Words for the Journey

I ‘lost’ my daughter to suicide a little over four years ago.  She was the light in our world . . . still is.  She continues to communicate with me.  Recognizing her presence within my life has brought me peace.  Maybe you have lived through the agony of loss and are still on that merry-go-round of pain and suffering.  It can become a circle of struggle, a waste of precious life on this incredible earth that you have chosen to inhabit.  I say this because it is so sad for me to see those people who are stuck in places of sadness, guilt, and pain.

While attending the 2012 Compassionate Friends National Conference this year I was approached by many asking if my husband was with me.  The answer was always no and as the weekend went on, I came to a harsh reality.  Not only did I not want him there, but I was angry that he wasn’t.  Many may read this and say “typical woman”.  Maybe, but it is much deeper than that.  My husband-Jeff, is Tony’s step dad.  He has known Tony since he was 7 years old-most of his life.

National Students of AMF: Kelly Interview from Rob Ranney on Vimeo.

Every year, 22 to 30 percent of college students experience the death of a close friend or family member. These students are at greater risk than their peers of a host of academic, social, and developmental issues, including alcohol abuse and dropping out. Yet, nothing existed to support them.

One of the ways I have described preaching and teaching following the loss of our son is that I am speaking with a new voice. I’m not sure I invented that phrase, I probably read it someplace. Speaking with a new voice means that I now see things I did not see before, and I am able to express those things from a totally new perspective. When I am talking to someone who is grieving a significant loss, I can usually hear them speaking in a voice to which they are unaccustomed. 

The holidays are always hard for those who have lost loved ones. One such Christmas for us was in 2010. My wife's parents were with us for a few weeks. They were becoming feeble and we wanted to spend some precious time with them. That was the last Christmas my father in law celebrated, as he died the following August. My mother in law has lost much of her memory and is in a nursing home. In addition my mother was with us. She had lost her husband of 28 years. It was a special Christmas, and a hard one.

            How do you cope with a death that is so sudden, so tragic, and would appear to some to be so preventable? The grief reaction felt by those that are left behind after a person dies from suicide are similar in some ways to any loss, but simultaneously unique in so many ways too. The anger and guilt that accompanies many situations of grief is often heightened further in suicide loss.

2008 was a rough year. It was the year we unexpectedly said a tragic goodbye to our 18 year old son. It was the year my mother suffered through breast cancer. It was the year we said goodbye to our stepdad of 28 years, Harold. In some ways it does not seem very long ago, and in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago. Mom now lives here in the same city, for which we are very grateful. She has her times of extreme loneliness and grief, yet manages to smile and enjoy good times as well.

My name is Michael Stalter and my wife, Mary, died from breast cancer January 6, 2008. As she was in the hospital for the last time I came face to face with all the different scenarios that Mary and I had talked about since she was first diagnosed with cancer back in 1990. We had tried to plan for the day when I would leave the hospital without her and how I should go on with my life and how I should finish raising our children, Tom 18, and Sarah who had turned 13 the day before.

Discovering Love by Barbara Ann Simone