EvilMomLady Looks at Life and Grief

Abilene writes that her whole family is offended, presumably by her behaviour since her son died. How can they be offened? No matter how she behaves, how is it that they don't understand? I don't understand. I feel so distressed for her, not that my distress will in any way help her. At the moment, I doubt there is anything that will help her. Nothing can penetrate the pain. Nothing. Not yet.

A huge wave of sadness has hit the world of BCUK tonight. Abilene has shared the dreadful news of the death of her son Cody. I know what she's going through and although I don't know her, my heart hurts for her and goes out to her.

Eight years ago today my son was in Oz, sitting out in the sun, writing cards full of humour and high hopes for his future to his friends. Ten days later he was dead.

For some reason today I'm thinking of a friend of his who I phoned to share the devastating news. He wasn't there, but he told me later that when he dialed 1471 and heard my number he thought it was my son phoning having returned home. He said that he'd been whooping and jumping around the room with joy. Whilst my son was in Australia, this friend had been building him a bicycle and was looking forward to seeing his face when he presented him with it. He showed us the bike. He'd done something special to it that he knew would please my son, although I don't recall now what it was.

My son had some incredible friends and we drew strength from them. I was amazed at the sensitivity and understanding of these young people, who with the exception of a couple, had not had to deal with the death of such a close family member. This was in contrast to most adults I knew. The less said about them, the better.

People used to say, still say, that my son looked like Brad Pitt. Years ago I took their word for it. I hardly noticed Brad Pitt, if at all, then. Well, I've had a good look at him since, and yes, there is similarity. There are times when Brad looks identical to my son, and times when he looks nothing like him at all. My son wasn't quite as beautiful as Brad to behold, but he was beautiful enough. Being so good looking isn't always a blessing though, and it doesn't necessarily bring happiness.

Because of his looks and charm, he could 'blag' his way into or out of almost anything. He could blag his way into nightclubs, gigs, parties, jobs, and out of most of the trouble he got himself into. He could charm almost anyone, and this was the problem. He managed to charm the woman in the Australian Embassy into giving him a visa without him having the required amount of money in his bank account. I think it was supposed to be two thousand pounds. So off he went to Australia for a three month stay with only a few hundred pounds to his name. Of course, he blagged his way round there and he made people feel so good that they didn't mind helping him out. You had to be made of stone not to be melted by his smile.

Everything came so easy to him, it just didn't seem fair. Looks, charm, intelligence, he had it all and yet, in the end, it wasn't enough because he had his demons, and his demons were more and greater than most people's.

Somewhere, in a comment on someone's blog once, I saw "suicide is selfish, the easy way out". I wonder if the person making that comment had any idea how painful that is for someone like me to read? If suicide is selfish, then it is no more selfish than anything else we do. I don't know how it is for other people, but my son killed himself not because he wanted to, but because he felt he had no choice. He wasn't selfish, and even in those last minutes of his life, he was thinking of how to ease it for those he loved and left. Suicide is not easy.

I had hoped that this blog whilst reflecting my grief, would also be something that is positive. Unfortunately, whilst it does the former to some extent, it fails to be the latter. Try as I might, and believe me, I do try, I just can't get into a positive frame of mind for more than a day or so at a time, and even those days are very infrequent. Both my son and husband were very positive people who didn't want me to spend my life grieving, and for them and for my daughters and my grandchild, I want to look forward. I want to look forward, but somehow I can't. The grief, although not always the weeping sort, washes over me constantly. I think of the smiling faces of those two men and their energy should carry me forward, but it doesn't, and I don't know why. It seems that the things that once brought me comfort no longer do so. I want it to change. I WANT IT TO CHANGE.

The last video I took of my husband was lost for nearly two years. Yesterday I found it. I've been wanting to watch it for so long, but now I'm reluctant to do so because I don't know if watching it will make me happy or sad. I'm not sure because just recently I've been feeling sort of happy and I don't want to run the risk of losing that.

When my son went backpacking in Australia, I kept thinking about the fact that it was an awfully big adventure for him. That very phrase "an awfully big adventure" just kept going through my mind.

When I read his wishes for his funeral, I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. He wanted the piece from Peter Pan reading that ended "To die will be an awfully big adventure". I'm not a screamer, but it freaked me out and I screamed until there was no scream left in me.

He'd lived with the premonition that he would die young, and he had tried to tell me, but I didn't hear and I should have done. It must have been so difficult for him living with that knowledge when he loved life so much.

He loved life so much.

Last night I watched Rita, Sue and Bob Too, a film that my husband and I both enjoyed a lot. We saw it several times and it never failed to make us laugh. And I sat through it last night with a stupid smile on my face - that is when I wasn't laughing out loud. And it felt really good, just like he was there. It was lovely.

I do try not to think about them, because nothing can be changed now. But all the same, somewhere down the line, things could have been different, although I doubt that there is anything I could have changed without the gift of foresight.

There are so many people broken and hurting, and much as I want to, much as I try, I can't mend them because I'm broken myself. Most particularly I can't mend my daughters and they can't mend me. And I couldn't mend my husband - I have never known anyone so distraught in my whole life. I don't even know if I eased his pain at all. I know he didn't ease mine. You would have thought that two people who loved each other so much could have helped each other, but you would be wrong.

You can't help because you hurt too much yourself and you know that he is going through the same and you think your heart will break. But it doesn't. You break, but hearts don't break. You wish they would, but they don't. And you cry and cry and cry and those tears wash away nothing. It's all still there. It will always be there. And you try to hide the sadness in your eyes and you think you succeed and then your daughter catches you unawares and you know she's seen it because she tells you. She's seen what you try to hide from her, from everyone.

I've just watched Jack and Sarah with Richard E. Grant. It was billed as a comedy, and I bawled my way right though it. Maybe it was a comedy to those who hadn't experienced the death of a beloved partner.

So much of what I see or read has something in it that acts as a trigger for my grief. That big hole seems to be getting bigger. Maybe one of these days I'll fall right into it.

He said he wanted me to find someone else. But I don't want anyone else. What do I want to love some other man for? So that my heart can break again? Enough of broken heart and empty place that can never be filled. No one can fill it, so why try? Yes, it would be good to have someone look at me the way he used to, hold me like he did, care for me. It would. But I don't want to pay the price. It is too high.

I've been watching the programme about Stephen Fry and how he has coped with being Bi-polar. Watching that programme has answered a question that I've been unable to find the answer to properly until now. It has at last put all the pieces in place for me, and has provided the answer as to the reason for my son's death. I didn't know enough (or even really anything much) about Bi-polarity to see that this is what was affecting my son's life. He couldn't live with it any more and he killed himself. It's not that I didn't notice his strange behaviour because I did, and I sought medical advice twice during his childhood, only to be told that it was normal, he would 'grow out of it'. It wasn't, and he didn't. He sought medical help himself later, but wasn't diagnosed, was just offered anti-depressants and decided to try and deal with it himself rather than take medication. It's strange how often this illness affects the beautiful and the clever. He was beautiful and he was clever and he was sensitve and he loved me (and the rest of his family) very much and I miss him, and if we'd known what it was, and if we'd managed to get it treated, he could have still been here. Or not. I do know of other young people who were treated, and they still killed themselves. The hard thing is, he didn't want to die, he loved life so much, but he just couldn't live with this terrible condition and what it was doing to him any more.

Sometimes it all seems so unreal that I think I'm going to leave this alternate reality and everything will be as it was. My beautiful son is still alive, my lovely husband is here with me and all is well with the world. Except that it isn't, and without those two, it is never going to be. I know they wanted all to be well with my world without them, and I have really striven to make it so, but it's just too difficult. Although my son's death was the worst thing, my husband's is the one that has really changed my life. After all, I'd been with the man for over thirty years, and I never, never imagined that I would be the one left. I can't get used to it, and I'm beginning to doubt I ever will.

It's a difficult time of year for me, my thoughts constantly filled with the memories of how much my husband suffered, although he never complained. Got angry once, but apart from that just accepted everything the illness inflicted on him. I say illness. But it wasn't just the lymphoma and all the failed treatments for that. There were the opportunistic viral and bacterial infections attacking when his counts were low, and the high doses of antibiotics with their very unpleasant side-effects; and as though that wasn't enough, he caught MRSA twice. No wonder his body gave up eventually. For more than two and a half years he battled bravely, but those last five weeks were particularly difficult - for him, for me, for our children, for our families. And to add to all this, the heat. That coupled with the stress and the nights of broken sleep nearly finished me off, never mind him. At times I thought I wouldn't make it, that I would leave him to battle to the end by himself.

The heat, the intolerable heat, brings back the memories of that distressing time, brings them back sharply into focus. I do try not to think about it too much. I want to think about the times when he was happy, and oddly enough even in those nightmare weeks, much of the time he was still happy, when he still had hope, and the man was such a star, that even on his last day, after everything he'd been through, he was still joking, still making us laugh. Focus on that. Focus on happy times. That's what he wanted. Try not to be sad. Try not to cry. It's difficult though, particularly difficult at this time of the year.

My eyes are smarting. I'm too close to tears of late.

Feeling discouraged today.  Nothing goes as I wish it would.  I'm worn out with trying to be positive.  It's exhausting physically and emotionally.  I never manage to get ahead.  Everything is crumbling around me.  I can't even manage to stay in the same place.  No matter how hard I try, I just keep slipping backwards.  It's just so, so discouraging.  I'm constantly falling down and having to pick myself up and start from the beginning again.  For all that my daughters do love me, without the support of my husband everything is increasingly difficult.  I know there are many people for whom life is much harder than it is for me, but it just doesn't make mine any easier knowing that.  It makes me appreciate what I have got, but it doesn't make it any easier to cope with what I haven't.
Just had to get that down here, or I would have been out in the street today shouting it.

Something a friend told me about the way a member of her family reacted to her loss set me off thinking about the ways in which people reacted to mine.
When my son died, everyone who knew him was great, especially his friends, which surprised me as they were mostly young people who wouldn't have experienced a loss like that before. Friends of mine who knew about it were brilliant too, allowing me to talk about what happened as much as I needed to. Although we never got round to putting it in the paper, most people we knew found out one way or another, and so if I met them in the street or whilst out shopping, they were very sympathetic. They would express their sorrow, but primarily they were concerned about me and the rest of my family. It was the people who didn't know that became a problem. There weren't that many, maybe a dozen or so, but to have to tell the story each time when they asked how my son was, became increasingly difficult. The problem was that it was their shock that I had to deal with. I had to try and calm them down and comfort them. The worst was one woman who when I told her, never even said how sorry she was, never asked how I coped, but went on about what dreadfull news it was and how terribly upset she was by it. It was as though she'd suffered the loss, and not me. (This was the experience that was similar to my friend's.)
Many people have said that when they have been bereaved others would cross the road when they saw them rather than have to speak to them. I can't say I ever noticed that, but after the incident with the above mentioned woman, I found myself trying to avoid anyone who might not know about my son. And if I do end up speaking to them, I find I'm in quite a state trying to avoid asking them how their children are, in case they ask how mine are. Also, I have discovered that some of them know, but never say anything. Maybe they don't know how to say it, or what to say, but a simple, I'm sorry for the loss of your son, would be enough. It just leaves me in an uncomfotable position. Some of the worst are those who have never mentioned anything about knowing and when during the conversation I can't avoid saying my son died, they say, I know I heard, leaving me feeling very awkward, and not knowing what to say.

I've just been watching some TV drama in which Neil Pearson, playing a husband, kisses his wife on the forehead. And I started crying. It's the little things. My husband used to kiss me on the forehead, his arm round me, holding me close, his lips brushing my forehead. He loved me so much, and I miss him dreadfully.

When my son died, people would say, there's nothing worse than losing a child. And I believed them because I didn't want to believe that anything else could hurt as much. But those people were wrong. I feel the loss of my husband every bit as much as the loss of my son, maybe more. Of course the loss of a young person is worse in that that person hasn't had a chance to live their life, there is so much they could have done, might have done, but did not, and the grief for those who remain is partly that. Anyway, somehow I was led to believe that coping with my husband's death would be easier, and it is not. It is not.

And so, another day begins where I struggle with never to be mended heart, and continually disintegrating body. Nothing gets easier. There are days when I'm worn out with trying to be positive, and this is going to be one of them.