Posted by Compasiva on September 2, 2005, at 1:53:26
My uncle Ray committed suicide about 5 months ago and the grief is just not getting any easier. I miss him dearly and wanted to share my thoughts on his suicide through a letter I wrote to him after I found out he had passed away. Its lengthy... but I am hoping at least one person will read it and know that he was a beautiful human being.
Ray,
Why did you do this? Didnt we matter to you at all? I had just learned to like you again and just like that you are gone. I wonder if we even knew you at all sometimes. I loved you unconditionally, thats what family does. None of us cared that you were losing your business, if you were rich or poor. You didnt have to do this.
I am grateful for our last breakfast together in NY, though I of course wish we could talk....just one more time.
Its so predictable you didnt reach out for help from the la familia, but it still hurts. It hurts that you held us at a distance, like we were taking up your precious time. All I wanted was to know and love you.
I feel like my addiction was a blessing because it brought you back into my life as you supported me through the early months of sobriety. You just understood. You didnt pry, or make me feel uncomfortable when I did want to talk about my using. I felt no judgement, no explanations were necessary, your love was clear and pure. My resentments toward you began to slip away as we grew close again. For a moment- I knew you cared, but now I doubt even that. But it made up for years of feeling like you didnt even know i was alive.
As I think about the moment of your death a silence settles over my mind and my body goes numb as I remember standing on the precipice between life and death, ready for the release, the peace, the end. Its a lonely place. In the storm of pain, death seems like the only refuge. But I am living proof that the sun always breaks through the clouds eventually, solutions come, pain heals, and even if you are starting with nothing, life leaves room for laughter while death steals away silently. But as your drowning in your own sorrow, flailing to keep your head above water, none of that is real, only the pain and emptiness is. I wish i could have helped you hang on for one more day. I hope your last moments were peaceful. I hope making your final decision eased your mind enough to let you find some peace at the end of your life. Many blessings upon your soul. I cant believe you are really gone. This nightmare is real.
Did you love us? Did you resent us? Were you jealous of the hugs, the laughter, the love that filled the house when the family came together? Did you feel like an outsider looking in? I know I felt that way many times, like they all shared something that I wasnt a part of. My depression was the bars keeping me locked away from those I love.But now I know they kept loving me all along. We loved you the same way. I wish I could tell you that your life mattered to me. That I saw my own search for something more out of life in the way you lived your life. But you gave up on the inherent goodness of life. Your pain was too great. God didnt give you more than you could handle it though. I think he just didnt mean for you to try to handle it alone. We need people in this world. I have to give up my own fears and put my faith into those around me or I will die like you did. But I am not giving up. Your suicide made into reality my own fantasy of suicide as an easy way out. I will reach out for people, not death when darkness falls on my life once more. I will remember that life is full of cycles. The darkness always ends. I cant see the future and neither could you. Two years ago I was an almost dead junky. I could never have imagined my life without heroin, yet here I am sober, for today. When I am so low that I cant believe I will ever be happy again my loved ones will remind me, and keep reminding me that another world exists even if I cant see it through the fog of depression. I only wish you realized you had the same resources, the same people who would love you, hold you, help you survive. I dont understand why you shut us all out.
We share something in your death. I know how you could arrive at this devastating decision. I know you werent "crazy". I know you made a rational decision based on what you thought you knew at the time. But the problem is, depression acts as a filter, altering the information your brain processes, so the intelligence upon which you based a decision you can never go back and undo was flawed in the end.
Humans have free will and i believe that is what makes us human. So I will do my best to respect the decision you made, to accept it and know you are a beautiful being with your own thoughts, ideas, and decisions. But never again with the atoms that composed your body come together to form another you. The chemistry that made up your physical being will return to the earth to connect in different ways, to regenerate, to prove you cant destroy matter. You chose to end your life and now I cling to the comfort of knowing your body will feed the earth and her creatures and you will survive in new ways all around me, I just wont recognize you anymore, but we know you are there. You left before I was ready, but I will keep working to accept who you were, even in your last moments. I will remember that your physical form is gone forever, but you are never really gone. I love you.Love Always,
Katelyn"Blessed are the blood relations
of the young ones who have died
who had not the time nor patience
to carry on this earthly ride."
joan baez
poster:Compasiva
thread:549886
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/grief/20041230/msgs/549886.html