Category Archives: relationships

Nothing To Give

06 Monday Jun 2011

Posted by in boundaries, conflicts, grief, guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress, PTSD, reactions, relationships, suicide

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At its best our mother/daughter relationship was an intense flip-flop thing.  One moment we bathed in each other’s love and attention, sharing laugher and friendly conversations.  Then—flip, one of us penetrated the other’s skin-thin edges and we got mad, or hurt, or both.  Sharp words crystallized into sudden swords stabbing.  Then—flop—we would start a conversation about Daddy or gardening or birds, the whole time smiling those there-you-go-again grins.  It had always been like that for us.  We were close. 
My mother and I shared the brunt of finding my father’s body.  The first year after Daddy’s suicide, we reminded each other of that day just by eye contact.   Traumatic shock affected our relationship. 
  I felt angry and guilty toward her.  I didn’t want to talk to her about my father after his death, good or bad.  She had trust-issues and leaned on me for too much emotional fuel.  I erected reinforced wall-boundaries. When she crawled over them, I felt angry that she wouldn’t seek support from anyone else.  Sometimes I even hated being around her.  Then I felt guilty—thought myself uncaring.  To keep from hurting her with these feelings, I kept an emotional distance.  And truth be known, I think she felt the same way around me.
I wished that our relationship would snap back to its original innocence and felt a spinning anger at my father that his action had set Mom and me haywire.  At least we still had gardens and birds to talk about.
           Some things shouldn’t be measured in terms of good or bad.  They are as they are.  Suicide takes its toll in relationships and each person is responsible for their own grief.  When the well is empty, does it apologize to the dropped bucket?

Important Relationship

02 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by in anger, marriage, professional help, relationships, suicide

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            My marriage was only three years old when Daddy died.  It was my second marriage.  I was frightened my grief would tear it apart.  Those intense emotions of heartache, traumatic stress, and fury funneled their way down to one emotional pipeline and spilled out in angry, watery, aggressive reactions.  I couldn’t control my feelings and acted like a tired, cranky two-year-old child.   I felt embarrassed to cry, but tears traveled down my face in rivers.  Grief left me looking sulky.
My husband became a safe target.  Most of my anger was focused at him over trivial things.  We painted the house together and I furiously blamed him for leaving a paint-can in my way.  He worked a split shift and was sleep deprived; I yelled at him for not listening.
            My father’s suicide taught my husband and me how to communicate.  We had a lot to digest.  He didn’t understand why I was so quick-tempered, and he would react defensively.  I didn’t recognize how tremendously angry he was with my father for hurting me.  He tried to keep those feelings to himself; they came across to me as condemnation.  We had a lot of conflict—and, thank God, ended up going for professional help.
Anger, I realized, had always been my method of dealing with uncontrollable things.  That realization and my husband’s loving concern may well have been what saved our marriage.  A counselor helped teach us both how to interpret our feelings.   I learned it was because I felt safe enough with him that I centered much of my grieving fury at him.  It wasn’t fair of me to do that.  He learned that I needed to be held when I acted like a child, not walked away from. In counseling, we talked out our feelings without so much emotional-fuel.   
Afterwards, he was there for me all the way.  He hugged me, and gave me space when I needed it.  But most importantly, he listened to me when I experienced my anger-disguised emotions of helplessness.  At a support group for families affected by suicide, he learned that my anger wasn’t as unique as he thought.  My tears came with less anger after they stopped meeting his resistance.  
            After a suicide, communication and emotional support is as necessary as water and air.