child loss, bereavement, tcf canada, tcf, compassionate friends, grief, grieving
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Grief Transition After A Child's Suicide |
When our child
deliberately ends their life our grief is compounded. We grieve the loss of this
precious part of our self and we grieve, as well, the fact of suicide....and all
suicide means....and all society perceives it as meaning.
Every emotional response familiar in grief is intensified and complicated to
almost intolerable dimensions by dread of punitive societal attitudes and
religious biases; by fear for our surviving children; by obsessive guilt and
unrealistic acceptance of responsibility; by a tremendous sense of rejection,
inadequacy and failure; and by our anger....at God, ourselves, often at other
family members and, perhaps most painful of all, at our dead child.
Unsuspecting, I was thrust into this over powering morass of emotional agony by
the suicide of Kent, my bright, handsome 24 year old son. I could not be
distracted from the horror of what he had done to his body, to his life and to
the lives of those who loved him. How could this dreadful, senseless act have
occurred within my family? How was it possible his desperate state of mind had
gone unrecognized and untended? We should have known!!! I found small comfort in
the bounty of sharing this tragic loss with my heart broken husband and our four
grieving children. I believed my family was irretrievably broken and my life was
over.
Oh, I never doubted
that my existence would and must continue, but I saw this continuance as pain
filled days stretching endlessly into years, to be endured without peace of mind
or hope for happiness. I was bereft of understanding for why this unthinkable
choice was made. Inexhaustible, I searched for answers, for reasons, for
justification I was never to find. I was desolate in my need that the magnitude
of my wounding from this child's intentional self inflicted death be understood
and comforted. I felt assaulted, exposed, disgraced and estranged from society;
fearful, without direction or assurance for my sanity.
I went through the motions of living. My physical self performed mundane tasks,
even extended comfort and caring to others. But it was a facade, a shallow
veneer around a vast, cold “nothingness.” I was wretched with self loathing,
tormented by the belief something I had done or failed to do had so robbed my
son of self love he could not live with the pain of it. I thought I would
disintegrate from the embroiling force of rage, guilt and frustrated impotence.
At times I found relief by having “finished” with part of this great complexity
of emotion, only to have them erupt again, confusing in their nagging
persistence to be reprocessed.
For months I remained entrapped within a restrictive grief cocoon; every thought
possessed by my son's suicide; every heartbeat accentuating his loss; every
moment consumed with hurting, hurting. I grew so very weary of hurting.
Perhaps it was this weariness that stirred a fluttering resistance against
continuing within this torturous confine; for, fragile and unsure, a new being
struggling to emerge; a being that wanted, needed, and yes, even deserved to be
freed. This metamorphosis was not achieved quickly, painlessly or without
reluctance, for I feared the glimpse of myself and my life forever changed. But
I also glimpsed love and life waiting to be shared and I saw hope. I recognized
the Ever- Presence of the God I had repudiated and my worth was reassured. I
realized a deeper, richer appreciation of my strengths and found renewed
confidence. I saw grief needs of others and found meaning and purpose. I grew to
understand and accept that the time and love shared with my son, his death and
my grief are, and will always be, a part of my life ....but they are not, nor
have ever been ...the whole of it.
And I was freed.....from the bondage of my powerlessness over his death; freed
from the consuming anguish of acute grief; freed…..to live again.
~ authored by
LaRita Archibald
2015 Devon, Co. Springs, C.o. 80909
© LRA 1986