The Long and Broken Road

It's been two and a half years since we lost my father in law to suicide.  

That sentence kinda needs a moment to hang in the air.  Because that's where his death remains.  In the air.  It's always there.  Always in the room.  Since my husband has began to process his father's death, I refer to the suicide as the third person in our marriage.  Of all of the things my husband and I have navigated in our 14 years together, this is the hardest.  It's unfix-able.  There's no way to make it go away.  It's just here.  In the air.

Yet as present as it is, the void that my husband feels is vast.  It's so big that he doesn't know how to fill it.  And here I stand, as his wife, tasked for eternity with ridding him of what hurts him, and I can't.  I can't fix this.  I can't explain or kiss it away.  I can't find the way out and I don't have the answers.  That is a helpless feeling when it's my job to make this man happy and heal what hurts him.

Since we met there has been this balance in our relationship.  I am the mouthy, moody, spirited one and he is the mellow one who pats me on the head and brings me back to level.  But since my father in law's death, the balance has shifted.  My husband is now left on the other side of the scale with the mood swings and the short temper and I am clinging to his side of the scale trying to figure out how to keep things mellow and pat him on the head.  It's a shift in balance I'll accept because when we said our vows, I meant them.  For better and for worse.  But I'll admit I'm struggling.

I want to make this better.  I want to get my husband back and sometimes I'm scared that I'll never know that same man.  I know that over the course of our lives together we will inevitably change.  We evolve and we grow.  I understand this.  I was 22 when I met my husband so we obviously have changed with each other over the last 14 years.  But this is different.  This is beyond change.  This is a change in who he is in his spirit.  He is hurt and wounded and I worry that it will stay with him.  That the very spirit of who he is won't be able to find it's way back.  And part of me worries that this change in spirit will lead him down the same road as his father.

Irrational? Maybe.  My husband has promised repeatedly to never hurt us like that.  But what I have learned in the last two and a half years is that people who hurt like this don't always plan an end for years.  They try their absolute hardest to hang on.  They push it down and force their smiles and they love and nurture the hell out of the people around them because they have so much love for them.  But in the end, they can't reconcile that deep down pain and it overwhelms them.

The first year we didn't get to process my father in law's death because we were in survival mode when I had to be on bed rest from 13 weeks pregnant to delivery at 39 weeks.  Then once we had the baby and it looked like things were okay, the baby and I were hit by a drunk driver when he was 4 weeks old.  Four weeks after that I had surgery to have my gall bladder removed.  So for a year I was the reason that my husband couldn't grieve.  I hate that.  So I will do everything that I am able to do to help him now.  I listen when he needs to talk, I give him space when he needs it, I take him to Survivors of Suicide meetings, I have even taken him to a medium so he could speak with his dad.  All of these things have helped.  But none have been the fix.  I don't think there is one.  And that is hard.

I miss my father in law.  I am sad that he won't be physically here to know my children.  I am sad that he missed my brother in law's wedding to his amazing wife last year.  I am sad that he left his wife when she thought they had the rest of their lives together.  I miss his phone calls.  I miss the bond that he had with our oldest son.  I miss his photographs.  I miss his smile.  I miss his hugs.

I am sad that my husband lost his best friend.

I love my husband in ways I can't even put to words.  I am committed to this man for eternity.  He is my heart and soul.  I won't give up on him.  But this is a long and broken road that I don't know how to pave.  I also don't know where this road leads.  But all I can do is trust in God to keep us on the path He has chosen.  We will make our way together.

These Are My People

Each time I walk into one of our Survivors Of Suicide meetings, I am instantly comforted by all the faces I see but at the same time I am sad that these people have to be here too. Survivors Of Suicide is a support group for people who have lost someone they love to suicide. It's a place where people get what you are going through, because the rest of the world can't understand what the aftermath of this act does to the people left behind.

Our group meets twice a month. Sometimes I wish it was more frequent as you can't schedule the ups and downs of emotions that you experience when you lose someone to suicide. We started going to meetings 11 months after my father in law took his life. Our grief process was delayed by my pregnancy bed rest, car accident, and surgery so by the time Thanksgiving hit last year my husband simply couldn't bottle any more emotion. He was full. Every knook and cranny of his body had been filled with things he stuffed deep down inside so that he could take care of me and our kids. But now it was time to take care of him. The difference in him was immediate after our first meeting. He wasn't alone. He could finally feel what he was feeling and know that it was "normal".

The group is a God send in the sense that each person in that room has had that day. That day, that phone call, that fist in the gut, that moment where all of the blood rushes out of your body, the disbelief that this has happened. And each person in that room has also had every day since. They've been mad. They've blamed themselves. They've cried themselves to the point where no tears will come out. They've wished harder than they've ever wished before that they could have stopped it, made a phone call, stopped by the house, or that their loved one will take it back. These are my people. They get it. They understand in a way that other people can't. I didn't understand how suicide left its survivors shattered to pieces and living in a state of question for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately now I understand.

There is so much that I have learned by going to group. The first is not to carry the shame that suicide brings to its survivors. My father in law took his life January 23, 2010. I couldn't say out loud that it was suicide for over a year. I would say "He died tragically and unexpectedly." Which is the truth, but not the whole truth. You see, my father is law was an incredible man. One of the greatest I had ever met and that is evident in the man that my husband became. Finding out that he had committed suicide was a shock to our system. This isn't who he was. He was so much more. So after he died I felt like if I told people that he killed himself that it would be the only thing they thought about when I spoke of him. I liken it to the period at the end of his sentance. I was ashamed of the way he chose to die. But his last day should not erase the 6 decades of the amazing life he lived. And going to our S.O.S. meeting you hear this same story over and over again. These people had amazing hearts, put others before themselves, loved the people around them intensly, and were amazing fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, friends, uncles, etc.

I have learned that the stereo type of suicide doesn't apply to the majority of the people who take their lives. Society seems to think they know what suicidal people "Look" like. Moody, depressed, etc. That they are young, hormonal and misguieded. In reality most people who commit suicide get to do so because no one saw it coming and therefore couldn't do anything to "stop" it.

I have learned that no matter what they looked like on the outside, these people carried a pain that we can't relate to. They carry hurt and a loss of self worth that we can't understand. Take your deepest depression and magnify it. That's what they had been living with. Whether we knew it or not.

I have heard so many stories of loss in our meetings. There are so many ways that the people in our group have lost their loved ones. Some are in the way you would associate with a suicide (gun, rope, pills, jumping) and others are much more graphic and done to ensure that this will be it. That there's no turning back. These graphic deaths leave such amazing scars on the people left behind. I know for us, my father in law was missing for 3 days before police found him laying in the woods with a gun shot to the head. The thing that haunts me the most is that this beautiful, amazing man whom we all loved and cherished laid in the dirt and rain for 3 days. I can't get that out of my head. So I really can't imagine what some of these families endure daily at the idea of how their loved ones died in such a graphic manner.

Our meetings are filled with tears. Some tears are healing and some are angry. Most are empathetic as we listen to our fellow survivors. Empathy is why we come here. Empathy is what we can't get from anyone else. These are our people. They get it. They feel it. They know.

So I'm going to ask you to do something for us. For all the survivors. If you or someone you know is depressed or have considered suicide- please don't take it lightly. Get help. Be the difference. Visit the National Suicide Prevention web site or call them at 1-800-273-TALK
to speak with someone who understands. Every life is valuable.

My Maui Memorial

This is my husband's family. We were blessed in May to be able to join them on a great trip to Maui to remember my father in law. My father in law's wife gifted us the trip so it was an even bigger blessing. For those of you that haven't read through all my blogs of the last year, my father in law took his own life January 23, 2010.
It was a shock to our family. He was an amazing man & the loss of him is felt every day. I hope he knows that.
I ended up on pregnancy bed rest and missed the funeral and the memorial with the spreading of his ashes. So for me, this trip was my funeral. That was a challenge in itself because my family was in a different place in thier grief process. Because we had so much to deal with last year just keeping me and our growing baby alive, our grief process has been delayed. So I stole many moments on our trip to hide away and think about my father in law.

My mother in law found this amazingly beautiful house called Maui Majestic in Lahaina.

We did so many amazing things on this trip! It was busy every day! You know that saying "I need a vacation to recover from my vacation"? That's how I felt coming home! Here's some of the amazing things we did!

Road to Hana trip. AMAZING! My suggestion is to do the guided tour so you can relax & enjoy. Our guide was incredible & was pulling over & hacking fruits and vegetation out of the jungle! Awesome!

Snorkel Cruise to Honolua Bay. Some of the most beautiful snorkeling I've done on the island! AND we did Snuba! So fun! Plus we got to see whales! So amazing!

We tried to see Haleakala (The volcano on Maui) at sunrise but it was too cloudy. Luckily we scheduled a bike ride down the volcano after sunrise and it was so amazing that it didn't even matter that we didn't see sunrise!

We flew over to the big island to see the lava in the crater of the volcano. It was a beautiful flight!

We did the obligatory luau but we did the Feast at Lele which served food at your table (instead of buffet style) and offered each course from the surroundung islands. BEST kahlua pork I've ever had!

We also did paddle boarding lessons! That is not as easy as it looks by the way but so fun! And a great work out too. I had muscles aching in places I forgot I had muscles! For fun one night we saw the Dave & Annabell magic show in Lahaina and it was hilarious!!!!

All in all it was such an amazing trip. It was so hard to be away from my babies. I cried from the minute I woke up until the minute I got on the plane when we left! I think its going to be a while before we leave them again!