The Eternal Challenge of the Suicide Widow

Last night, after a tough week, a friend and I treated ourselves to a night out at a local comedy festival to have a few laughs and blow off some steam. We had tickets to see an up-and-coming Australian comedian who has acted in a couple of popular local TV shows and I was really looking forward to seeing her live. 

It was great... until she started joking about suicide. My stomach dropped, my face started burning, my throat tightened and my eyes were pricked with tears.  I couldn't believe it.  There I was trying to forget about being a suicide widow for a night and the topic was being shoved in my face. 

I tried really hard not to spiral into the grief, to just breathe and push it aside, but I just couldn't loosen up and laugh properly again after that.  At the end of her suicide bit she may have noticed a few blank looks in the audience (there were a few laughs too though) and finished it with 'come on people, lighten up, I'm joking!'.  Making me feel not only sad and self-conscious, but also like I was some kind of uptight downer who couldn't take a joke.

Driving home, I kept thinking about it.  I know it's not uncommon for comedians to push the limits of social decency for the sake of a joke. But is suicide EVER funny?!  Even for those who haven't been touched by it?  

Dan's suicide has been weighing heavily in my thoughts this week.  I don't usually focus on it, but have found myself heavily distracted with questions around why and how it could have happened to him.  

A few days ago I was searching for something on my computer and found a link to his wedding speech.  I'm going to share it here for anyone who might be interested.  We were married a little over six weeks before he died.  So this man, standing up in front of a room full of people who care about him, brimming with happiness, love and gratitude, was 45 days away from taking his life.  I want to track down people who say 'suicide is a choice' and show them my husband's wedding speech.

It's probably been a year or so since I've watched it.  Seeing him standing there, talking about how meeting me was like finding his home, brought on a wave of disbelief that hit me like a tsunami.  I didn't see depression in him that night.  

Looking back, I can see times throughout our relationship where he was a bit quieter than usual or seemed a bit withdrawn.  He never pulled away from me or held anything back between us, so I had made assumptions that it was his personality to sometimes be a bit detached from the hustle and bustle going on around him.  I had no way of knowing what he was battling.  Any silence or space in the months before he died was most likely filled by my own excitement about our wedding and starting our life together.  He was always fully there with me, never giving me reason for concern.  But what did I know?  I had no idea what to look for, I just didn't see it. 

In his speech my husband says: 'Our lives are just beginning and together there is nothing we can't do.  We can take on the world, it's me and you and nothing else matters.' 

These words have echoed around my mind and torn at my heart since I heard them again this week.  I want to feel angry.  I want to rage at the injustice of him dying like he did.  It's not supposed to happen like that.  How is this my story now?  What on earth happened?

It can be so easy for those of us left behind by suicide to get lost in that torment of what should have been. I have worked incredibly hard to find a place of acceptance in the way Dan died.  This is the only way I can move forward. There will never be answers to the questions that I deserve to ask.  No good can come from fixating on them, I have to let them go.  

This is my eternal challenge, because even though months can go past where I feel like I understand how depression took him and I'm at peace with it, they will never be resolved and I will always have to work at the 'letting go'.

It's so very difficult, this extra layer of grief that suicide hands us.  The stigma that it brings can cast a shadow on the memory of our loved ones that makes the burden slightly heavier to bear.  I never could have imagined that this might be part of my story, but it is.

I have to keep reminding myself that he died from a disease.  Looking at him standing there, in his beautiful wedding suit, the pride and happiness beaming from him, I can't see this disease.  This in itself is the problem.  It's invisible, tormenting and sneaky and would have caused him to doubt himself in the cruelest of ways.  I hate this disease. I am petrified of it and I hate it.  I think of it as the demon disease that fed lies to my wonderful husband until his brain was poisoned beyond his own recognition.

When I look back on photos from our time together I sometimes see a shadow here and there, a flatness in his eyes in some photos. And these break my heart.  But I'm glad I couldn't see it in him on our wedding day.

I hope he had some reprieve that day.  I believe he did.  And so I will carry these memories with me always, using them to bring comfort during the times that his depression attempts to torment me too.

No Tears in Tampa...

Well here I am at Camp Widow in beautiful Tampa. Today I attended round table discussions on 'being widowed by suicide', 'being widowed without the chance to have children' and 'signs and synchronicity'.  I met some wonderful, inspiring people and told my story a couple of times.  And I didn't cry once.

This last point is making me feel VERY uncomfortable.  How come I'm not a teary hot mess right now?  While I participated in these sessions and engaged with others, I was able to talk about my grief almost calmly, as if I had made my peace with it.  As if this is all something that happened to me a lifetime ago.  Or as if I was telling someone else's story.  

Right now I'm trying not to judge the way I'm feeling or force myself to 'be' a certain way, but I can't help but wonder ... where is the pain?  Am I heading towards a bad grief crash?  Surely it's coming.  I mean, it always comes, doesn't it.

I arrived in Tampa on Thursday night, fresh from a wonderful week in New York and firmly in holiday mode.  I'd wandered around the city that I had planned to explore with my husband, seeing the sights that he'd spoken about from his previous trips and wishing he were by my side.  But I had fun.  The ache for him felt almost... compartmentalised. As if my brain had packaged up my grief in to a neat little box and stored it on a shelf in the back of my mind so that it didn't mess up my holiday.  

It's still there, I can touch it but it's almost like I'm opting to let it sit there for now, rather than bringing it down and unpacking it again.  I know I have to at some point.  One thing is for certain, that grief can't be left in that box on the shelf.  It needs to be aired and sorted through regularly so that it doesn't fester and get stale. 

The box may come tumbling down this evening at the welcome reception (I'm writing this quickly in my room before I head out again).  It may burst open during a workshop or presentation tomorrow or the flood gates might come undone on the flight home to Australia, when my brain starts to slow and think about returning to the life I have there without him.  Who knows.  

For now, I am trying to enjoy the moment of peace and the company of the wonderful people here at Camp Widow.  

If you're here and we haven't met yet, please find me and say hello.  I'm the tall one with the accent. 

A Dangerous Indulgence

Waiting to board the plane for our first holiday together in May 2012. Dan was so excited, like a big kid. He made every day so fun.  I really miss that. 

I’ve been really missing my husband this week.  I miss him every week, of course, but this week his absence has been palpable.  I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because I’ve been spending a bit of time helping a friend who has a new born baby, which is a sensitive issue for me. Maybe it’s because yesterday marked the 15-month anniversary. Maybe it’s just the grief rollercoaster swinging me through a new bend or dip.  Whatever it is, it sucks.

I’ve been waking up in the morning and finding myself just laying there, staring at his pillow and resting my arm on his side of the bed, knowing I’d be hugging him if he were still there. 

I’ve been feeling that urge to call or text him throughout the day with the tid bits of information about what I’m up to that would be mundane to most other people in my life but fascinating to him.  I’ve been clenching my fist as I walk through the city to work, wishing he was beside me and I could tighten my grip around the comfort of his hand in mine.

At night our house has felt quieter than usual.  The emptiness has been bigger. When I look at the photos of him scattered all around our home, I’m less able to smile at the beautiful memories we shared and instead have found my thoughts wandering towards his depression.  Imagining what dark whispers might have been lurking in the corners of his mind, tormenting him. 

I’ve been day dreaming about what life would be like if he were still here.  This is always dangerous territory for me; it’s an indulgence that I don’t often dare allow myself. To start with it’s such a sweet sensation. When I let go and imagine the life we could be living, it fills me with warmth and love.  We had a very fun, kind and playful relationship. Dan would make even the most mundane and boring chores a delight. 

When I think about how dramatically different my life would be if he were still here (and his depression had magically never existed), how I’d be spending these lonely nights, the adventures we’d be getting up to on our weekends, the face of the child we could be raising, with Dan’s bright blue eyes and round cheeks - well it’s so wonderful that it’s almost unbearable.  Because when I come crashing back down to reality and this dream is replaced with the severity of my new life.  It’s nothing less than torture.

I’m overwhelmed with how unfair this world is.  Everything around me seems so bleak and inadequate.  Trying to look for positives or find things to be grateful for is just impossible – all I want is Dan. 

I want the life we should be living together and I want my innocence back and I don’t understand a world where this could be taken from me. I don’t understand why such horrible things can happen to good people.  I miss him.  And I’m so sick of these words because they just feel so inadequate to explain how deeply I ache for him.

I understand my grief well enough now, that when this low sets in, I instinctively go in to self-preservation mode.  I pull back, tread lightly, and reach out to my support network when I can.  I remind myself that I'm stronger than I know.  This agony will lift again. I know Dan would be so proud of me for surviving without him.  I just wish I didn't have to.  I wish he was still here.  I wish I didn't know this pain - I wish no one did.  Death sucks.