Temporary Melatonin Deficit, or Logical Next Step?

Actually, there's an amazing irony about this. This is just the place to write my thoughts about checking out earlier than my body will accommodate on its own. No one reads this blog, so it’s a perfect place to hide in plain sight. When all is said and done, my crystallizing thoughts will be found to have been clearly delineated and left in plain view. I guess it’s true I’m whining about a lack of attention; such a miserable, gutless cry baby, the type of behavior Justin loathed. “Stop whining and just do it!” I can hear him saying that now, though perhaps not to me in this context. Then again, he might urge me to shit or get off the pity pot.  

This world is a harsh, unforgiving place, and everyone is rightfully focused on their own trials and tribulations. It gals me a little though, how people feign remorse and regret after the fact. I think they know in their hearts, that without the benefit of hindsight (which we never have in advance) they’d respond the same way if given a do over. In the final analysis, we are who we are after all.

I am increasingly miserable. And the prospects for my future seem more and more dismal ….. a sorry mess actually. There’s just no point in being old, poor, and perpetually grieving, with a failing body that’s not quite sick enough to die.  Not long ago, I determined I needed about 10 years to get done with everything, and because the things I wanted to do were hard for me, I believed, I had to get strong before I died to achieve it all. It increasingly feels like my grandiose goals are not realistic, and need to be paired down significantly. I can’t make people remember Justin if it’s not in their nature to do so. He will never be as important to any other person as he is to me. And I’m beginning to conclude my writings of him are not sufficiently impressive to burn his uniqueness, and worthiness to be known into eternity. Haviing such lofty goals is probably unwise, and it makes sense to shrink them more in proportion to my diminished life. The things I can get done can be accomplished in the short term, and a decade is hardly necessary. It’s really just a cowardly excuse to hang on I’m afraid. I’m rather tired of being the caretaker for the self absorbed, who will continue to drain me spiritually as long as possible. And I don’t want a future living on the margins of other lives when they clearly have more important things to do. I’m not complaining about that really. Unlike my mother, I don’t have the self importance, or gumption to continuously insert myself using other’s sense of obligation. There’s just no point in trying to do that. It doesn’t suite me. Neither does it make sense to circle suspended, haunting the edges of other people’s lives; a position one assumes when others are “just not that into you”. Better to be an actual ghost than a virtual one. Anyway, they’re either to intelligent or indifferent to be manipulated by my stupid, pathetic neediness; as well they should be.  

At this point, it’s clear this life has not worked out. It’s been quite a train wreck actually. And the truth is, it’s going down hill from here. This is not the radically premature judgment of a 24 year old. I’m fifty eight; experienced enough to know when things are irreversibly fucked, and I don’t have 25 years to recoup. There is also the unalterable reality of images that cannot be undone, and will live forever in my head. In a fit of poetic expression I’m sure Deva would think unforgivably cheesy, I described it as the image “seared in swollen memory”. Some things are indeed unfixable. It’s fruitless to live long term with an intolerable memory that won’t cease until you do.  Living until 80 with this is as unfathomable as it is unacceptable.   

All this must stop soon. There’re just a few things left to do that make a difference to me. Right now, it looks like they can be accomplished in less than a year. The time horizon is shrinking faster than previously thought. It’s not that I want to leave anyone endlessly remorseful.  I just want to step out of this miserable charade, and I’ve determined those remaining have the recuperative skills and/or supports to move on after some acute feeling of sadness. Those who would be left behind are either true survivors, who’ve sucked more than their fair share from my life, or they’re intuitively wise, fully individuated spirits who know they should never love someone more than that person loves their own misery. Justin didn’t understand that. Like me, he wasn’t emotionally wired to live by that rule. I wish more than anything he had been. In this way too, I blame myself. It was the consequence of heredity. That inherited trait coupled with his unbendable, heartfelt principles is a bad combination, because people will inevitably let you down in the end. The best thing to do is not to care. But unfortunately, when that’s not who you are, it’s easier said than done.   

My impulsiveness this weekend to tuck the pills in my purse for my solitary journey to Mother’s place provided a preview of how I might execute my plan. I could drive to an unknown destination, even to myself, and swallow enough pain killers to make revival a mute point by the time anyone knew to look for me. Of course, I chickened out when it came down to actually doing this. No matter what you’ve heard, following through on deliberately exiting this life requires more courage than most of us have. This notion is anathema in suicide prevention philosophy, however. While prevention proponents don’t want to call it cowardly, they go to great lengths to refute the idea that suicide is ever a courageous or noble act. As a survivor of a loved one who died this way, I totally understand this view. But it is what it is. Perhaps it’s not noble, but it does take a an extreme level of unblinking daring and commitment the fait hearted can’t begin to approach. It’s ironic that some rationalize their own sniveling fear by calling the brave hearted among us cowards. I think my cowardice is slowly diminishing, however. And in the not too distant future I’ll marshal the courage of my convictions, finally acting on my belief that living as long as I can is not the most desirable path for me. And like Justin, I’ll be able to look death in the eye, and refuse to blink.      

July 11th, Birthday # 58

The day didn't feel special at all until I arrived home, and found an envelope in the mail from my daughter Deva. As I expected, she sent me a birthday note, hand written on a beautiful card. But what caught me by surprise were several pictures she'd taken of, and with, her brother Justin. They were taken several years ago when he visited her at graduate school in Chicago. I had never seen them before.

You must know, viewing previously unseen pictures of Justin is a joyful, tearful revelation; an excruciatingly spiritual experience. He looked so happy, strong, and beautiful. Just as I like to remember him. And I could see their love, pride and attachment for each other popping off the prints. If we could achieve it, would the benefits of freezing time out weigh the detriments?

Looking through them, one at a time in a repetitive loop, I smiled and cried a little. This was a priceless, precious birthday gift from my surviving child; my full grown daughter, now with a child of her own. This alone made waking up that day worth while. It gave my day relevance, beauty, and meaning, while slumped in the shadow marking another useless year.  

Five Years

Justin,

As of June 30, 2011, it has been five years since you left. And at approximately 7:30 a.m. on July 1st, it  will be five years since I found you hanging from the back deck. This vision is seared in my mind, in my soul, like a thousand degree burn. It has broken me. I don't hope for anything triumphant in my life. There are no triumphs left, just the observation of others' ups and downs. When beauty visits others, I am happy sometimes, even joyous for them. But it is beauty appreciated at a distance from my life; One that is irrevocably scared ..... disfigured beyond fixing. Just days of doing things, moving through events until it stops someday. Strangely, and totally beyond my understanding, losing you didn't kill me. It just deadened my soul. Made whatever follows superfluous, useless and unnecessary. The passage of five years hasn't changed this underlying reality for me. That's not a surprise really. I never thought that it would. My only hope is that I can find a way to honor you. I think succeeding in  this is the only way to make the rest of my time matter.

Forever, Your Mother   

Before They Were Suicides

Before they were suicides, they were our children.

All soiled hands and scrapped knees. Laughing; Playing

with abandon. As if time had no consequence;

As if forever was a given.

We could not see beyond the limit of their lifetime

then. Could not imagine the urn holding their

ashes, or the single rose on the coffin, lowered

slowly into the hard, cold ground.

Before their final struggle they were our babies.

Dimpled hands grasping wildly; New eyes shinning

smiles; Gleeful squeals under peppered kisses,

and raspberry blows on soft bellies.

I remember the way you gripped me; Legs

straddling my hip; Tiny arms circling my

neck; Holding on as if there were no options;

Clinging tight, as if your life depended on it.  

Before all faith was shattered they were believers; In Santa,

magic, and the tooth fairy. In the power of the dark

and monsters in the closet; That we could fix all

things; That we would never let them fall.

We believed kisses were the soothing balm for

bruises then, that simple band aides covered 

stinging wounds, and our squeezing hugs to

quiet bitter tears would always heal.

Before the mark of teens they were our toddlers.

Explorers on unsure, testing feet: Fearlessly consuming

life; Brave discoverers of worlds inside the

tiny universe we made for them.

And the first time you peddled the big wheel away

with dawning independence; Small and determined.

I always believed I could call you back again;

And that you would come.

Before they were statistics they were our beloved;

Restless, pensive, joyous and despairing; Embattled

keepers of conviction; Carriers of all our hopes;

Our dream into the future.

And in this anguished aftermath, this

bleeding, empty present; The vivid color of your 

lives will linger; And we will remember, before

you were a suicide, you were our child.

                                                 

Ann Woodly

Forever Justin’s Mom

September, 2010

How I’m Feeling It Today

I feel like I'm dying today. And so much would be solved by my death. It's been almost five years, and still I'm entering a time where I am in constant physical and psychological pain. Silent, convulsive tears took the place of sleep last night; left me with highly visible, red edged bags under my eyes, not to mention a dull headache. Good thing Donnell found my sun glasses yesterday. I haven’t had a night like that for some time, but it feels so familiar. Like it is my actual reality, and the weeks before that were really the exception. My soul is drowning; don't feel like I'll be making it to those "better days" waiting just around the corner. And I don't feel like holding out for remote possibilities. I awoke this morning with that persistent pain in my left leg, and my back felt wracked in a giant, aching spasm. I don't want to do this anymore. And as things are progressing, there seems to be only one way out of this mess. Today, it doesn’t feel like I’m ever going to become healthy in any way. Like Justin once implied, this is taking the slow, agonizing route home. I wish I could facilitate speeding up this journey somehow. But I'm not as brave as him. I’m your typical groveling, ambivalent coward, who is only different from the general population in that I have no illusions that continuing to live like this is courageous. That's a myth the despairing tell themselves to avoid facing the reality of their fear. But getting to the point where the fear of non-existence is less than the fear of a long, crawling, failed life is not easily accomplished. We become so used to it. And unlike Justin, most of us don’t have high enough standards to find this unacceptable.

Still, I’m feeling today like my body may make the end of this stalemate easy by leaving me no choice in this. I'm like a balloon with a tiny, steady, imperceptible leak. And my sprit seems to be instinctively moving into a period of mourning for my life. Maybe it will be over soon. And that would be totally o.k. Financial challenges for Deva solved! Sadly, that’s probably the best thing I have left to give her now. The best option I’ve got in supporting her promising life. It feels like the least I can do, and at this juncture it’s not much of a sacrifice at all. The only regret would be my unfinished tributes to Justin to mark the fact that he was here. Maybe Donnell could go on to make something meaningful of his tortured existence. At least he’ll have the funds to live comfortably. Whatever he chooses would be just fine with me at this point; no hostilities about that at all. It’s too late to fix the things that can’t be salvaged.  

And if there is an afterlife, some other option to rotting in the ground, perhaps I’ll see my son again. And I can tell him once and for all how sorry I am. And let him know how deeply proud I am of him.

Absent

I've been absent from this space for several months now. There are a multitude of reasons, some of them conflicting. Sometimes I've been too busy. Other times, my absence had more to do with being distracted. Still other times, my reason for not posting is just because I've been unfocused and lacked the energy. This morning I got up and out of the house later than usual, largely because I felt emotionally lethargic; hopeless; wanting to not have to live this life anymore. I felt as if there was no meaningful reason to get up and continue this awful slog. I wanted not to have to get up again at all. As of 2:00 p.m. I still feel that way.


I saw my grandbaby Vaughn this past weekend. His mom and dad brought him for a visit. They stayed at a hotel instead of my house; the house my daughter and son grew up in. There are so many reasons this fact hurts so much. All of them are emblematic of my failure as a mother; my failure to make a place my children would want to come back to. In my mind In my mind, this mirrors the uselessness of my failed life. I am 57 years old. Past the point of assuming things will change for the better beyond the next bend in the road. I'm arriving at the conclusion, and this is pretty much it; the sum total of things; how my life has turned out. And I don't want this life. I feel like I imagine I'd feel with a painful, terminal illness. If this is as good as it's going to get, I prefer not to do it anymore.


I am so in love with my grand child. He is purely, deeply beautiful. But I believe he'll be just fine without me. I don't do him justice with such a morose, distracted split mind. He deserves more than the splintered bits of my soul that remain alive. And today, it just doesn't feel as if there's anything I'll ever be able to do about that. And the most awful thing is I'm sure there are bad things still coming.

"Trouble in the air. I don't want it. But I've got to breath. It's

coming through the door,

behind the shadows that surround me when I sleep."

The saving grace is that it's all down hill from here. I believe I've reached the zenith of how bad living can be. Instantaneously eviscerated while standing. The rest is just falling. That's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm falling down. Once that happens, I suspect I won't want to get up. And the strange thing is, at this very moment, that probability doesn't matter to me one bit.

My Crystallizing Idea

I was recently a part of the cast of Atlanta's 2010 Vagina Monologues production. It was another affirming, cathartic experience but it seems right now like it was a hundred years ago. I need something to feed my soul on an on-going basis. If not, I succumb to the most awful, pervasive feeling of empty grief. Finding that next thing to engage my attention and energy is the difficult thing. Since the VM show, I feel like I've returned to that desire to just go home from work and take to the bed for the rest of the evening. That was my pattern in the many months following Justin's death. Even with the impending birth of my first grandchild I am caught in a thick malaise and think about Justin’s absence nearly every minute of the day. I know I have to somehow combine my focus on Justin with some project that engages my creative energy. While its barely paying the bills, the work I'm doing right now is void of satisfaction, so I've got to make this connection in some other area of my life. One good thing is my involvement in the VM production helped me crystallize my idea for the production I envision that’s now titled "The Spoken Word Project: Suicide Survivor Stories." I want this dramatic piece to have a similar format to the VM production we did a little over a week ago. The seven actresses who participated were seated in different places on a multi-level stage. At different points we stood and came forward slightly to deliver our lines/monologues and at other times we shared what were typically shorter lines while seated, sometimes in unison. It made for a dynamic presentation that had a lot of energy and visual interest and seemed equally suitable for the comic and dramatic parts of the show.

If a small group of six to seven performers (all parents of suicides) could be staged in this way to deliver lines, poems and monologues on the topic, I think it could be a very powerful piece that educates the audience about suicide and brings the people our children were to life at the same time. I've already composed a draft script, but it focuses solely on Justin and my struggles as a survivor. Ultimately, my goal is to incorporate the diverse voices of five to six others to create an illuminating, moving and at times, tenderly funny theater experience. In addition to line and monologue delivery by the stage performers, I envision a large screened backdrop with an audio visual presentation synchronized with the live performance. This feature would include pictures/video of our children, facts about suicide and other visual imagery along with appropriate music (songs and instrumentals).

Now my challenge is to pull together an updated script template based on these ideas sufficient to attract other parents who might like to participate and can visualize the goals of such a piece. Rather than make it a requirement to memorize all the lines, it should initially be performed as a reading theater like the early VM performances. While the written material and performances must be worthy of a dramatic theater piece, it is most important that the production be an authentic expression of real parents who are going through this awful tragedy. This vision is so clear to me now, but it all feels so awesome. Achieving this will require me to be part script writer, part talent recruiter, part director, and part collaborator with other creative parents in shaping this project. That’s not even including the promotional aspect of getting venues to present the piece. Yet I know this is what I want to/need to do. It’s a key activity to help me with the on-going challenge of retaining my sanity and to move forward in this life-long grief journey. Unfortunately, the bed-ridden malaise has been calling a lot lately, making productive activity a trial. I must try to pull it together and marshal a self generated burst of energy to make this creative vision happen. It's a struggle right now. Please wish me encouragement and luck. And please, pray for me.