To Josh

Dear Josh,

Today is four weeks and one day since you took your life. In ways, it is harder now than it was then: I cry less constantly, but miss you more with each passing day. I expect you to drop by just to say hi, I long for the opportunity to put my arms around you, feel your hair against my cheek, brush my lips across the coarseness of your beard and tell you I love you.

When I think of your last moments I’m haunted by the thought of you pressing the gun to your head. I keep wondering if you were crying, hesitant, if you had to work up your nerve or if you were calm and precise, sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that death was a welcome release from the torment of your own thoughts. If I allow myself to think of you crying it’s not long before I have to shove those images away before my own heart ache becomes crippling in it’s intensity. The desire to do the impossible becomes a constant barrage of thought in my brain. I become obsessed with the need to comfort you, hold you close and do what I’ve always tried to do for you… ease the pain. I long for the days when a bandage and a kiss could dry your tears, when you not only looked to me to provide comfort, but believed in my power to do so.

Josh, there are so many things I want to tell you, yet I am soothed by the knowledge that I told you the really important stuff. I have a sense of peace knowing you loved all of us and knew how very much we loved you in return. The rest of the world may not understand the pain you were in, or why you killed yourself, because you always did such a good job of hiding it, but I’m your mother. I know your heart, I know your soul, just as I’ve always known it from the very beginning. My love for you was blind, but my understanding of you was infinite. I know only too well the torture your mind put you through, the doubts and insecurities you lived with every single day. I know how hard you tried to live for everyone around you. I saw it baby, and I hope you know now, wherever you are, I’m not angry with you. I just miss you more than words can ever express.

Because I miss you so much, some days it’s nearly impossible to not be selfish and wish you could have continued to live for my sake. Forgive me for wanting you back, but please know it’s only because you brought so much joy to my life and all the lives around you. The depth of my longing and sorrow is a direct reflection on how incredibly loved you are. What a wonderful Son you are. I’m so grateful for you, for all you've taught and shared with me and I am at odds within myself to balance the joy with the anguish of your loss. I’m constantly reminding myself that the only way to have avoided the darkness of your death would have been to never have experienced being in light of your life. You have been such an incredible blessing, and I struggle to open my mind and heart to the lessons I can still learn from you.

You know I never thought I could live without you, and don't often understand why my heart is still beating in a world without your presence, but I truly believe that’s what you need me to do. Life will never be the same, but I know you believed in our strength as a family, in our love for each other to get us through this. I’m not sure yet exactly how it’s going to happen, but we’re trying Josh, so very hard.

The days pass and I see you in every thing around me and carry you with me everywhere I go. Nothing’s changed my Love. I feel your love surrounding me, and hope with all my heart you are finally at peace.

As always, I love you,

Mom

Sand castles

Every day brings more closure to Josh’s life, makes his death more of an excruciating fact of my life. My heart and mind rail against the necessity of the phone calls, the faxes, the planning and organizing of his removal from day to day existence.

Yesterday I spent half an hour on the phone with his cell phone company in an attempt to capture his voice mail message in a retainable way. In the end the lovely ladies at US Cellular were able to send it to me in an E-mail message and the call ended with all of us crying. The kindness of others, the concern and sympathy of complete strangers never fails to de-rail me and though I certainly wish none of it were necessary, it is a balm to my soul.

Butch and I met with our grief counselor in the afternoon. When we went in I was feeling drained and hopeless but after an hour of talking to her I came away feeling somewhat more buoyed, more resistant to the constant barrage of tears and anguish. The conflict waging in my head was quieter.

The miniscule moments of peace are the only thing holding me together on most days. Grief feels like a surf, whipped up by hurricane force winds, pounding against the edges of my sanity. It washes me out to sea one grain of normalcy at a time. During the calm moments I rally slightly and build my emotional castle walls higher and dig the moat deeper, but in the end, the rising waves of grief return and my reinforcements are no match against their power. The days stretch before me in endless repetition of repeating this same act of folly over and over, yet I see no alternative other than to surrender to the storm. So, armed with a plastic pail of resolve and a shovel made of broken dreams, I work on getting through today.

Trading Places

He took himself out of his own private Hell and put me in it instead.

Birds of Prey

Saturday we dismantled my sons life. We sorted, boxed and organized his possessions into categories and labeled the boxes and the whole time I felt as if I were a scavenger picking the flesh from his very bones. Touching his knick-knacks, folding his clothes, finding his intimate belongings. Toothbrush and razor into the trash because he will never need them again. (But only after coaching to do so) Condoms following behind, because realistically, who wants to use a dead man's condom? How ironic is it that he would practice safe sex, but commit suicide?

For now, it all goes to storage. I am not able to make a rational decision about the smallest of items, and it feels too wrong to be scattering his belongings to the winds. I don't even want to bring things home because it makes it too real, too permanent. The days stretch before me in vast deserts of Joshlessness, and my mind often leads itself astray to a mirage oasis where he is only gone for the moment, not forever. In Dallas for the weekend perhaps. When reality comes crashing in, it can only be allowed to stay for a brief while before I am swallowed whole by the sheer hopelessness of living the rest of my life without him. Those are the moments I consider his path understandable, desirable even. At the very least, I've quit hoping to live to an old age.

My Love, My Heart, My Son

Josh loved Autumn. The briskness of the air, swishing his feet through the leaves and hearing them rustle and crackle beneath his step, the vibrant colors, wearing jackets and beanies, all made him feel invigorated and alive. Each time I step outside and the sharpness of the wind snaps me across my face I think how much he would love to be experiencing it. If only......

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war

Woke up this morning feeling overwhelmed. Sleep is a welcoming shroud to be held tightly wrapped around me until the buffeting winds of grief pull it from me. Only when I am no longer able to keep thoughts of Josh from invading the space between slumber and wakefulness do I force myself to get up and stumble to the coffee maker with his memories swirling in the wake of each step like the autumn leaves he loved so much.

Today I will continue shutting down his life. I will call the gas company and fax his death certificate to the electric company. I will go to his home and begin taking inventory of his possessions in order to figure out how many boxes we will need to pack them up. Before I’ve even begun, I’ve entered into that strange realm of denial where he is going to get pissed when he sees what I’m doing. Reminding myself repeatedly that I’m not the one ending his life, HE already ended it three weeks ago.

The books and pamphlets say I’m not crazy, these thoughts incessantly pinging through my mind are “normal” for my situation. His girlfriend refers to it as waging war with her mind. I would tend to agree, only adding the sense of standing on a precipice while doing it.

Before and After

I think I was walking into the living room from our bedroom when I heard the car pull up. Somehow, I knew what was coming and instead of continuing straight, I veered right, into the kitchen. I recall trying desperately to think of something to do, anything to avoid the inevitable, so I opened the fridge and took out a bottle of water about the time my husband said “ Officer Burgess is here”. I calmly opened the bottle, briefly thinking that I looked awful and was going to have to get out of my robe and put some clothes on before the calls started. Then I tilted the bottle to my lips and drank. If I think about it I can still feel the coolness of the water slipping past my tongue, the momentary urge to throw up instead of swallow... The sheer agony of my stomach clenching against it’s invasion. More than anything though, I just wanted that drink to never end.

Our eyes met through the front window and his averted first. There was no smile, no acknowledgement, only that fleeting connection when he looked at me. I can only wonder now what he thought of my calmness; My continuation of getting a drink of water despite the fact that he and his partner were at my door. Perhaps he understood, or more likely, he was so busy steeling himself to speak to us it never entered his mind to wonder. It’s crossed my mind whether or not my response seemed cold or unloving, but at the time avoidance was my only resource, the only way to cope with an unbearable, unspeakable reality.

That’s when I knew for sure what I’d been feeling all day was true: My life as I’d known it for the last 26 years was gone, to be placed amongst all the moments of my past. That was the difinitive moment. The spot in time dividing joy and heartache, laughter and sorrow, hope and tomorrow.

I had started grieving that morning. I don’t know why or how I knew, other than a mother's heart sometimes just knows. There was a palpable difference in the very air I breathed. We'd filed the missing persons report the night before, and that day I'd left work because I couldn’t stop crying. I'd spent the day waiting to officially hear the news. Despite everyone telling me it was going to be O.K., every fiber of my being was aware that it was already too late for O.K. to even be an option.

Two days of his phone turned off, no word….. This time he didn’t want to be talked out of it.

My son was dead.