Category Archives: memories

Structure

16 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by in compartmentalize, details, getting through it, God, images, memories, screams, structure, suicide

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            Probably the worst thing about losing my father to suicide was that I could never stop thinking about it.  It sat right under the edge of every thought and action.  His death invaded me, waking or asleep.  It was hard to know how to go about my life.
            One woman that I met at a support group who had lost her husband to suicide said she had to structure her life tightly to keep going.  “I did everything I could to limit the impact of the suicide and grief on my life,” she said.  “I kept going.  I kept functioning.  I took enough control that it didn’t cause additional problems for me.”  I think her organized methods of structure helped her compartmentalize her emotions. 
            My sister told me that she put her grief and memories of my father into an emotional box and took them out when she had the strength.
I found that I couldn’t handle a tightly structured day or find an emotional box tight enough to hold back the thoughts.  In the beginning, my mind didn’t operate well enough to keep up with details.  Silent screams, memories, and images wormed their way in and out of all details.  I had to leave plenty of time for staring into space.  At work, I eased out of as much stress at possible.  At home, I refinished furniture, sanded the wood in a hypnotic state and thanked God that I didn’t have children.  Each of us did what we needed to get through.
Find what works best and do that.  There are no rules in how to go about a day after you have lost someone to suicide.  Just getting through it is the goal.

Memories

04 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in dreams, energy, memories, miss him, suicide

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            I awoke one morning with clear visions of Daddy teaching me how the guts of an AC unit worked and then another memory of his sitting at the kitchen table trying to drum into my head the notion of compound interest.  In the first, he pointed to black tubes with his grease-covered fingers, and though his brow beaded with sweat, his eyes smile-crinkled at my understanding.  But in the next, he sat upright with a pencil eraser tapping impatiently at the examples that made no sense to me.  “Look here,” he said, his voice raised and frustrated, “you mean you can’t understand this?”  I never wanted to talk to him about money, but always, I loved helping him work out there in his garage. 
            After his death, such nightly memories sucked away my energy.  Throughout the day, I felt like bland food with no added salt, no pepper, no spice.   Come nightfall, thoughts and memories of him flickered behind my eyelids like a movie-marathon.  I saw him laughing, talking, or just looking off into thin air.  I saw his hands petting his dog or holding my mother’s hand.  I saw him sitting on the couch with his elbow on the armrest.  I heard him cuss under his breath when something he fixed broke.  I heard him whistling when things he worked on went right.  I missed him so much—I still do.
            At first, those memories hurt.  Leaded with the pain of his suicide, they came with extreme sadness and wild, horrible imaginings of the seconds before he shot himself.  Later after time healed the rawness of my grief, my true memories helped me understand that his life meant far more than just how he died. 
Memories are a pathway that connects us to others.   Memories help me hold my father in a gentle and real place now.