smoking a pack of American Spirit Menthols in a shitty hotel room that I would pay for in cash and hide in forever or until all of the money ran out, making a mural of photos of my Dad's life, lighting candles and making an alter to him, praying, drawing pictures of my feelings, picking up my kids from school and making them stay home with me, finding lots of pot and smoking it all while playing with my kids (would they like me more?), calling my therapist, calling any number of old friends and crying, playing John Denver, playing Neil Diamond, sleeping all day and letting someone else do everything, hiding, eating only sugar all day, drinking another pot of coffee, running at the reservoir while having a mental memorial of my Dad's life, setting up my own Suicide Survivors walk, becoming a spokesperson for survivors of suicide, never identifying with Suicide Survivors again, calling the therapist who discharged my Dad to say "hi", picking a fight, crying all day.

Needless to say I did not do any of these things. I ate breakfast with my mother in law. I cleaned my house. I looked at old pictures from my Dad's house that I never get time to check out. I notice how much I look like my Dad's mother. I spent time thinking about my Dad as a man and not as a person who killed themselves. I spent time thinking about who he was before. How much I liked him when he was funny and healthy, how much he made me made, how much he loved me and often he was able to tell me and show me that. 

Then, of course, I thought about last year. At 1:30pm I looked at the clock and knew that this time last year he was already gone. I had lost him already this time last year and deep down, even then, I knew it. I thought about how he left me and how I left him and how scared I was the entire time. I thought about what it means to show up. I thought about how some people close to me have told my husband that they hate my Dad for what he did to me. Their hate does not make me feel better. I get it but it makes me know that they don't get it. I know that they have not seen what I have. Th depression, the pain, the hopelessness, the inertia, the thick blanket of nothing that fell over my Dad over and over, without warning, for over 30 years. I know you wont believe me when you read this but he kind of was a survivor, he just ran out of steam and so did I. I wish I had known then some of what I know now but, well, I guess everyone feels that way.

I haven't listened to my voicemail in a while. My one last saved one. Ask anyone who has lost someone suddenly, they have one. Mine is long and at the end my Dad says, I love you...I love you a lot. The end. xxK

two hours before a year

Hi All,

A little less than two hours before it is exactly a year since my Dad's death. I have tried to write this stupid post so many times. Maybe ten. Deleted or didn't finish each time. I have tried so hard to wrap a ribbon around this year for myself mostly. Wanted to come up with some hard won knowledge or wisdom. Kept thinking if I mine this pain just one more time than maybe I'll have some shiny and beautiful thing. Maybe the shiny and beautiful thing is not there. Maybe it is there and I just cant see it yet  because I keep getting distracted by how cold and scary the mine is. I really don't know. I know that much, I know I don't know much.

On my way home tonite I was doing my new/old thing of crying only alone and in the car --which was a trick I had back from when I was trying to not cry all day or at work. I realized wow, I have not been crying in my car for a while. Then I realized, how weird life is. I was pumping gas at Quik Check at a Super Quik Check and it was cold and windy and dark for 5:15 and I looked around at all of us, pumping our gas, and there was like 15 of us out there in this huge gas station with fluorescent lights, pumping gas. All of us in varying states of disarray. Me crying. No one noticing or caring. Me thinking about how so many people are in pain and I need to stop thinking it is just me. Me looking around and seeing that, yes, it could be that many of these people are in pain. Me and Super Quik Check people are connected. We are all here, cold, trying to get home to somewhere warm and safe and ok. Some of us will.

I got in my car with my coffee and donuts and thought about how this cold world that was full of pain and adversity seemed so clear standing at the gas station. In the car it was sort of clear. At home, it would seem a more faint memory. The beauty of my children seems to push out all possibility for self pity, self loathing, mean spiritedness. I wondered how can these two worlds live as one. The world where  my Dad is dead and it hurts with the world where my kids are here and perfect and full of love, and mess, and questions. I want them separate so much. Compartments. Leave the pain in the car. Keep that pain away, down, aside. Protect them. Protect me.

I drive home crying looking for tissues under the passenger seat with one arm. I finally find them in the driveway. I use the last two. I sort of laugh thinking about my Dad keeping donuts under his passenger seat. I think of how it was funny then and now. Think about not knowing much except I should keep tissues in my car. Think about this year teaching me to feel my pain as not unique, to use it to connect, not hide, and everyone so often to buy donuts.  Then, as one last thing, I think of my Dad and how I miss him every single day and how that is ok too. xxK

Running

Hi All,

Today is Tuesday and I just realized that I think I write a lot of blog posts on Tuesdays. Interesting. I actually just started another blog--it's called up2run and it's address is up2run.blogspot.com I wondered as I began this project my year of running in the morning if I was running towards something or away from it? Or both.

I am not sure it matters. The pragmatic part of me says that it doesn't. I don't think it is an accident however that the idea for this blog came to me in early November--at a time when reminders of last year seem to be suffocating me into submission. Grief. It's power cannot be underestimated. I didn't think twice about picking up my Nov Better Homes and Gardens and then dropped it in horror when the first picture of a turkey dinner appeared and made me lose my breath. Maybe this wont be as easy as I thought. No, I didn't really think it would be easy. My Dad's suicide last Thanksgiving sort of made it a marked day for me, forever it seems. I've tossed this around-how I don't want to ruin this holiday forever and how I want it to be good etc. Its complicated because I do want this and then also feel sort of as if, it was predetermined that this Thanksgiving would be painful and I cant pretend it away. I cant run away from it either. It just is this holiday that I once loved and now am a combination of determined and terrified about.

Determined is a funny word. Terrified is too. I don't know what to write other than to be honest and those are the words that come to be about this holiday. My determination which feels so steely at times--fueled w anger, hostility, strength. My fear--cold and lonely and weak. The marriage of those two is where I'm at in relation to this upcoming holiday. I'll do my best to make it good for everyone else--to serve them and to honor my Dad in a way that makes sense. To be real about who he was, what I miss and what I don't miss as much.

Mental illness is painful and damaging. It hurt my Dad and it hurt me. I wish I could go back in time to when he was still on the Lithium and make him promise to never stop taking it. I had no idea just how much it was working, for him, and for me. I wish I also could go back and help him grieve over his own mother's suicide. I wish I could tell him over and over that it was not his fault until he believed me. I would tell him that I know how horrible and painful it is to realize that your parent doesn't want to live anymore and then I would tell him that this is not his fault, was not his responsibility, and that he needs to forgive himself. I would tell him that he deserved a mother that would not be in that much pain and that I am sorry for both of them that he didn't get that and I am sorry for how hard it must have been for him to live with his secrets and pain buried so down so deep. By the time I knew what had happened it was too late for me to help, his pain had eaten him alive. I see that so clearly only now--I see how his pain was buried so deep that the people that loved him couldn't help him. I see how I have to let my own pain out, let it surface, and let the people that love me, help me. And they do. And I'm grateful. xxK
 

Unpredictable, a little Crazy, and too Loud

Hi All,

It's Wednesday night and here I am...today I got a call from my daughter's first grade teacher. He said he was concerned because she was having a tough few days and most recently had hid under a table to attempt to avoid recess. He said he felt that she was having trouble adjusting to the noise level in the classroom and that when other kids (mainly boys) got a little more wild that she seemed to have a tough time. I paused on the phone stuck somewhere between laughter and tears. I thought about both my husband and my own lack of tolerance for loud, I thought about my desire for a home that is calm, peaceful and under control and how much I craved the consistency of this simple thing in the last year. I thought about how hard both me and my husband had worked to get our house to be this sort of safe haven and how now it seemed that was coming back to haunt her.

I drove home. I thought about my girl. Who she is. Who I am. How we are similar and how we are different. I wondered about how my Dad's death has influenced her. She was not very close to my Dad because of his own limitations with his depression and temperament and so his death probably more impacted her thru me then her directly but it did have an impact. I thought about things I can control and things I cant. I came home to a happy girl who seemed totally ok, good. I helped her put on her Super Girl costume and watched her run out to the car to go to Daisy's. I thought about 6 and nearly 40. I thought about my Dad and how much he drove me crazy worrying about me. How in the end I drove him crazy worrying about him. I thought about all of that worry.

Will he be ok? Will I be ok? Will she be ok? What if he, I, she is not ok? Then what? Part of me feeling ok is me feeling smart. Part of me feeling smart is me feeling informed and in the know. Part of me feeling informed and in the know is me feeling in tune with those around me. So there is this...when my daughter was with me she was good, happy, ok. And yet she went to school, had experiences that I did not see, feel or know about and then was unhappy and became scared or sad. I want to make that scared and sad go away until I realize (again) that the scared and the sad are both important. The scared and the sad is sort of where the growth is. Do I hate seeing my kids go thru the scary and the sad? Umm, YES, but do I understand that these bad feelings will serve her someday. Yes, I do. I understand that learning to cope with feeling scared and sad is the essence of growing up. Scary and sad things happen all around us. How we learn to deal with those feelings defines who we are. Do we stuff those feelings? Do we act out? Yell? Throw things? Hide? Cry? Just what do we do when we feel unsure or sad or afraid? I don't really know.

I spent some time thinking about ways I could suggest for her to help her deal with her loud classroom. We talked about the girl who she sits next to that turned her back on her yesterday during recess. We talked about what that is like and how, yes, that has happened to me too. We talked about what I like in my friends and what I don't like in my friends and how I have learned to like people who make me feel good when I with them but how that took me a long time to figure out. I left her room with a lump in my throat for all that I know and all that she doesn't and then for all that she knows and all that I don't. I thought about how alcohol protected me for a long time from feelings I didn't want to deal with. I thought about how she came out from under the table and stopped crying and put on a Super Girl costume and flew to Daisy's with her Dad. And now I just sit here and think that when they say in AA that 90% of life is just showing up that they are right and how you can apply that to parenting too. And it hurts to sit with her little girl sadness and it hurt to sit with my Dad's older man sadness and it hurts to know my own. And I feel it all. And I show up. xxK

Autumn

Hi All,

Today is Tuesday and really uncharacteristically I'm home during the day. I stayed home today because I was feeling so sick last night and into this morning that I didn't sleep well and woke up still with a stomach ache. It sort of reminded me of how I used to feel when I was drinking--the waking up and just feeling pain immediately. At the end of my drinking I was drinking with an ulcer and that is just downright unpleasant. Feeling this way today is strange and I cant help but wonder if it is connected with my writing what I think may be the last checks for my Dad's estate. It was so hard to get past the procrastination and pain and do it. I wonder if I made myself sick somehow in the process...Either way, I seem to be mostly finished with the working part of settling his Estate. A process I found to be the most painful and difficult part of this all. Not because it was hard but because I had to show up and do it and all I really wanted to do was hide until someone realized I was still a kid and had my Dad take care of it--like he always used to. The reality that I am the parent and that it is my job to take care of this has never ceased to wake me up and cause me pain. I miss being the kid, and specifically I miss being my Dad's daughter.

My Dad was sort of a chauvinist which may or may not have been the result of his age, generation, temperament but the result of this fact was that he was always trying to take care of me and my sister. I was 30 years old and he was filling my tires or giving me gas money. It used to make me so angry--I thought he didn't realize how capable I was. He tried telling me once that it was just that he was my Dad and it wasn't about my capabilities. I didn't get it at all--I never really got that part until he was gone. That he just wanted to do it for me because he wanted to, not because I couldn't do it, but because he still could. Perhaps, unlike me, he knew that there would be a day that he was not around anymore and he wanted to do what he could while he could. In retrospect that stuff that angered me the most about him--the doing for, the calling so often, the checking in about small stuff that drove me crazy--it is that stupid stuff that I end up missing.  In some small way I also understand a little better now what drove that. How he had lost his own mother in a traumatic and sudden way just like I did and how it makes you scared, and vulnerable, and cautious. All of that energy trying to make sure that we were ok. Energy spent trying to control the people and events around him so that he didn't have to experience the pain of unexpected loss again.

And now my own pain. I too have pushed and pulled at the world around me. Have fought repeatedly the urge to hide both myself and the people that I love the most from a world I fear may indeed hurt them, and hurt me again. When I was about to give birth to my daughter I remember reading that the pain of labor comes from the tensing up after the contractions or in anticipation for them--this made sense to me and it helped for me to invite the pain in and not try to fight it. I can only assume this same logic would apply to this except it feels terrifying to invite this pain in. Like it could destroy me and leave me, like my own father, crippled by the sadness. So here I am--half warrior, half cripple, and one whole real person. A daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Feeling the pain when I can stand it, staying busy when I cant, and trying to find the middle place where I can live.

On November 22nd it will be one year since my Dad jumped off of the Lambertville, NJ toll bridge. One year since I got the call. One year since my world fell apart right down inside itself and I was forced to confront one of my own greatest fears--that he would someday take his own life. Like a train wreck I saw coming and could not stop my Dad had jumped away, taken flight, returned home. I wonder where he is out there and if he'll come back to me in some other mystical way...and I hope he will. In fact, I hope he finds his way back to me soon. I'll be waiting for him, right here, where he left me.
 

React, Relax, Respond, Repeat

Hi All,

It is has been a really long time since I last wrote. I am not quite sure where the Summer has gone. Here it is September already...huh. The Summer was fun, and chlorinated, and swimmy, and sunny. It was in many ways what the doctor ordered as the antidote towards the cold numbness of Winter and the startlingly alert Spring. My grief seems to have changed with the seasons and to have ended up somewhere new and different as we approach Fall. Winter was just nothingness. Spring was pain. Summer was perspective and some relief and some healing and some sadness too but Summer marked a more simple grief for me. I found myself more often missing my Dad and less often replaying the events that lead to his death. Not that I don't still do that a lot but I don't do it everyday or maybe it is everyday still but not for as long. That may surprise people not used to this sort of thing but the thoughts are frequent and by frequent, yes, I mean daily and in the beginning hourly. How did this happen? Why did I do this? Why did I say that? Why didn't I do or say? And then just the event itself as an image burned into my brain that may get smaller but wont go away. Surviving the suicide of my Dad is not how I thought it would be. I am not how I thought I would be.

I disappoint myself some days with how I cant just rise above it. I surprise myself other days with how far I've come and how much I've risen above it. Some days I feel strong and clear and ok. Other days I feel the opposite--and not as ok. Lately, I have been better about not questioning my own sanity. In the beginning I wondered often if his mental illness was happening to me. My therapist (God bless her) continues to assure me that this is not the case and as she is reassuring me I wonder how it must feel to have to reassure someone of the same exact thing almost every time you meet with them. She doesn't seem mad or surprised though, so I think it must be (at least a little) normal.

The times when I have disappointed myself the most are related to my family--not my children but my sister, my Mom, my husband.  I cant even put into words how much I have wanted to save them from this pain, to protect them from this pain, and then when that failed how much I wanted to then (at least) be strong, sane, and helpful. I wanted to go on my first vacation since my Dad died and help everyone. I wanted to smile from the moment I woke up until the sun went down just out of gratitude and wisdom and compassion but instead I was exhausted, anxious, and emotional. Yes, I had moments of smiling and playing and relaxing but I also had a lot of other moments where I was just getting thru it. Slogging thru it. I might be the only person who ever slogged thru Amagansett but I did. I saw the beach and cried. I thought of how much my Dad loved the Jersey Shore and I cried. Tears down beneath my sunglasses. Tears while the kids made sand castles. Tears while my husband walked away with my daughter on the beach. Tears when no one was watching, tears when they were. I felt like a failure. It took me almost until the vacation was over to relax. It took until a few days ago to forgive myself for being hurt, selfish, sad and to accept that and own it.

9 months ago my Dad took his own life. The severity of the pain, the completeness the loss, shattered everything that I thought I knew about myself and about life. Where I sit tonite is in a new place and I am, in many ways, a new person. The other night a man was speaking at a meeting about being suicidal--I could barely sit and listen but I did. I wanted to say something to him after but the words would not come, stuck inside my throat they stayed. I thought You are important, I said nothing.

A week later I saw the same man. I walked straight up to him and I opened my mouth. I said, "I am sorry that I didn't say something to you the other night when you were speaking but I am really glad to see you here tonite. I said "Depression is awful and Im sorry you are going thru it." He smiled. I could tell it meant something. I felt the force of the words and then I grabbed his hand before I walked away and held it tight. He smiled.xx