Day 1096

Today is the third anniversary of my husband Jason’s death.  He took his own life on August 18, 2017, 1096 days ago, and our lives will never be the same.  

During this past Christmas, I started feeling very impressed that it was time for me to talk about Jason’s death and publish it on the third anniversary because, in my mind, three years would be enough time to process and talk about what happened.  I have no idea why I felt that way because while there are aspects of losing Jason that I have processed and worked through, I don’t know that there will ever be a time in my life when I can say enough time has passed and I have worked through all of the trauma, to the point where I can comfortably share it all in detail.  I have experienced too much to be so naive, but being able to talk about it is an important step in my journey. 

Right after Jason died, I sat down, and I wrote down everything that happened while it was fresh in my mind in case my children ever ask for all the details that led up that terrible day.  Then I folded it up, and I put it away, never to be told except to the people that need to know.  Only, I was living in a fog for a solid year after he died, and I have no idea where I stashed it.  I wish I were kidding.  Somewhere, probably in a place that completely makes sense, is the story fresh from my mind, not whitewashed or altered by the passage of time.  When the time comes for me to share the story in detail, I will dig through every box and find it.  

Today is not that day.

Today I want to share some aspects of a grief journey with all of you from my own perspective and shared experiences with others on this same path. I want to share the growth I have experienced through this journey in hopes that it will help you on your own path, whatever challenges you are facing.  Grief looks different for everyone.  Very, very different.  This is my perspective and my experience.

1. Grief is physically painful.

I am not a crier.  I have legitimately gone years in a row without shedding one single tear.  I had times when I would get misty over a happy ending to a movie or a joyous occasion,  but there have been very few times in my adult life that I have just sobbed, and I can count them on one hand. 

There are no words to describe the physical and emotional pain of being told that your spouse took their own life.  It is still hard for me to imagine the amount of pain inflicted by an almost imperceptible shake of a head and the two tiny little words, “He’s gone.”  All of the pain and anguish came spilling out of my mouth, and I, very publicly, cried and screamed in a way that was very unlike me.  What I had already felt was true was confirmed, and yet it still seemed so impossible. How could someone I had spent half of my whole life with be gone in one instant, with no chance that he would ever come back?  My heart was shattered; I felt it break into a million little pieces deep inside my chest.  My soul was mangled; I felt the shreds of it being painfully ripped away in those awful moments that felt like an eternity.  The life I had known was gone, and part of me died with him that day.  It was the worst day of my life.

The day after the worst day of my life, I had to do the most difficult and terrible thing I had ever done.  I had to look my children in the eye and intentionally say words that caused them the same pain, and then hold them as they sobbed, knowing there was no way to make it better.  No bright side, no silver lining, no distraction, no bandaid, just pain.

Over the last 1096 days, we have learned many coping mechanisms, but there is still pain.  We learned that physical pain from grief could be just as real as the emotional pain and could present itself through migraines and other intense pain in your body that makes you wonder if there is something seriously wrong with you, but no, that’s just grief.  We have learned that the pain of grief can drive a person to attempt the same thing that caused the pain to begin with. We have learned that attempting to shield other people from pain by not sharing your own actually causes them more pain and can lead to devastating consequences.  There is legitimately no way around the pain of grief.  It becomes part of who you are, and you simply have to go through it to heal.

2. Grief is ugly.

We have a rule in our family.  Everyone is allowed to grieve in their own way, no matter how ugly it is, because everyone grieves differently.  Our job is to love them, support them, and accept them.

I spent a solid year and a half angry. My first thoughts when I woke up in the morning were hateful and sometimes filled with naughty words.  I used very dark humor to mask my rage.  It took me almost a year, and therapy, to recognize that this was my grieving.  I did not realize that grief could be so angry.  I thought I would cry all the time and be sad.  Or that grief would be all-encompassing and make it so I struggled to function in even the most basic ways. But no, grief for me was very angry for a very long time.  Jason left me in the most painful and vindictive way that anyone can leave another person, and he blamed me for it. He also hurt our children in unspeakable ways by abandoning them, for which I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive him.  He destroyed our life and uprooted our children, for what?  Having never been suicidal, I do not personally understand the state of mind someone has to be in to destroy people’s lives with no regard for the aftermath of the destruction.  He left me here alone to sift through the remains of what used to be our life and try to salvage our children from the ruins.  I was furious with him for it, and I still am for the pain he caused our children.  

I made a point of never speaking ill of him to my kids.  To protect them from how I was feeling about their dad, I said nothing about him, which was worse.  We didn’t talk about Jason or what had happened at all.  As a result, we all suffered alone because none of us wanted to hurt others with our grief.  It was intensely unhealthy. Like eating three supersized McDonald’s Double  Big Mac meals every day for five straight years unhealthy.  Recognizing this was not okay, but not knowing how to fix it, I looked for places specializing in grieving children and families. 

 I found Judy’s House, and it was time for the healing to begin. It wasn’t fast, easy, or pretty. I remember the first time I tried to talk to them on the way home from Judy’s house about the importance of talking about their dad.  I wanted to let them know that I was ok with it, and I was there for them.  It was incredibly awkward and so uncomfortable, and to add to the awkwardness, they sat there silently all the way home.  As we pulled in the garage after the thirty-minute drive in silence, one of them asked how he died.  I answered her, and she said, ‘ok, that’s what I thought.’ I asked if she had any more questions, and she did not, so I told her if she thought of anything else, she could come to me anytime, and then we went inside. Here I had been thinking I was doing the best thing for them by not telling them all the details and not saying anything negative. I was so lost in my own emotional garbage I didn’t even realize they had lived for almost a year without even knowing how their dad died, other than that he had taken his own life.  It was a colossal failure that I immediately began working to rectify, but it took a long time.

About a year after Jason died, I had to take objects that reminded me of him to therapy, and I had to tell my group about them.  The week before this, I had to tell them the story of his death.  Telling the story of his death was far less painful than sharing memories from his life.  It sent me into a tailspin for several weeks.  I cried more during that time than the whole year before. It was a turning point for me, and I experienced some very important growth, but it was terrible.

I realized that being angry had prevented me from remembering anything good about the twenty-one years we spent together, which had protected me from the unspeakable pain I had experienced the day he died. I finally accepted that being angry wasn’t a long-term solution, and if I wanted to move forward, I needed to allow myself to feel the pain and walk through the darkness.  There was simply no way around it.  

My therapist recommended that I listen to music that made me think of him and to consciously allow myself to feel the emotions brought on by this process.  I cried a lot for several more weeks.  And then one day, I didn’t cry, but I didn’t feel angry either.  I was ok.  It wasn’t a permanent ‘ok’, but I accepted that moment for what it was.  Progress.

Slowly, I learned not to fear the darkness of grief, but rather to recognize it as part of the healing process and accept that there was a lot to be gained from walking through it. It is like the super ugly scab on a skinned knee, it is part of the healing process from a physical wound on our skin, and if you keep picking it off because it’s ugly, the wound will never heal.

Through this ugly process, I have learned that just like our bodies have a remarkable ability to heal, so do our hearts and souls.  We feel worse before we feel better, but if we allow ourselves to go through the process, we can heal, and we will see the light again and feel the sunshine. We go through times that set us back, like anniversaries, family reunions, birthdays, or sometimes just seeing a truck just like his on the road, but we keep working through those times and find our way forward again.  We will always have the scars, but we are healing.

3. Grief from suicide is different than other grief.

I blame myself.  A lot.  Way more than I am honest about.  

Cognitively I understand that I am not the one who made that choice.  I wasn’t there, and I did not take his life.  He did that.  Sometimes when the thoughts of what I could have done differently begin to invade, I have to step back for a second and remind myself how things actually happened. All that transpired while he was deployed, not knowing his mental state when he returned home (because he kept it from me), his adamant denial and insistence that he was not going to harm himself or anyone else, and his refusal to accept help when it was offered. Those are the things that led to him dying, and none of those things had anything to do with me, even though he blamed me for his death. 

Thankfully, I have not been openly blamed by anyone else. I hope I have never been blamed behind closed doors, but if so, I don’t know about it, and I don’t want to.  I know it wasn’t my fault that my husband chose to take his own life.  It just wasn’t.  I all-out fought for his life until the very moment it was too late. I did every single thing I was supposed to do. I took extreme measures to protect him, but the sad truth is, it wasn’t enough because he wasn’t fighting for himself, and the system is stacked against families trying desperately to get help for their loved ones.

Knowing all of that doesn’t stop the thoughts from creeping in, making me question every single decision I made and wondering if I had made just one decision differently if he would still be alive today.  But no matter what scenario I run through over and over in my mind, the reality is that he refused to accept help or even admit he needed help, and that was, tragically, the deciding factor for him. He was mentally ill.  If he had cancer, his brain would have told him to get treatment because it was his only chance for survival.  But with mental illness, you’re just as sick, and you’re just as likely to die, but your brain tells you you’re fine, and everyone else is the problem. Without the ability to force someone into treatment, families are helpless to intervene.  That is the tragic reality.

People who lose someone to cancer, stroke, heart attack, disease, or accident do not go through this. They do not question themselves.  Their loved ones never blame them.  They do not have to live every day, knowing that the person they loved willingly left them.  They don’t have to raise children who feel abandoned and guilt-stricken.  They don’t have to wake up every day, hoping that their children won’t become another casualty of suicide because of their parent’s suicide.

No, grief from suicide is much different than other grief, and it leaves very different scars.  

4.  You don’t just grieve for the person you lost; you grieve for the future you will never have. 

When Jason died at forty-one years old, our children were eighteen, sixteen, and twelve.  He will miss every graduation, every wedding, every grandchild, every birthday, every anniversary, and growing old surrounded by his family.  He will miss countless Christmases and Thanksgivings. He will miss retirement and seeing the fruits of a lifetime of labor.  He will never walk his daughters down the aisle or give them away at their weddings. He will never get to see his son grow into a man. He will never get to play with the sweet baby toes of his grandchildren, and they will never know his quick wit and sense of humor.  They will never hear him read How the Grinch Stole Christmas on Christmas Eve, or see him put on his Santa hat as we decorate the tree.  They will never have one memory of their grandpa; he will always just be a story told to them by their parents. 

We went to visit family this summer, and the whole time we were there, all I kept thinking was how Jason was supposed to be there and how much he would have loved it.  That is how every holiday feels, every vacation, every family event, and every important occasion. One of my children didn’t want to learn to drive because their dad was supposed to teach them. I ended up paying a professional instructor because it was too painful for both of us to face the fact they were stuck with me when neither of us wanted it that way.

He escaped his pain, but by doing so, he missed out on all the joy this life has to offer, and we are missing out on a lifetime of memories with him. It is like a gray cloud over everything that should be exciting and fun.  A constant, nagging reminder of what we lost, and a future that will never be.

5. Grief changes your perspective and your priorities.

I know what is important now.  I don’t care what my family looks like to other people.  I am certain some people look at my family and think we are a hot mess (especially when we are chasing a dog wearing a diaper down the street and enlisting the help of neighbors to catch him), and I could not care less.  We all wake up every day and take in a breath.  That matters.  We are all working to care for one another.  That matters.  We are all striving to grow and learn and become better people.  That matters.

I no longer care what my children wear, what they look like, how many activities they are involved in, how smart they are, or how that reflects my parenting skills.  It simply does not matter.  Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business.  I want to live in peace, and anything that interrupts that is not allowed in my sphere.  I have let things go that used to be very important to me because I realized they were not making my life better, they were stealing every ounce of peace from my life and putting me at odds with the people that matter most, my children.

My perspectives on families, feminism (real feminism, not the garbage feminism you see on tv), financial matters, and independence have changed exponentially.  I provide for my family, and there is tremendous freedom and a sense of accomplishment from doing so.  I am the master of my own life for the first time in decades, and I relish in it. 

Yes, I am different now in many ways.  But in the words of one of my children, “Of course I am different now!  How can I go through this and not be different?” I don’t know what the future holds, and I am ok with that. I am working on being present and intentionally working to live my best life.  I don’t know if I will ever seriously consider marriage again.  I don’t feel the need to, and currently, I am not interested in doing so. It is just not a priority.  I have not closed myself off to the possibility that someday I may, but for the time being, I am perfectly happy on my own, and I am thoroughly enjoying my independence.  I mean, really!  I have full control of the remote, and I get to watch as many dumb shows as I like without any complaints. I get to make or not make dinner as often as I want, and because of COVID, I don’t even have to face judgement from the Door Dasher who has been to my house every night in a week!! I get to make my room as girly as I please and redecorate the house as often as I like. I get the entire closet and dresser all to myself, and I can buy as many shoes as I want.  Independence definitely has its perks. So, for now, raising my kids to be good humans and working on my personal goals are my priorities, which feels good.

It is hard to believe 1096 days have passed since Jason left us.  In some ways, it feels like a lifetime, and in other ways, it feels impossible that I have lived this life for over a thousand days. It has been a time of learning and growth, a time of struggle, and pain.  But there have also been good times, laughter, joy, and yes, even light, that has shined brightly into the darkness giving me the hope I need to keep moving forward.  The hope that one day I will be able to share the story of all that happened from scars rather than wounds, from a place beyond the darkness of grief.