So here we come up on 2 years since Shawn killed himself.

My birthday again - number 42.

Last year I remember being so concerned with what my birthday would be like and how to reclaim the day as my own.

This year I feel very...blase.  Very unusual for me who has relished each and every birthday as something exciting and special.

My family keeps asking me, "What do you want for your birthday?".  I have no answer.  For the first time in my life I have nothing I "want" for my birthday.

I know this happens to many people as they grown older - they just quit caring about their birthday - so maybe that is all it is.  Or maybe this year will be like that and next year will be something different again.

Lily asked me again last night what I want for my birthday and indicated she was running out of time to do something.  She commented that last year I just "cried all day" and that we "didn't do anything special" for me.  That isn't exactly how I remember it.  Sure, I had a melt down when no one could possibly make my birthday special and perfect enough to make up for what a hard day it was.  But everything turned out okay and we had a cake and they sang "Happy Birthday".

Earlier in the summer I had thought about throwing myself a big party with friends but then I ran out of...time and apparently desire.

Maybe not wanting the day to be a big deal is my way of not creating unrealistic expectations that will be only let down?  Maybe it is my way of trying to take the power of his death away from a certain day that is loaded with "shoulds" of how one should feel ("We should be sad, this is the day that Daddy/Shawn died" or "We should be happy and joyous, it's Mom's birthday."). 

It really is just another day like any other.  I am not actually a year older on August 29th - I am really just one day older than I was on August 28th.  Shawn is not actually dead a year longer on August 29th - he is still dead, just one day longer than he was on August 28th.

As for what I want...hugs.

No really, I'm Good.

Well, hello.

I'm still here.

And gearing up to do some writing.

In fact, I've decided to rewrite the story of staying up all night, waiting to tell my children their father was dead by his own hand, and submit it to a magazine that I've read religiously for years.

When I look back at the various "Capital T" traumas in my life I would have to say that this was the worst of them all.  And that's saying something considering my timeline.

We are approaching the 2nd "anniversary" since Shawn's death...funny that...I've always thought it is so strange to use the word "anniversary" to describe the calendar date on which something terrible or tragic happened.  To me "anniversary" always seemed like it should commemorate something happy and joyous.

Of course you could always just call the day of Shawn's death, "Jennifer's Birthday" if that is any easier.

While talking with her Grandpa Jack (my Mom's husband of 25+ years who is like a father to me), Lily retold a dream she had of her Father.  In the dream her Father was there and was crying and said, "I'm so sorry.  Will you forgive me?".  This was very powerful for Jack because he had told the adults in the family that as he was playing guitar at the funeral he was overcome with this powerful sense of Shawn saying the same thing..."I'm so sorry.  Please forgive me."

Grandpa Jack is not a religious person, nor is he a particularly "new agey" type - he just felt this overwhelming sense that Shawn was very sorry and that we should forgive him.

I thought about this a lot since hearing of Lily's dream (which she had not yet shared with me).

I have felt Shawn's presence a few times.  I did feel him with me the night he died as I counted the hours until I could wake the children.  I railed at him and ordered him AWAY - that he had NO RIGHT!

I've never had a sense of him saying, "I'm so sorry.  Please forgive me." - it is always more of a sense of him enjoying the children via me which sometimes I allow to flow and other times I shut off.

I wondered tonight, "How would I feel if I DID feel or sense this sentiment of, 'I'm so sorry.  Please forgive me'".

I realized that maybe I haven't heard this thought - if it were even possible for a deceased person to convey this sort of thing - because I don't want to hear it.  I don't want to forgive him.  I am angry and I don't feel like he just gets off that easy to say, "I'm so sorry." and then be forgiven.

I don't hate him for what he did.  I understand that he was in extreme pain.

It's just that sorry sometimes doesn't cut it.

When I last saw my therapist many moons ago we talked about my feeling (at that time) that maybe Shawn had thought, in some sick way, that killing himself on my birthday was a gift to me.  Because, of course, some things were better after his death.  I could make parenting decisions without the conflict between us that had become par for the course (and didn't seem to be getting any better despite my repeated attempts to ignore inflammatory remarks and pleading to move past the anger because it would be harmful to the kids).  I no longer had to worry from month-to-month if he would be paying child-support or if he would be asking for yet another reduction.  Now the Government sends me a check each month.

Maybe like some other suicidal people Shawn convinced himself we were all better off without him.

And then my therapist pointed out this...when was the last time Shawn had shown ANY gesture of kindness or compassion towards me?

I had to admit that the last time I could remember was before Lily was even born.

Add in the fact that his suicide note to Amber was filled with vitriol and blaming and that he could not have possibly been thinking rationally enough to decide, "Oh, she won't have to fight me on everything and she will get Social Security" and we know the answer.

It was not gift to me - it was a punishment.

I still wanted to believe that, even in his death, that Shawn had ultimately cared about and loved me when really all that was left was this empty shell of a man with hate where his soul had once been.

So, yes, I don't think I'm ready to just say, "That's okay.".

Just Another Statistic

There's been a lot of talk about guns in our country...for a long time.  For most of my adult life I was aware of guns being used, not only as tools of the police or hunters, but for violence.

There was a mass shooting at the University of Iowa when I was a student (a friend who was disliked by the gunman avoided being a victim because she happened to fill in at work for me that day instead of going to the meeting in the Physics Dept where the shooting happened). 

The Columbine shootings happened right after Shawn and I moved to Colorado.  I was saddened but detached (my typical reaction when these "big" things happen in the news).  Shawn was devastated - it happened the day before his birthday and he actually drove the 90 minutes to Denver to attend a candlelight vigil.

There are lots of others that come to mind:  at a McDonald's in California in the 1970s when we happened to be there visiting my Grandparents, Virginia Tech, Aurora movie theatre.  And, of course, there is Newtown - which caused anxiety for anyone who has to send a child off to school in the morning.

What I didn't realize until recently is that, by far, people using guns against *themselves* far surpasses all the other acts of violence combined.

When I heard these statistics I was stunned. 

People who attempt suicide by gun have a very high success rate.

50% of all suicides are by gun.

White males, about 40% of the U.S. population, accounted for over 80% of firearm suicides in 2010.

A study of California handgun purchasers found that in the first year after the purchase of a handgun, suicide was the leading cause of death among the purchasers.

Shawn is just another statistic among so many.

For someone who saw himself as "terminally unique" (to use the words of a friend) he did something totally un-unique.

I know that Shawn had thought about suicide for many, many years and had never made an attempt.  Until he had a gun, that is.

If he hadn't purchased guns a year before his death might he have just gone up into the woods and hiked up his favorite trail and gotten drunk?

I have no answers to suggest that would change or even make a small impact on these statistics. 

Outlaw guns?  No.  Look at what has happened in the US with our drug laws.

Keep them out of the hands of the mentally ill?  Sure.  But who decides?  And does it prevent people from seeking treatment if they get on a "list"?  Would Shawn have been someone on the "list" of people who shouldn't own a gun?  If they had asked me I would have said "NO - it's not safe!"  But Amber must have thought it was okay for him to start buying guns, right?  And what about his parents?  Did they see the danger signs that I did when I heard from the kids that Shawn had become a gun owner after the divorced?

Education?  What do we tell these young-middle aged men?  Just don't do it? 

What can be done about this gruesome statistic?

She's Not 8 Anymore

I haven't been writing and I don't think anyone has been reading.

Everything has seemed...normal lately. 

Lily's depression magically seemed to lift when I finally realized that her sleep problems seemed to be the source of her inability to cope with anything.

Despite my reluctance and fear I did finally start giving her melatonin which has worked so well that I actually now fear, every night, that it will quit working.

For at least a year bedtime was a terrible time for her.  She would want to talk about her Dad and some of the terrible details she knew...right before laying down for "sweet dreams".  She would cling to me and ask, "Where I he?  He's right here isn't he?" and she would look blindly around the room.  I, of course, was exhausted by this time of night and really didn't have the energy or the knowledge about how to help her.

I knew it would take her several hours to finally fall asleep and I knew that she would wake up 2 or 3 times a night and have trouble getting back to sleep.

Once I started thinking about how things really must be for her I realized that I couldn't just ignore her situation just because of my own hang-ups about "medicating children".

She will be 10 years old on Sunday.  It will be her second birthday without her Dad.  She is growing into such a beautiful and amazing girl - I know he could have never envisioned her like this.  I know he thought he was making things easier by "going away" when she was young.

I wonder what memories she will have of her Dad as the years go by?

What kind of things do you remember from when you were eight?

Reboot

I wonder how long the denial phase of grieving can last?

I can see how anger, sadness and acceptance can be a cycle we go through our entire life.

After 18 months, though, it still surprises me when, out of the clear blue, I feel this deep and utter disbelief...

Did he really do that?

Anyone who has experienced a death knows that this is not your run-of-the-mill, "Oh my gosh!  Can you believe that happened?"

It is a deeper surreal feeling of being out of sync with reality.

I have found that it seems to happen after I've been going through a period of acceptance.

Perhaps that is why it feels so jarring and unexpected?

And it seems like each time it happens it, at least temporarily, reboots the acceptance phase and gets me thinking again.

Lily's Feelings

Bedtime is hard for Lily. She has extreme separation anxiety - complete with clinging, begging for "one more hug" and bringing up topics that are way too big to tackle when it is time for bed (and when Mom is exhausted).

 

The difficulty is that she doesn't want me to go. And she knows that if she brings up her grief for the loss of her father I'm not just going to walk away.

 

She asks the hard questions about things that a Mom doesn't really want to send her 9.75 year old daughter off to bed thinking about.

 

Her level of questions amaze me because these are the same mixed up questions that everyone has when they lose someone to suicide - and I already know they are unanswerable. 

 

Below is a collection of some of the things I have heard from her, at bedtime, over the course of the past 6 months.

 

• She misses her Daddy, of course. She wants to know WHERE he is...she points around the room like a blind person and says, "Is he there? Is he over there?" and then says, "Daddy? Where are you?"
• She struggles with the “not getting to say goodbye” – she talks about when someone gets cancer and dies you usually get to say goodbye. This seems to be a very hard thing for her – she talks about how she just waved and said, “See you Monday.” and that if she had just known she would have said a better goodbye.
• She wonders why some people have this same disease and DON’T kill themselves
• She gets upset when she tells people her dad had a brain disease and he died from it and they, in trying to be empathetic (which she does understand is their intent) talk about people in their family who are also depressed and are getting help. She wonders why her Dad was one who killed himself and finds it maddening because it makes her feel like they don't understand it isn't the same to know someone with depression as it is to lose your Dad.
• It is hard to hear other girls talk about their Daddy’s
• She still wants more information about the disease – did he have “the disease” before he started drinking? I told her I didn’t think so. I told her I thought that there was a family history of alcoholism and that when he started drinking at 14 that he enjoyed it and thought he could control it but that it damaged his brain so he couldn’t think properly. She wanted to know if anyone had tried to help him when he was a teenager.
• She talked about his selfishness to do this to his family.
• One of her questions prompted me to concede that it wasn’t the first time he had gotten so angry that he had threatened to kill himself. She wanted to know how I stopped him those other times? I told her I couldn’t stop him – he stopped himself. She wanted to know why he wasn’t able to stop himself the last time.

Also during our bedtime conversations I have learned that she has been given far too much information about her father's final 24 hours by her step-mother. These details I wish I could take back from her...

• Shawn's final words to Heather before he drove to the mountains to kill himself were, "I'm outta here". Why would you tell a little girl this? It is not helpful to her. Her take on it is one of anger..."If you knew they were going to be the last words you said to someone you loved wouldn't you say something nicer?"
• He left a note or notes and "she can read them when she is older - like when she is 15". Originally Amber told me she thought he had left notes for me and the kids. Later she said it was only one long horrible, hateful note written to her. I can imagine what it might say - I have my very own version that he wrote to me many years ago. Why was it helpful to tell Lily about the existence of this note? It was not written to her. It has no answers. And NO - the last thing a 15 year old girl should do is read her father's suicide note!! I've talked with both my and Lily's therapists about this extensively. We all agreed that, even if Amber agrees to not show her the note, there is nothing to stop her from giving it to her later (possibly out of anger at me, Shawn or Lily. There is also the possibility that Lily could find this note if it isn't secured. The only thing I can do is try to prepare her for the moment she is faced with a decision of whether or not to read the note. I did tell her the other night that I "didn't think she should ever read the note" because it was written in anger and wouldn't answer any of the questions she had and that "I didn't think her Dad would EVER want her to see it".

 

I have talked to Amber about the fact that this information has caused Lily so much distress. With the coaching of both therapists I have gently told her that "less is more" when it comes to sharing details of her father's final 24 hours. I encouraged her to share happy memories of him and to keep it simple if she presses for details on the end. Lily's therapist also talked to her this weekend. I am waiting for a report on that.

 

I understand it is hard and one doesn't want to feel like they are lying but I also think for a child of 9 that saying, "It is too hard for me to talk about right now." is perfectly okay.

Time Passages

Dear Shawn,

It's been almost 18 months since you died.

Wouldn't it be something if people who committed suicide could see what things were really like after they were gone and then make a decision.  But I guess we have no "Ghosts of Christmas Future" in our lives to show us these things.

I've reached a point where I can accept, and possibly even understand, that you saw no other possible future other than death.  This hasn't stopped me from scripting what you might have been able to do differently.

Remember how the morning after our wedding you woke up and told me you wanted to pack all of our belongings into our VW Bus and live on the road?  It wasn't too late for you to have done that.  Sure, your parents would have been horrified.  Your kids would have missed you.  But you could have done it.

And can I tell you, Shawn, that it's these memories that I miss the most.

Because I have no one to share them with.

These were OUR memories.  No one else lived this life we had built together and there is no one left to remember them with me.

We did amazing things together, Shawn.

You were my youth. 

Do you remembering sitting at our tiny red kitchen table and deciding, together, to pack up everything we owned into a U-Haul and move 1,500 miles to a city where we had no jobs, no place to live and didn't know a single person?  And it took us only 3 weeks from when we decided to do it to when we were actually there with jobs and an apartment!  Do you remember how sick I was?  Do you remember that campsite in New Mexico?  Do you remember how the VW broke down at the first light after we got off the exit in Phoenix?  Can you believe we did all that and it was no big deal?

And what about all the other things we did?  Together.

Remember how I told you to wait on the big adventure and that we would make it happen?  And we did.  We put everything we owned in storage and took our old VW and three dogs as we traveled through every state west of the Mississippi looking for a place to start a family and a business.

Do you remember all that I do about those three months?  Who else is there that remembers these things with me? 

Do you remember Goosenecks State Reserve in Utah and how it was FAR better than the overcrowded Grand Canyon?  Do you remember how hard it was to leave Durango and all the people we met there?  Do you remember the world's nastiest bathroom (as mutually agreed upon for years) near Crested Butte?  What about Salida?  That heavenly place of streams, flowers and butterflies.  Do you remember when we found Fort Collins and almost didn't leave because it felt like home?  Do you remember being covered with sap and sand in Moab and having to drive to the edge of the Colorado River where we dunked ourselves and the dogs and then hopped in the van to escape that hellish place as quickly as possible?  Do you remember that military jet that zoomed out of nowhere in Nevada and made the ground rumble?  Remember how I came flying out of the tent into your arms, sure that the earth was about to open up beneath me?  And then there was Eugene, OR, where we thought we would find what we were looking for and, instead, found it just didn't "feel right".  And Minneapolis where you got so sick you had to be hospitalized.  And Greg and Michelle's wedding reception that we went straight to when you were released from the hospital.  And visiting your Grandpa in Oklahoma - which was surprisingly mountainous and beautiful.  And what about all the little things on that trip?  Little flashes in time that became part of who I was?

Can we just spend some time now talking about these memories?  Because I don't have anyone to share them with now.

And you let me down, Shawn.

You broke the deal.

We moved to Fort Collins. We started that business that had been your lifelong dream.  We had two beautiful children. 

And you got angry.  Or maybe you always were but it was easier to handle when we were young and free of the big responsibilities of life.

You scared me, Shawn.

You were gone, Shawn.

Your essence had escaped.

You no longer took joy from hiking.  Or animals.  Or bikes.  Or your children.  The happiness you showed was hollow - most especially for you.

And so now here I am raising our kids without you.  That wasn't part of the dream.

Lily has struggled.  Part of me feels like you never really knew her and so you didn't realize how much she would be hurt.  I know how much you loved her - that's not the issue.  But I think you were so checked out emotionally by the time she was born that you couldn't see what a sensitive child she is and you couldn't fathom the pain you would cause her.  I think part of her struggle is because she has only a few memories of fleeting connections with you.  Why do you think she cries and cries about the fact that you only took her to one "Daddy-Daughter Dance" and talks about that night as if it was magical.  My wish for her is that someday she will find a way to reconcile the good memories of you along with the ones of you being angry and checked out.

Lennon is doing okay.  I know he misses you.  He has a little shrine in his room with some of your ashes, your favorite hat (with those white sunglasses I hated perched on top), a special rock, a Livestrong bracelet like you always wore, and a feather.  He is missing out on all the things you would have taught him. 

I'm okay, too.  It is different for me because we had been divorced for 4 years before you died.  I did a lot of grieving for the loss of you before you were even gone.  The hard part was that I always believed you would find a way to rediscover yourself and that we would be friends again.  I thought I would be able to talk to you and share these memories and laugh and laugh.

Jennifer

PS - I made this movie for you. You know the song - it is one we used to listen to together in college.

Whose Story is This Anyway?

Every.single.day.

Every single day I think, "I'm going to write today.  I'm going to answer the question.  I'm going to share what I would say to Shawn if he was back for just two days."

It's not that I don't know what I would say.

I have been having the conversation with him in my head for over a month now.

I even shared with Lily what I would say to her Dad if he was back for just two days.

Two days is quite a long time, actually.

Do I have two days worth of things I would want to say?

And what about him? 

Do I imagine him reacting in the way I would want? 

Or do I imagine the way he might have really reacted if I had shared these things with him before he died?

I suppose it is my exercise - my story - I can make it up however I want.

And maybe that is what has made it hard?

If I imagine the reaction I would want is it too painful to never actually have it?

Two Days..To Be Continued

Lily's therapist recently did a role play where they used anime characters on the computer - one was Lily and she typed the dialogue for that character, the other was Shawn who had come back for two days - the therapist typed the dialogue for Shawn.

It was very powerful to watch the finished project - both the therapist and I cried for sweet Lily who responded to "Shawn" saying, "I'm sorry I hurt you, Lily.  I hope you can forgive me." with, "Of course I will forgive you, but I miss you and wish you could stay longer."

It got me thinking...what would I say to Shawn if he was back for just two days?