Its Been a Year

A couple weeks ago was the year mark of my dad's death.  For a couple weeks leading up to that day I was having a really difficult time.  I just could not stop thinking about him and what he must have been going through.  I kept reliving the day he died.  I was almost getting used to him not being at family get togethers.  And then it became so surreal again.  I almost felt like my world got flipped upside down again.  The day before, I actually felt pretty good.  I looked out the window as the sun was rising and thought about how the sun rises every day.  Even after the darkest time of night, the sun always shines again.  The next day I woke up and felt very down again.  I wanted to go on a bike ride but it was really cold.  Tyler and I had a baptism to go to that morning.  That was good, it got my mind off my dad for a little bit.  Then we picked my mom up and headed to Todd and Heather's so we could all spend the day together as a family.  We went to a park and walked around.  It was a pretty nice day.  It was very refreshing to be outside for an extended period of time, and to be with my family.  The kids had a blast.  There was a playground that we stopped at for a while.  Claire loved it.  They all loved it.  After a while we went back to Todd and Heather's for dinner.  We made a big breakfast.  I'm so grateful for my sister who suggested we tell funny/happy stories about my dad.  It was so nice to remember those things and laugh.  After dinner we spent more time at their house, and again it was so fun to watch all the kids play together.  I loved it.  We did a balloon release like we did at his funeral.  We wrote notes on the balloons and sent them up to my dad.

There have been a few times over the past year that I have thought of good memories of my dad.  But most of the last year has been trying to make sense of things, feeling very confused, sad, mad and all kinds of negative feelings.  I feel like I may be getting to the point, though, where I'm done feeling those things.  Well, I'll feel those things throughout the rest of my life I'm sure.  But I guess I just feel like I'm ready to remember the good things again.  Whenever I would try to think of good memories before I couldn't do it.  Or if I did, I then felt very sad because I missed him so much.  I want to focus on the life my dad lived, not the way he died.  Just as we don't want our lives to be defined by our sins or faults, I don't want my dad to be defined by how he died.  Everyone has faults, but those who truly love us know those faults and love us anyway.  My dad made a choice I don't fully understand. But I still love him, and it doesn't take away all the things I learned from him, all the good memories.

My father in law shared something insightful with me that has also helped me to want to focus on the positive.  Alma was talking to his son Corianton after Corianton had committed some serious sins.  He said, "And now, my son, I desire that ye should let these things ^atrouble you no more, and only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance."  (Alma 42:29).  When we sin we should feel guilt and unease, but only so much that it brings us to repentance.  Once we have repented, we can let go of that guilt, those troublesome feelings.  We shouldn't dwell on them and beat ourselves up.  He told me this because he thought I could relate that to grieving for my dad.  When you have any kind of loss, grieve.  Just as guilt has a purpose, so does grief.  It eventually helps us heal.  The process is painful to say the least.  But if we let them, trials of any sort can make us better people.  I have grieved for my dad.  I have felt like I am stuck while everyone else moves forward.  I have felt like I am trying desperately to survive, barely succeeding.  And that is part of the grieving process.  There comes a time when we need to move forward.  I don't like the term move on, at least not in this case.  I feel like that means I'm moving on with my life and leaving my dad behind.  That is not what I want.  I want to move forward with my life, yes.  But I still want my dad to be a part of it.  And I know my dad wouldn't want me or anyone he loves to be stuck and have their lives controlled by grief.  He wants me to be happy.  He wants me to succeed.  So does my Heavenly Father.  Both my dad and my Heavenly Father have blessed me in countless ways.  The best I can do is move forward and let them guide me to do the things I should.

The sun will shine again.  Life is made up of darkness and light.  I'm going to have dark days again.  But I can hold onto the fact that I can come out of it.  I can move forward.

My Story

I am a pretty private person, but I’ve been feeling like I need to share my story.  I’ve been inspired by other people sharing their personal stories.  There is something about hearing about people’s struggles that brings you a sense of unity and understanding and normalcy.  It helps me realize, “hey, I’m not the only person going through something difficult.”  Even if they’re not the same experience, it still helps to know that we all have difficulties in life.

So, here goes.

In March of this year, my dad committed suicide.  I still sometimes sit and wonder, “Really?  Did that really happen?”  It did.  And to say that it has been difficult to deal with would be an understatement.

Shock, overwhelming sadness, grief, guilt, anger, unrest...these are just a few words I can think of to describe how I have felt over the past 8 months.  An analogy that has come to mind is I feel like I’m swimming in a stormy ocean and it is a constant fight to stay above water.  I feel like I’m so close to drowning a lot of the time.  I have to put in constant effort to not let hopelessness and despair win.  I have to make myself notice the good in my life.  But sometimes I get tired of fighting.  Some days I do feel hopeless, very unmotivated, and I just want the pain to go away.  And I decided its ok that I feel that way sometimes, the difficulty is to not stay there.  Eventually I’ve got to start swimming again, I’ve got to start fighting again.  You have to let yourself feel emotions, whatever they are.  It is normal and healthy even.  Many people know that if you try to avoid your feelings, it doesn’t do you any good.  For about two weeks after we moved into our house, I avoided thinking about my dad.  I just couldn’t and didn’t want to do it.  But after a while I realized that was taking a toll on me.  So I started not ignoring pictures of him.  I let myself feel sad.  I let myself feel angry.  I let myself cry.  I let myself feel whatever I was feeling.  There are days where I know I am not being the mother Claire deserves.  But I’m so grateful I have her.  She makes me get up every morning.  If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t have a reason to get up some mornings.  Some of those days are miserable, but at least I’m out of bed.

I’ve tried really hard to not let myself feel guilty, but it always finds a way to creep in.  Its been happening less over the last couple months.  I knew my dad was struggling, but I didn’t know how badly.  At times I have felt very guilty for not doing more, for not reaching out to him.  But living in the past and wishing I had done things differently won’t get me anywhere.  He made a choice.  Even if I had done things differently, it may not have changed the outcome.  Or maybe we could have saved him this time, but as long as he wanted to die, he would find a way to make it happen.  Guilt does have a purpose.  That is to make us better.  It is to help us not make the same mistakes in the future.  I hoped that the guilt I felt from not helping my dad more would inspire me to form better relationships with the people that I still have in my life.  Unfortunately that hasn’t happened to the extent I imagined it would, but I’m working on it.  There are so many people that I care deeply about and hope that I can be there for them and do what I can to make their lives worth living.

A big thing I am learning from this experience is that it is ok to ask for help.  That seems obvious, right?  But sometimes for some reason we think we can do things by ourselves, or we know we can’t, but are embarrassed to ask for help.  Like I mentioned earlier, we all have difficult things happen in our lives.  Why are we afraid to ask for help sometimes?  We’re not meant to do things on our own.  It is really hard for me to let people know when I’m having a hard time and that I just need to talk.  Sometimes I sit there and wish that someone would just call me.  But that rarely happens, so I have to be the one to put myself out there and ask for help.  Every time I do, I feel better.  It is a relief to verbally express my thoughts, and to have someone say, “yeah, I understand how you’re feeling,”  or even, “I don’t understand what you’re going through, but I can imagine.  And I am so sorry.”  I have to say here that I am not very good at knowing what to say to people when they are going through something.  So I usually end up saying something stupid, or just nothing at all.  But from this experience, at least for me, I think its important to always say something.  Because when people don’t say anything, it makes me feel like they don’t care.  Which is probably not the case, they probably are just like me and don’t know what to say.  For me, all I need to hear is, “I’m so sorry for what you’re going through,” or “How are you doing?” and not as a way to make conversation, but a sincere, “hey I’ve been thinking about you and wondering how you’re doing.”  That being said, I’m not writing this so that people will feel sorry for me.  But just keep in mind when people you know go through hard times, don’t be afraid to say something to them.  If they’re like me, they don’t need you to say anything profound, they just need to know you’re thinking of them.  And this is for myself as well.  I can’t count how many times I’ve thought, “I should call this person and see how they’re doing,” but don’t.  That’s something I want to be better at.

Another big thing I’m learning is that Heavenly Father loves me.  He knows what I’m feeling.  And He wants to help me get through this.  A couple weeks ago, I was having a pretty hard time.  I read about someone’s experience with their wife committing suicide.  He said something along the lines of ask God to carry you if you don’t feel strong enough.  And I just sat there like, “Duh!”  How many times have I been told that?  So I prayed.  I asked God to carry me, because I can’t do this on my own right now.  Between praying, talking to Tyler, and talking to a few other people around the same time, I felt much lighter.  That’s not to say that I’m all better now.  I’m going to have really hard days.  But I feel like I learned how to better cope with those really hard days.  

I have felt a lot of anger towards my dad.  How could he leave us?  Didn’t he know how much we love him?  How could he leave my mom?  They still had so much time together.  How could he leave the grandkids?  My kids, my sister’s kids, and some of my brother’s kids will never know him.  The two oldest will remember him, but won’t get to play with him, build paper airplanes with him...all the things he used to do with them.  It is heartbreaking.  Claire is learning things so fast and sometimes I just wish so badly that my dad was here, enjoying watching her grow just as much as I am.

It is important to remember that grief is a cycle.  I have cycled through different emotions many times.  At times I thought I had gotten over the anger I felt, I thought I had forgiven my dad but then it would come back.  As of late, those feelings of guilt and anger have become fewer and further between.  What I feel most days now is sad and I just miss him so much my heart hurts.  I just want to talk to him and give him a hug and watch him play with my daughter.  My mom, sister and I have attended a support group for suicide survivors.  It has been very beneficial to talk to people dealing with the exact same thing.  It provides hope to know that I won’t always be in this cycle.  I won’t always be this sad.  

Sometimes it is exhausting trying to stay above the water.  Sometimes it is exhausting and discouraging that I have to try so hard to be happy, or at the very least not be miserable.  I have so much to be happy about, shouldn’t it just come naturally?  But that’s just it, I do have so much to be happy about, so much to live for, so I’m going to keep fighting.  Yes there are a whole lot of crappy, awful things that we have to deal with in life.  But there are just as many if not more wonderful, happy, beautiful things in life.  Unfortunately sometimes we have to work to see it that way, but it is worth it.  It is worth the fight.

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”  Philippians 4:13