Wow. Thank You All for your responses. They have helped my heart more than I thought possible. Just the fact that 20 people out there in the world somewhere took the time to respond in someway – anyway – to a pitiful anonymous cyber-plea of confusion & pain – Thank You. I feel less alone in this.
I’ll be reading back thru your replies, & responding individually as I can, but I just wanted to Thank this Community.
Hi. Thanks for responding to my post. I’m very sorry for your pain. Your description of the world as a place of “tears and screams” is poetic, if bleak. It reminds me of a line from Mrs. Dalloway; Septimus Warren Smith, a mentally ill character who commits suicide in the course of the novel, says of humanity in general: “they are plastered over with grimaces”.
My friend, when he entered this last downward decline, believed the world & humanity to be fundamentally evil. He also struggled with incredible anger towards God. It was very painful to witness this grinding turmoil of spirit, soul, mind. I am truly sorry for your suffering, pansdisease. And can I say? – I respect it. It is hard to convey what I mean by this, except that I think there’s a very truthful wrangling with Reality that underlies such despair.
Please keep wrangling.
@emi
I’m so sorry for your loss .[quote=“Emi, post:1, topic:6414”]
How much it’s going to hurt – how long.
[/quote] When my son was born with a disability, I thought I would never laugh or feel a moment of happiness ever again. I was still crying all the time, months later and I asked another Mom like me, “When am I going to stop crying about this?” Her answer helped me a lot 24 yrs ago. She said “Maybe you will cry 3 or 4 times a day now, and in a month or so, you will find that you are crying only twice a day. A few months down the road, you may notice that you are only crying once a day. Eventually it will sneak up on you only a few times a week. It will get better.” She was right. Eventually the joy of my little boy, overtook the sadness.
22 years later, her words were helpful to me again, to cope when he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Although this time, the process has been slower. I imagine it will be a slow process for you too, with a loss so tragic and permanent. But for sure, the pain will diminish and hurt less often.
Gosh, I hope this message is more helpful than depressing.
I almost said something like this yesterday…and if cannot visit grave, can still talk to him. Birds can bring a message both ways too…I have been comforted often by the signs my wife has sent. Let’s me know she is okay, especially when i have worried about the possible unknowns and what ifs of the afterlife.
I hope this can be reassuring…
last year the night they took her body out of the woods down by the brook, there was a bird singing a rather beautiful yet haunting song…that birds song will always be there in my memory now…
A short time after her death I went out in the yard and spoke to her spirit…I heard a rustle in a tree above me and looking up saw a strange bird just 2 feet above my head that then flew off…gave me chills as the bird was odd, never saw one before. My wife had already manifest through creatures a few times, and other physical signs by leaving objects in the house, and the house of a friend…
Anyways, I got curious and looked up the song of the bird and discovered the bird in the tree and the song the night she died from where she died were the same…not only that, the bird was a Nightjar…and surrounded by so called “superstition” especially among Native tribes that it is an omen, or sign of a soul departing! No longer superstition for me. that’s as real as can get. And my wife was part Native too.
Along with the giant moth that landed on the window the night she died, a moth known as a death mask, which I learned was also a sign, But the birds manifestation was awesome…
the actual Nightjar is called a “Chuck-Wills Widow” of all things…which seemed almost like a joke…my wife departs the 3d world leaving me a widower and yet sends a bird called a widow…thing is if you knew her sense of humor and love of nature, that is EXACTLY what she would do! Like she would think in the spirit realm she was the one alive who had lost me, and would call herself a widow, reversing the roles…that’s just her way of thinking.
Yes, it was more helpful. smile & it rang true, too. As I was brushing my teeth tonight it occurred to me that I wasn’t crying – I think I had been every time I brushed my teeth since he died (no especial significance to oral hygiene – I think it just leaked out when I had moments alone). In any case, yes, your thought is a consolation. Thank you, RiseAbove. Blessings to you and your son.
Here are 2 other ways to look at the loss of a loved one that I use:
The first is to understand that time is not really an arrow. It doesn’t really ‘flow’ like we experience it. It actually is all happening at ‘once’. We see it as ticking onward, but that’s just because our minds are tied to ‘cause and effect’ and you can’t form a memory of something ‘before’ the cause of the memory. This means that they are still alive in the past, living out their life over and over again without knowing it (as we all are doing now). Kinda like a video tape.
The 2nd is to realize that as long as you remember the person, a small piece of them will live on inside you. Not literally, but virtually. A lot of what makes a person is their decisions and behaviors. If you can imagine the person doing something or making a decision, you are basically running a fragmented copy of them on your own mind. Like an application on a computer. This is probably why someone who passed away can seem to ‘come’ to loved one in a dream. You know enough details about them to know what they would do so subconsciously your mind runs a copy of them using what you know.
I use these ideas because they are more practical to me. Sure it means someone who passes will never be conscious in any way after passing (as in heaven, etc.) It does mean even without believing in any particular religion, they will maintain a sense of immorality.
Plus, if you do believe in the afterlife, spending time on earth with SZ has gotta earn some serious points and perks in the afterlife.
Lastly, you may choose to not read this last part as it relates to my take on suicide.
Their last action was to take their own life into their hands. Instead of dying in an accident or from disease (technically there is no such thing as dying from ‘old age’), they scripted their own ending. SZ takes a lot of control out of your life. So their suicide isn’t really then giving up, it’s them having the last laugh at the illness. Ending the game in a draw instead of defeat.
Dear Friend,
Deepest sympothy.I am also faced this in my personal life.I have tried suicide before 14years twice.but now i can recognized that is i was done foolishness when i have mental disorder in my early time.
Excellent! Along with that would be to carry on their work for them. Did they leave anything unfinished that you could finish, or continue on? for instance my wife wrote articles and left many unfinished drafts and ideas of what she wanted to write, and I have edited and completed some of them. Things like that…or just making something creative “in memory of” Celebrate birthdays or anniversaries in some small way at least.
One thing I did with my Mom was bring her ashes to her home to sit in her favorite rocking chair…I dumped some ashes out on her favorite collectors plate she had bought in Germany in 1963… 4 pieces of bone fragment fell in the perfect shape of a cross right in the middle of the plate… I left them there, went and got some glue and glued them in place…it was like a sign how those pieces fell like that, and I still have that plate with the cross she made on it…
Your friend is in a better place.