A Beautiful Dream

I was so happy in my marriage that when I look back and remember that time, it almost seems surreal. 

My incredible wedding day, filled with so much love, feels like a dream to the point where I start to wonder if it actually happened. A beautiful, delicious dream that had me walking on air for 45 days. I'd found a soul mate and we'd made the perfect match.

I was still getting used to this incredible feeling of being so blessed when I lost Dan to depression and it was all ripped away. The bubble popped.  

You know that feeling how when you have something so wonderful, that you can't help but be scared of losing it?  To the point where it distracts you from actually enjoying it.   And then when you do happen lost it - for whatever reason - there's almost a sense of relief that you don't have to be afraid anymore?  Well I think a tiny part of me never believed it would be possible for us to be as happy as we were. 

It was almost unfair, we had it that good. I would wonder sometimes how I'd fall back to earth. Would we have infertility issues? Would we come up against financial hardship? Would our house burn down? If so, regardless of what our challenge was, I knew we'd deal with it. We'd be happy with each other and focus on our blessings.  But I couldn't shake the fear... what would it be that popped our bubble?

I convinced myself there'd be a car accident. I lectured Dan about the dangers of using his phone while driving and beg him to be safe.  The day he didn't come home from work I immediately suspected this is what had happened and called the police to ask if there'd been any accidents involving my husband.

I never thought I'd lose him to suicide. Even when he was diagnosed with depression four weeks before he died and I knew he wasn't well, I couldn't consider that he would reach a place so dark. But when the police came to my house that night, many hours later, and shattered my heart with those devastating words - a little voice said 'there you go, there it is' and the other shoe dropped.

What was it that made me believe I didn't deserve to be that happy? I'm a good person, I'd waited a long time for Dan. I'd paid my dues, put in the hard yards as the single girl at the party, waiting for the right boy to ask her to dance. 

This is what bugs me now. We were good people. This was not a fair and I shouldn't have to assume that being ridiculously happy has to come with some kind of penalty or pay off.  I don't want to worry, every time things look up for me, that some kind of morbid, cruel karma is going to come along and take me down a peg or two. 

Maybe I just wasn't used to the level of joy and security. If we'd been given longer, years, decades, maybe I would have stopped feeling so uneasy in my good fortune and settled in to a sense of stability.  I hope I have that opportunity again in the future to feel that level of happiness that Dan instilled in me.  And I hope I have a longer period of time to enjoy it and grown comfortable with it and learn that it doesn't have to come with conditions or an expiry.  

Running on empty

Do you know that saying 'running on the smell of an oily rag'? Maybe it's an Australian thing, but it's the best description I can think of to explain how I'm feeling today.  I'm exhausted and my tank is low. My 'refuel' light is flashing and I need to pull up and refuel.

So, I'm trying to lay low this weekend and as much as I want to pour my heart out here and write about this past week, the first anniversary of Dan's funeral and what it's been like to creep into my second year, I just don't have the energy to scrape it together. I'm sorry, I take my commitment to Widow's Voice very seriously and I promise I'll be back next week, pushing the limits of my word count.

In the mean time I thought I'd share an extract from my personal blog that still applies to how I feel today. Thank you for checking in and remember - it's ok to put your own needs first sometimes, in fact, it's essential. I know you guys get it. 

"Most days I don't really think about HOW my husband died anymore. The shock of his suicide has eased and now my pain is mainly focused around the loss of him, how much I miss him and my sadness for the life we should be living.

There are still days, however, where it creeps in to my mind or I find myself needed to share my story and as I get to 'that' bit... the uneasiness in my stomach grows again.

This morning I saw a health professional and as we discussed the stress I've been under due to my personal circumstances, it became relevant to explain the trauma around his death.

After all this time, I still stumble with the details and struggle to deliver it gracefully. 

It seems so inadequate to just say 'he took his own life'. 

He deserves more than this, he was so much more than 'just' a victim of suicide and I feel compelled to try and explain his actions. 

The most adequate explanation (short of spending a good 20 minutes going through what a brilliant, good-hearted, thoughtful, caring man he was) seems to be along the lines of: 'he had depression, we had no idea how badly... His symptoms were predominantly memory loss and inability to focus, so he became convinced he was developing dementia and, during a suspected psychotic episode, took his life to save us from having to care for him.'

But the truth is, this is merely the picture I ended up with from the prices of the puzzle that I could pull together. Pieces like: the beautiful, heart-felt note he left me; conversations we had about how scared he was by his symptoms, as well as those he had with his doctor; the assumption by police that his death was not planned or pre-meditated, but carried out in a state of detachment; and the undeniable fact that he adored me, and would never have wanted to willingly cause me this pain.

However I will never truly know what happened in his head that day. There will always be questions that creep in when I let my guard down. I will never fully understand the 'why's, no matter how much I try to help others understand and accept.

Maybe the best I can hope for is to find peace in knowing I will never know, and one day I won't need to ask the questions anymore."

It's Just Not Fair

I was driving home from work recently, singing along to the radio in my own little world, when I passed a car the exact same model and colour as my husband's. Next thing I knew I was instantly transported back to That Day.

The last time I saw my husband, 11 months ago, was around 8am as he kissed me goodbye and left for work. But he didn't go to work that morning, he drove an hour away from our home, parked his car in a hotel car park, checked in and took his life.

Seeing that car triggered my grief and my brain went careering down that slippery slope: ‘What did he think would happen to his car?  Did he realize that I’d have to arrange to collect it?  Did he realize I’d have to find a new purpose for ALL of his possessions?  Did he know his parents would fly in and help me with that?  How did he think we’d be capable of sorting this out?  Why would he do that?  Why didn’t he TALK to me? What the hell happened to us?’

And I’m back.  Right there in that very moment where my husband’s suicide defines our existence – all there was and all there ever will be. 

So. Many. Questions.  He left a note for me, written on the hotel stationery (which indicated that he hadn’t planned or prepared for his death) but what about his parents?  His sister?  His friends?  They all wanted answers too.  Didn’t he realise they’d be just as devastated?

He left so many things unfinished – dirty laundry, paperwork, our weekend plans to visit friends at the beach.  He received and made work calls on his drive that morning, set up meetings even.  Did he know then that he wouldn’t be able to attend? 

I had planned to plant a garden in our backyard that day and sent him a photo of my handiwork via text message only 15 minutes before he died… didn’t he want to come home and see it? See me?  Hug me?  Crawl in to bed with me and tell me he was scared and let me help him and hold him?

These questions are such torture and I will never get the answers.  Why did this happen to him?  How did he get to that point?  When did he decide that this was his only option? If only I'd seen it, if only I'd stopped him from leaving the house that morning.

I’ve had intensive suicide bereavement counseling and I understand and accept that it wasn’t Dan that day, it was a disease in his brain, but in that moment I forget all the rationale and the questions build and build and build until I feel like I’m drowning in them. 

I finished my drive home with tears flowing freely and fell in to bed, muffling my howls with my pillow.  Until, almost like she I knew I was struggling, a message popped up on my phone from an old university friend I haven’t seen for more then 10 years.  We drifted apart but are Facebook friends now and even though she didn’t know Dan, she felt compelled to reach out when she heard the news and still checks in with me now and then. 

I replied to her message, confessing how distraught I was, telling her I couldn’t understand why and how this happened. 

In her reply, she said she understood more than I realized.  She opened up to me about her own depression.  Unbeknownst to me until that day, her battle was a fierce one, and ongoing one.  One that she had come close to losing. 

My beautiful friend told me that almost five years earlier she had been in a dark place, struggling with an abusive relationship and a stressful job.  Her depression was deep and she had thought abstractly about suicide but knew she would never, could never do that to her family.  It was not an option she would ever consider.  Until one day she had a sudden ‘brain snap’ and decided in an instant it was the only answer.  Within moments she had made a serious attempt on her life that failed purely because she had been in such a rush.  It was incredibly close though and only by pure luck and chance that she survived.  She eventually reached out to her family, admitting how serious her state of mind was and got the help she needed. 

Today, she still struggles with her disease, but she is strong and determined.  She wanted me to know that she came very close to a similar fate as my husband’s.   Under different circumstances he might have survived his 'brain snap' too, and gone on to get the help he needed.  We might be telling his story to other people who are suffering and giving them hope. 

It made me realise (again) that my husband wasn’t a man who took his own life.  He was a man who had a disease that took control of his body, and caused an incident that claimed his life.  I stopped thinking of his death as a suicide even, because in my mind that implies a conscious act or choice. 

This conversation with my friend calmed my raging questions but made me very sad.  Sad that she had been through such a terrible experience, one that lasted years and still affects her deeply.  Sad for so many others who are battling with mental illness and not getting the support and treatment that they need.  And it made my sad for my sweet, gentle husband.  My beautiful Daniel. My darling didn’t deserve to leave our world in such a tragic way.  If life was fair, he wouldn’t have died so young.  There wouldn’t be disease in the world taking such beautiful souls from us, there wouldn’t be accidents or murders or cruel twists of fate, there wouldn’t be so much pain.

It sucks.  Death sucks.  It’s just not fair. 

The Questions

Source - I took a picture of this heart (graffiti) last year. While searching the internet for a perfect "why"
 picture, I decided to take my photography and turn it into my own why picture. See more of my photography here.

For the last two years my life has revolved around questions.

What if? Why? Could I have done something? Did I do something to cause my husband’s suicide? Would of, could of, should of, why me? Why my husband? What did we do to deserve this? Why was love not enough to save him? Why was life not enough?

I have beaten myself daily with questions. For two very long years.

This week while reading I wasn't ready to say goodbye (by Brook Noel and Pamela D. Blair) I realized I don’t live in the world of questions anymore.

Somewhere in the last 6 months the questions stopped.

I still question why? But I have come to the realization that unless I walk in my husband’s shoes, the world of mental illness, I will never understand.

I will never understand what it’s like to see dead people or hear voices. I will never understand what it’s like to have the voices in my head constantly tell me “You’re not enough. Just kill yourself.”

I will never understand how the love of my friends and family is not enough.

I (hopefully) will never understand the pain my husband was in. Pain so bad that suicide is the only way to make it stop.

I will never understand how he could leave me. I will never understand the thought process of suicide. Even at my darkest moments when I was suicidal, all I could think about was my family and what my suicide would do to them. So I will (hopefully) never understand the deep dark hole he was in.. where the hole is so deep and dark that thoughts of your family can’t even leak in to save your life.

I will never understand the stigma that comes with suicide. See, because my husband had bipolar disorder which is not a physical disease, people don’t get it. With mental illness people think “Suck it up, get over it. It’s all in your head.” People don’t understand that bipolar is more of a disease then a disorder...  In my husband’s case it was a disease that killed him, not a disorder.

I will never understand the comments DGI’s (Don’t get it’s) make. “Just kill me now.” Perfect example - this week a sales rep said to me “I have so many customers screaming for product that I just want to kill myself.” There is a certain hand gesture people do that is very insulting and triggering. People don’t understand how devastating suicide is, and to joke about it is just.. There are no words for it. All I can say is it’s not a joke and it’s not something to laugh about.

There is a lot of things I will never understand. I just accepted that I will never have the answers. 

So I stopped asking the questions.

Not questioning all of this has brought me peace… and quite. My brain is a lot quieter. I don’t get the racing thoughts as often (Sure, they still pop up, as soon as my head hits the pillow) but it's not a everyday, all day, process. 

Somewhere along the line, the questions stopped so gradually, that I didn't even notice it. I had to see it in black and white on paper to realize the questions have stopped.

I find peace in knowing my husband was suffering so badly that his suicide was not impulsive. It was years of suffering that lead up to his suicide.

Sure.. I will always wonder why. But I know at end of the day, I will not get any answers. 

I also know when it’s my time to go, it will all make sense.

That brings me peace.