Day 100: Holding On While Letting Go

Logan & I, 2009

I have started and re-started writing a dozen times over the past three months. Today is 100 days since Logan died and a fitting way to mark this milestone and bring light to a dark day in my mind. When I write or speak it as though it makes my thoughts become real. Often I want to not say the words in hope they somehow will no longer be real. "My son killed himself."
But there are occasions where the unspeakable must be spoken.
They are physically painful words- my chest physically hurts when I think about losing him. I never saw his body and I wasn't allowed to attend his funeral. All I have are words that were told to me on the phone, words I read in the police and news reports, words on his death certificate. No closure or undeniable proof; instead, an emptiness his bright light once occupied. Some moments, I feel as though I'm standing on the edge of a void that taunts me with the vastness of the hollow core in my heart.

I am denied those basic elements of being a parent: to hug him, soothe his fears, or humor his meandering questions and observations on the world. I never knew I wanted to someday be a grandmother until the day it no longer became an option. It is still too painful to dwell for very long on all the things that will never be for him or for myself.  He will never be a fighter pilot or the dictator of an empire like he speculated and dreamed of. He will never marry or even have a driver's license. The college we were so worried about paying for will never receive an application from him.

I made the decision to start writing about my journey at the encouragement of others and because writing has always been cathartic for me. I look forward to the day where I don't fill a dozen kleenexes while I'm writing but that day is probably far in the future. There is not a day since I found out he was gone that I haven't had eye leakage (my dad's teasing term for my tendency to cry easily.)

Some days are better than others, but in all honesty the grief doesn't lessen; it changes. There are different layers of understanding as my mind processes what happened and what my life continuing without him means. The thoughts consume my mind roil over and over, boiling and bubbling up. They overwhelm more productive thoughts and keep me trapped replaying a movie I don't want to see. I hope getting them out will help both myself and maybe even help others. I hope it keeps him alive in some way by honoring what my son's life meant to me.

It is like picking a scab off of a wound whenever I speak or write about him. It makes the hurt fresh again. It is a wound that part of me wants to keep open because it means he was real. I am so afraid that he will cease to have been because he isn't alive any more and everything in my heart will be invalidated. I felt my purpose was to be his mother from the beginning of his life. Since he doesn't "need" me anymore in a conventional sense, I struggle to find a way to still be needed and have a purpose. In a way, being a parent is easy for giving your life purpose. Without that, things aren't as clear. Especially with the sense of failure that is left for those left behind in a suicide.

I am in the process of figuring out how to have purpose and how push back against the heavy weight overwhelming my life. I have an overriding need to make things "right" somehow. I feel that helping change how people think about suicide by opening a dialogue and education about suicide-inducing depression could alter someone else's path and maybe save them. Save another mother's precious child by bringing a light into the dark recesses of their mind.