Venting now...

Yesterday I really just wanted to VENT! I did, a little bit, with my wonderful pal Julie. I went and kidnapped her and took her along to run some errands. I didn’t need the help as much as the company, but I wanted to let her feel useful, so I said I needed the help. We went down to City Hall and filled out a reservation for the local park’s barbecue area so we can host a memorial for another friend who committed suicide last week.

Yes! Yes, I know! I am in the middle of it again! A friend has died and my closest girlfriends are reeling in grief and shock and despair. A couple of them, closest to the situation, are having to immediately deal with our friends’ possession and their disposal…what an awful, emotional and exasperating process. Who ever wants to toss out their closest friends possessions and clear out the house, leaving barely a trace of their existence? Our suicidal friend, whom I shall refer to as “C”, had just one brother with whom she was not real close and he was now tasked with cleaning out her house and disposing of her things. My two friends were there, JW up from Santa Barbara and J with her husband, and C’s ex-husband, packing things into boxes for Goodwill or the dump, respectively, alongside the brother and sister-in-law. The men really were unaware of any practical or emotional attachments to any of the items in the house. The sister-in-law just didn’t know C well enough. By contrast, J knew just who would want the massage table, so she had to call her and see if she could pick it up. J had to break the news to this person, who hadn’t heard the news of C’s death yet. She also knew who could use C’s esthetician’s tools. Then a neighbor stopped by, demanding to know what was going on and where C was...J had to inform her of the situation. J was going to need lots and lots of support to get through this...she was grieving as she was working away. She had also just lost her brother to suicide a few short months ago. This was too much! But she and I understood it as perhaps others could not yet.

Mostly, it is so unnecessary. Our friend committed suicide in a fit of despair. She was an alcoholic. She had made some bad choices in life during the past 5 years and was depressed about it. She was lonely and unhappy. She was childless, divorced and recovering from a bad dating relationship. She was on probation and in anger-management classes, and she was drinking again. She was, for all practical purposes, a mess. Yet, all her friends are rallying now to support each other. We loved her! If she only could have accepted that we loved her and didn’t judge her too harshly.

We are sharing the good things about our friend and planning a memorial gathering in her honor. We are collecting pictures and exchanging laughs about our memories of C.

Amidst it all, people are checking in with me to see how I am doing. It is concern for me due to my having lost my son to suicide. Luckily, I now feel somewhat programmed to deal with this stuff. I am writing my girlfriend’s obituary. I am setting up the memorial. I am sharing on Facebook and getting all the friends to do the same. We are posting photos and friending more people. We are all talking, reminiscing and reacquainting ourselves with one another. It is having a positive effect. I am showing my friends how I grieve, which is to share and talk and laugh and cry and even to express our guilt and anger, and they are following along beautifully. I think we will survive yet another tragedy. But damn it, we are going to miss our friend!

Deja vue...

This is a hard week. First I lost a friend from work who went into the hospital with possible pneumonia and then died from blood clots. He’d had a heart attack about one year ago. Now, at age 57, he was gone. Just like that…gotta deal with it! It has been a very sad week at work, but at least people are posting remembrances on Facebook pages…the sentiments and occasional humor help. He was a good man.

Then I got a text message from my sister about my former brother-in-law, her first husband and the father of her two children. She forwarded a message from his current ex-wife (yes, recently divorced a second time) saying something about trying to take him off the sedation meds, but it not working. He was in a coma. What???

It seems that about a week and a half ago he had surgery for hand numbness and back problems when something went wrong. The carotid artery had been “nicked” during surgery. It was repaired and he went home, only to have it burst open a few days later. By the time the ambulance got there, he was unconscious with major blood loss and was flown to Santa Barbara, where he now lay in a comatose state.

Oh, geez, that brings it all gushing back…seeing my son, unconscious, in a hospital bed, with machines all hooked up and beeping…talking to him, stroking his hair, trying to determine if he was still with us or if this was all an exercise in futility. Watching my oldest daughter talking to him, begging him to stay with us, to come back. Tape, tubes. Feeling repulsed by the way his left hand was swelling up with fluid. Beep, beep, beep, whoosh…beep, beep, beep, whoosh…all day long, all night long. Sickening sounds.

Bill just stood beside Andrew and held his good hand. Becca sat there, staring blankly. Jayney was taking charge, talking to Andrew the most. I kept thinking, “Goddamnit… goddamnit… goddamnit.” The doctor coming in and giving us a grave prognosis. Something about waiting 24 hours, doing more tests, praying for a miracle. Bill and I watched as he checked Andrew’s eyes, which were totally unresponsive.

I don’t know what Bill was thinking, but I was thinking, “He’s gone. He is not coming back. Why do they make us wait 24 more hours?” I had to force myself to be patient, to not react. Let everyone have time. We all need time. I can’t back-track on time and fix it, I thought, so stay in the present. What was done, was done! Be here for my kids, my ex-husband. I felt I knew, but they didn’t yet…let them all have time to absorb it, accept it. My fiancé was there with me. My family and Bill’s family were gathering, some coming into the Intensive Care Unit to stand vigil with us, some waiting out in the lobby. Some felt they needed to see Andrew; others couldn't bear to look but wanted to support us. At one time there must have been 20 people out there, waiting. I am sure images haunted the ones that did come and look.

This stuff is all going on now with my ex-brother-in-law. His ex-wife is sitting there with him in a hospital, listening to the machines work. My niece and nephew are not there. They don’t really want to see their father like that, all hooked up to machines in a coma. I can’t say that I blame them, yet I worry that maybe they should be there. Is it better, in the long run, to avoid this stuff or to deal with it? I don’t know the answer. I do know that with every day that passes, I remember less of the hospital and more of the boy and man my son was…more of the good stuff. I keep processing it, over and over. I go to the support group, I talk about him, I write down my feelings and let it all hang out. I try to comfort my girls and my ex and my fiancé and his son. I think that is the healthiest way for me to deal with it.

I am going to football games, but it’s hard…I feel him there. It was weird, watching a kickoff. As the kicker measured off his steps and placed the ball, I saw Andrew doing that same task. I took all the steps along with him as I watched his games. He did it so many times, exactly the same way, pacing off the distance, stepping sideways a couple of steps, then pausing. Hand up, running toward the ball and kicking off…okay, that was hard to watch. It was, and it wasn’t. I have to smile about that kind of memory. It’s good. These players don’t even realize they are stepping in my son’s footsteps on that same field…but he is there, enjoying the game. His spirit is there and I hope they glean some inspiration from him.