A Difficult Month

I'm reading "Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society" with my students. The main character, Ye Xian, looses her mother when she is a girl and her father soon finds himself a woman who becomes a dreaded stepmother - hence the Cinderella connection. Good readers we use strategies to understand the text better: we make connections with the world outside, with our own experiences and other books. In today's chapter, Ye Xian emotionally falls apart in front of her future society brothers and tells them about her misery and pain related to her mother's death. 

I was not a little girl when I lost my mother and I didn't have a stepmother but I understand the excruciating pain a child feels loosing a parent. I told my students that I understand Ye Xian's tears because five years ago I lost my own mother. 

Although a lot of time has passed, I remember everything about her.  I remember her smell. I remember her voice, I can hear it in my head. I remember how she walked. I remember the shape of her fingernails and the texture of her hair. I remember her body shape. I remember her laughs and her tears. 

Oh, how I miss her!

October is a difficult month: each year around this tie I feel her absence even more. When it's really hard I ask her if she is somewhere around and sees me and I hear the voice that tells me that she has never left anywhere. 

I miss her. 

I have flashbacks and see scenes from our life: I see her dancing: there was a time when my house was full of laughter and joy. My parents loved having people around and every weekend there was somebody around: families, friends. I see her laughing and dancing with my father. Then I see her sitting in a chair with her cigarette drinking coffee in the morning on a terrace. Many times I would join her. 

How things can go wrong!

Guilt! I have a lot of guilt inside as well. I will not write more about it here but it's there and often I need to face these difficult emotions so that they it doesn't eat me up. I have hole in my heart.

I'm trying to leave my life as well as I can. I have my up and down, and I'm surely far from being very pleased with myself. But I'm trying. I'd like to look back one day and feel that it is possible to have a 'normal life' even after such a horrible tragedy as a suicide in the family but I'm failing so often...

And then I miss her even more... She would always tell me: if not you, then who? She believed that I have a potential to become successful but...

October is a difficult month. 

I was not a little girl when I lost my mother and I didn't have an evil stepmother but I understand the excruciating pain a child feels loosing a parent.

After Suicide

This is a message to anybody who has lost somebody to suicide, who is mourining after the death of a close relative and would like to know how to go about the process. This message is also for those who  know somebody who is struggling at the moment after the suicide in the family and would like to help to relief the pain but don't know how.

I experienced this after suicide darkness first hand in my closest family not that long time ago. I know what it's like to be faced with something that is bigger than anything else you have encountered in life. I know what it means to feel guilty and go through what ifs and whys. I know the pain and the struggle with them. I know and I understand. I know the fear. The fear about your own sanity, I know the fear of being judged and rejected by the society. The topic of suicide isn't often discussed in open and more often than not, people are left alone with their pains and broken hearts.

I don't claim that I have answers to all questions but I certainly have some suggestions about how to get helped and how to go through the time in your life that seems like the world's worst hell.

What is even more important, I have a message for everybody. A good and a positive message: YOU CAN GO BACK TO LIFE AFTER SUCH A LOSS.  Losing a family member or a close friend to suicide doesn't mean the world has come to the end and your life has stopped. It means that you have stayed and have a choice of either fall into despair or fight for yourself. From day one, I have chosen to fight and I'm still chosing it. I knew that I have to face this monster and tame it. Because you CAN!!!

I know how important it is to have understanding people around when going through the process of mourning, especially after a suicidal, unexpected, vilolent death. The death which is different from other deaths. Your family can be of help, but they are mourning themselves and healing their woudns so it's better to look for a conversation among people who have already done some mourning work and who can relate.  It is crucial to meet/connect with such people so that  you don't feel alone and isolated. Certainly it's difficult to talk about it but you will have to. After a while you will realize that you are not isolated and there are  MANY people out there who have been through a similar patch in life and who have survived and are doing well.Even for a second don't allow yourself to think you are alone in your pain. We, the Survivors, are with you. I am with you.

The pain stays forever but you can learn how to live with it and how to live to the fullest. It is entirely up to you and how you will approach the problem. I have decided to fight for myself!

If you need to talk about your loss and would like to know what to do to get better or if you know somebody who is struggilng at the moment, tell them to write to me. I will share my story and I will try to help.

My email address is: camboadventure@gmail.com