Jumping Tracks: Life After Suicide

 

It’s been a considerable amount of time since I wrote my last blog post.

 

I’ve sat down at this computer many times to try to put my thoughts down in a way that could pull from anyone who cares to read the words, an empathy, a shared moment, or an understanding that could ease some of what I’ve been feeling for the past six months. But the words have been hard to find and all of them have felt so heavy that I’ve wanted to keep the weight to myself. To not share a burden that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

 

But this morning when I woke at 3 am again, like every morning for the past few months, feeling the wonderful ignorance of sleep recede and awareness take its place, I knew it was time to write. It’s a feeling almost like the approach of labor when giving birth; a desperate slide into something you can’t escape from, which you know is going to hurt more than you think you can endure, and carries a hope that on the other side there will eventually be more joy than pain.

 

Not Okay

 

Early in the morning of April 10th my niece, Michaela, called me. I don’t remember the time, but it was early enough that it hit in the time frame where I knew something was either very good or very wrong. It was the latter.

 

“Vernie,” she said, in a voice that was so thick with tears that I could tell it was a struggle to get the words out.

 

“Michaela, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

 

“No, I’m not okay,” she whispered, more breath than words, “Ben’s dead. He was killed last night.”

 

“No.” I don’t remember what else I said, I just remember “No.”

 

Why do we do that? I think it must be the very human response to deny something so impossible to believe. A resistance to what is true, but horribly wrong.

 

Ben could not be dead. Ben, the smiling, laughing boy . My nephew. The law enforcement officer. The gentle friend. The thoughtful son. Ben was not allowed to be dead. We’d already lost my mom less than a year before, my father 18 months prior, and Ben’s maternal grandma just two weeks before that. Wasn’t that already enough grief for one family? Wasn’t there already enough pain to go around? Deaths are supposed to come in threes according to the old wives tale, a fourth was completely unacceptable.

 

My first thought was “How?” As a law enforcement officer there was always the risk of Ben being killed in the line of duty. It was a thought that always lurked in the back of our minds. But we didn’t know anything about how yet. For hours it was an agony, that feeling of living in limbo, waiting to hear any news that would tell us something, anything at all. I was calling, checking in with family, trying to find out details, anything real and tangible that could help me grasp hold of what felt impossible to believe. I went to work, I cried my way through half of my shift and finally just asked if I could go home. They were kind and I drove away. Still wondering, still not knowing. I visited some friends at my massage school, I just needed someone to hold onto for a few minutes. Just that brief reminder that I wasn’t alone in this. I stopped at a restaurant and ate a bowl of soup. There’s something comforting about soup. It’s silly probably. It’s certainly unhealthy, seeking comfort in food. I was sitting in an Applebee’s booth when my sister called. She’d finally tracked down more information.

 

Suicide

 

Suicide? That made the impossible catapult off into the realm of utter fantasy. How? What the hell happened? There was no way to make the words “Ben committed suicide” make any kind of sense in my mind. I hung up the phone and stared at my soup.

 

I sat there, trying not to have a complete breakdown in the middle of a crowded public place. I put my face in my hands and tried not to sob. I guess I failed. The waitress stopped by, put her hand on my shoulder and asked “Honey, are you okay? Can I help?” I was thinking “No one can help.” But I just tried to smile and said “Thank you, I just got some hard news. I’m sorry,” my voice kept breaking so I had to breathe deep, “I don’t normally do this. I know this isn’t a good spot to be bawling in.” She just looked at me and asked “Can I give you a hug? You look like you need a hug right now.” I nodded and started crying in earnest. She held onto me for a minute. Even when I tried to pull away after the socially acceptable 10 seconds she kept holding me and the uncontrollable feeling passed. It was a tender mercy. She held onto me while I was flying apart inside. A few minutes later the hostess sat down at my table and offered to let me talk. It was too early to put it into words, but it was good to not be alone.

 

The next few days were a blur. I drove to Michaela’s house so we could just cry together. We tried to make sense of what was happening. We tried to get more details.

 

I think that’s another very human response to death, and suicide in particular: the desire for all of the details. It’s like our life shatters with the news we can’t accept and we have to gather back up every bit of it we can find so that we can put our lives back together from the puzzle it has become.

 

NOTHING about Ben’s suicide made any sense. It still doesn’t make sense and I’ve had to stop asking the endless “why?” that no one else but Ben can answer.

 

Why?

 

“WHY?” It’s a question for understanding what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what hurt so much that he couldn’t keep going? “WHY?” Is a plea for forgiveness that I wasn’t there in the moment he needed me. In that second of decision it took to forget that so many of us would have done anything to ease his pain, to carry his burden, to take away the heartache if we could have. “WHY?” Is an accusation, a question you hate yourself for asking, but it’s there just the same. “How could you do this? WHY did you choose this pain for us?”

 

I sat in the church pew at Ben’s funeral. His casket draped in a flag. Officers in uniform. Bagpipes playing. Hundreds of people wrapped up in a mixture of horror, sadness, anger, and agony. All of us asking “Why?” I turned to my children sitting next to me and said “You remember this. When life gets hard, because it will, you remember all these people sitting here in this room. Any one of them would have stopped whatever they were doing and they would have been there for Ben. You don’t have to be alone in your pain. And I never want to go through something like this EVER AGAIN.”

 

At the cemetery I watched as Ben’s sisters, all seven of them, and his mother carried his casket from the hearse to his grave. I’d never seen that before. Pallbearers are traditionally male. But he was their only brother. He was their friend. He was their hero. It struck me as beautiful, terrible, and moving all at the same time.

 

 

 

I saw my brother who is unflagging in his faith and love of family, fall to his knees beside his son’s casket, heartbroken by that last physical touch at the graveside. I watched law enforcement officers from all over the state of Idaho, strong men and women who deal with life and death decisions on a daily basis, shaking and holding each other together as we all fell apart. I watched Joy, his beautiful mother, my wonderful friend, hold onto every single person at that graveside, putting off her own unbearable grief long enough to get everyone through it. Just one step at a time, until it was over.

 

 

 

And then, suddenly, it was done.

 

That’s how death is. We close the casket. We fold the flag. We make that last radio call. We weep, we breathe deep, and we walk away from the dead back to those who still live. And each step kills something inside us because Ben should still be here. Right here walking beside us.

 

Off Track

 

The irony of death is that life goes on. Your world stops, it’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever done, you don’t know how you’ll get through it, and then… you get up the next day and live the hardest day all over again. And do it again the day after that. And the next. Again and again. For weeks, then months, and then years.

 

Decades.

 

You hold onto faith, you look for comfort from friends and family, you search for understanding in the scriptures, other people’s experiences, and shared sorrow. And you never really get to set it down.  To set it down you would also have to set down all the beauty, the preciousness, the absolute joy of the life lived by the one who’s absence causes the pain. And I can’t imagine my life having never known Ben.

 

So you learn how to carry it with you instead. You carry it on your shoulders when it knocks you to your knees. You carry it in your heart when you’re flat on your back with the weight of it. You carry it in your hands and in your feet when you reach out to someone else who is hurting. You learn to carry it in a smile that is not necessarily slower to come but has more meaning. You learn to carry it in a laugh when you look through old pictures where he stood with you and in new family stories that he won’t be a part of, and every memory means more.

 

 

I look back at the last six months without Ben and it still feels unreal. There’s the life I was supposed to be living. A journey that was both good and bad, difficult and easy, full of joy and sorrow, and mostly of my own making. But now I feel like a train that has jumped it’s tracks. Someone else flipped the switch, derailed my travel plans, put me on a new path, and I can never go back to where I was originally headed. The train I was on heads off in the direction I understood and I’m jealous of my old dreams and thoughts, heading off to where I wanted to go. I’m stuck on this railcar, clicking along down a new track I never wanted to travel.

 

I look out the windows of my own soul and because it’s who I am I try to find the beauty on this road. The beauty is there. I can see that it’s there. It doesn’t feel like it’s mine yet, but I’m learning to live with that too. I’m finding that I can create beauty even if I can’t feel it. I’m discovering that I can offer comfort even when I’m hurting. I’m finding that I can forgive even when I don’t understand, I can listen even if I don’t feel heard, and I can love even when I feel lonely.

 

Grief made me jump my tracks, buy it doesn’t get to tell me how I’ll travel them.

 

For today I’ll try to travel them with compassion, with kindness, with generosity of spirit, with a little more wisdom and a lot more faith. And tomorrow, when I wake up stuck on this same train, I’ll try my best all over again.

 

I’ll reach sideways just a little more. To friends who are going through similar grief. To family who feels the same loss. To a stranger in some restaurant booth who looks like they need a hug. I’ll remember to thank the officer who pulls me over if I’m stupid enough to speed and tell him that I’m grateful for him and for all that he sacrifices to do his job. I’ll wrap my arms around the mother who has lost her child and mourn WITH her instead of wishing she wouldn’t mourn. I’ll hug the father who lost his child and comfort him because his heart is hurting too, no matter how often our society tells him to be strong.

 

Grief has a way of beating up our hearts until they are very tender. Sometimes that makes me want to protect myself more. But other times it makes me want to be more open instead. It makes me want to take the extra steps to make sure a friend is okay. To call family for no reason except to say “I love you, I’m glad you’re here.”

 

I’m glad you’re still here. Please keep being here for a very, very long time.