Redefining All Things Java
With the turn of events in my family’s lives, my blog has taken on a decidedly melancholy tone. I’ve often wondered if the Javacat Café now feels more like the Suicide Café. I thought about apologizing for this….for just a moment and then decided that I would not. I have other decisions to make in my life that are deeply parallel to this one little decision on how I will now define my blog…and that decision is how I will let this tragic event define my life. Despite what I think or how I feel on a daily basis, I still own the choice on how I will let Abigail’s choice define me.
With that being said, I am a different person than I was four months ago. I question every previously held belief that I have ever had….about me as a mother, about God and certainly about life after death. I don’t believe I have been a horrible mother but certainly I could have been a better mother, which is not self-deprecation but rather a realistic evaluation. One thing that I cannot be is the grieving mother who stays in bed and cries all day while her other two children wonder why they no longer matter. Not to lay claim that I do not have those days. Sometimes my will is not stronger than the paralysis, and I realize that this is part of the process and embrace it.
So, to that end, I get up every day, I go to work and I come home and remember (most of time) to feed my kids. I try very hard to make time for a run. The pain I feel inside is constant and at times unrelenting. Running is also painful, but a different kind of pain….it is an elixir in a sense for the other pain that will probably never be quelled, but at least be made bearable. It’s a constant struggle to not let that pain shove me into a dark corner where I am less able to be normal enough to be a mom, a wife and a friend. So I exist…I do more than exist, I choose life.
I am slowly learning to live with the feeling that I have been somewhat lobotomized. I am not unlike a person in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, to put it more succinctly, I can’t remember shit. I have huge gaps in my memory and I struggle with the simplest things. I look at people and no longer recognize them…it’s strange. I even forget sometimes that this tragic thing has happened. I expect to go home and find my girl on her computer, and when I pull myself back to reality and try to comprehend the reality of this new life…it’s crushing. It may be years before I can say “there is no turning back”, and yet I am patient with myself. I allow myself to march straight up to her room every single morning and absorb the fact that she is still not back. I am patient with the wound being torn open day-after-day. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I get extremely pissed off and sometimes I just go numb. All of that is okay. It’s something I need to do.
I want you to know that the kids are all doing well…or as we like to say, the best we can. They are much like me in that when they try to comprehend the realness of this new life, they break.
Another thing that I have to acknowledge is that we have not gone through any of this alone. Our families, our friends and our neighbors have held our hands and at the very least provided distraction every step of the way. It surprises me to read about how a family suicide often changes people’s relationships with their friends…scaring them away and making them uncomfortable. This experience has actually brought our circle of acquaintances closer and words could never express how grateful we are to them. So with this blog and with life, it’s one step forward.
I love this post and I love this blog. I love reading your words, both from “before” and “after,” and in no way shape or form should anything close to an apology be made for what it is now, for it is what it is. We blog because we need to reflect on our lives in written form, and yours is what it is because it is your life. Were you ever connected to hyiidra (Bonii Jo) in any of the platforms on which you have written? Once, when I was lamenting the state of my blog, she said that my blog was like my very own coffee shop, where people can come in and partake as they wish because it is someplace they like to be. I cook up what’s in my head, serve it, and if people want some, then they can have it. But it’s *mine* and I need to be what I need to be on it. This is the Javacat Café. You are serving up fare with the ingredients you have available to you right now, which is the aftermath of Abbey’s death. If I might be so bold to say, I think you might need this, just as you have always needed to write. I need this as I get perspective on life as I read you coping with your own and all its joys, sorrows, and complexities. It is what it is, and I like it.
I also think it is a great way to stay connected to others, others who know what grieving is, and what it is like to lose your head in that process. It is long and slow, it is painful, but also full of the blessings you describe in your family, friends, and neighbors. It is what it is.
You write: “It is something I need to do.” Exactly. Right now just do and be what you need to do, no matter what that is. You have to, huh.
And honestly, I like reading about it. Not voyeuristically so, exactly, but because I read and feel and learn from you and your most recent and powerful experience. It’s this way with reading others’ blogs, too, no matter what they are going through in life.
So you knowwwww, I’m here, I’m reading, I send you good thoughts when I do, I like connecting with you this way and peering into the thoughts and feelings you are having, and I am grateful you are sharing these thoughts. Just as I am with every other blogger I know.
Yes, you are finding your way to a different kind of “normal,” a new “normal” that is “Who am I when such a profound change has happened?” I put “normal” in quotations as “normal” it will never be again, but there is a redefinition process that occurs, especially with major change, and this is a biggie. And it is a new way of being, of course. This new way of being, without your daughter present, is what it is going to be. Yeah, everything you describe is just going through that process, huh. It is trying “to comprehend the reality of this new life…” So comprehend away here. I don’t know if *any* of us can get our heads around this kind of stuff, but I think it is human to try, huh. Lots of love, and thank you again for posting.
Sorry to hear about your daughter Java. She will be with you forever, but don’t be sad because that is not she would like to see you in you guys. She wants you all to be happy, she is with God and God needs her for something else. My mom died very young and I used to be sad a very long time more than a decade but once I realized that she is with God and her good stuff remains with me, I became a different person. You have so many things to do for yourself, for your kids and for the future. Hugs. Chris.
Thanks for those words, they have lifted me up today.
Heather: *hugs* Sending love and light your way.
I treasure your words, the way you express your way through this brings expression and healing to me from the loss of my daughter.