Is this my life?

I don’t even know where to start. My life reads like a fictional thriller - I mean, if I had to read my story, I wouldn't believe so many things could happen to one person. These past two years have been the straw that broke the camel’s back and I have been so deep in the dark pit of despair that it became almost home to me. 

When I was five years old, I remember crying at my uncle’s wedding because I had thought he belonged to me - loved only me. Oh, yes, he sexually abused me. It only stopped when my mother caught him when I was ten years old.

My mom didn't help me, but instead made me feel guilty for the abuse. I grew up thinking I was a dirty little girl. My mom warned me that my dad would kill me if he found out, so I never told him. I loved my dad so much that I didn't want him to know my dirty secret. This brings back so many emotions that I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by telling the world about me. (I have forgiven my mother because we do things we think is the best in the situation.)

Like so many victims of child abuse, I fell in love with a man who beat me up, drank like a fish, and cheated on me at every opportunity he got. At the age of twenty-one, I left him while six months pregnant with my son. It broke my heart later when I lay in that hospital bed among the families and smiling fathers. That afternoon, a school bus drove into a lake and 42 children were killed. Was that tragedy a warning of the life my son would lead? I have no idea, but it is burned into my memory. I knew my son Emile would grow up without a father to guide and love him.

My father was my idol. I always hoped I would marry someone like him. When he died at the age of 77, I thought I was going to die of heartbreak. Our family doctor referred me to a psychiatrist when he couldn't help me through the grief I was immediately put on anti-psychotic drugs and lost four months of my life as I can’t remember a thing that happened to me. Maybe that's a good thing, though. In that time, I cut my wrists to the bone and almost bled to death. Also while floating around like a zombie under the influence of the drugs, I decided I didn't want my husband and told him to get himself a girlfriend. I then drove off an embankment with my car and almost died. Paramedics in an ambulance were on their way back to the hospital when the man who saw the accident happen flagged them down. Without him, nobody would have found me as you couldn't see the car from the road.

When they reached me, I didn't have a heartbeat and wasn't breathing, so they resuscitated me. Because I wasn't wearing a seat belt, I'd flown through the front window of the car and cut my face to ribbons, broke my arm, and a broke few of my ribs. The psychiatrist decided I wasn't responding to the medication and had me admitted to a mental asylum.

While I was there, they stopped the medication and I returned to my senses. I thought I'd been thrown in the pit of hell. It took four days to prove that I was sane before they would release me. I found out my husband had taken my advice and started an affair and that broke me even further.

After months of fighting, my husband eventually ended the affair and we tried having a normal family again. Not that it was very normal; in fact, it was very dysfunctional. I married him when my eldest son was two years old, and when our second son was born, he stopped being a father to my first son. That is where the trouble started for Emile. He felt rejected and began acting out by stealing things to make himself feel better.

His behaviour escalated until, at age thirteen, I put him in boarding school.

The what ifs and should haves have driven me insane for years. After building a petrol (gas) bomb with a friend and throwing it in a field, he was arrested and put into a juvenile facility. Everything went downhill from there. He started using drugs and got caught up with drug dealers. He was working, but retrenched in December 2005 and moved back in with us in January 2006.

On February 5th, 2006, my life was shattered when my son was found hanging in a weeping willow tree in a park near our home.

Hell does not even begin to describe what his suicide did to me. I struggled with self-hatred, guilt, regret, blame, intense unbearable pain and insanity for almost five years. I still can’t believe he took his own life and without a note explaining why. In my heart, I know he never felt accepted and loved and I feel so much guilt for not helping him, for not making his life a better one. It will haunt me forever.

On May 15 2011 my husband died of a massive heart attack in front of me before I could get him to the hospital. It sounds completely insane, but when I saw he was dead, I immediately thought, "I could have my son back."

My youngest son Marco and I haven't had a good relationship, but in the past two years since his father died that has changed for the better. His father spoiled him rotten - let him do and say all he wanted. Their relationship went down the drain when Marco grew up - they fought almost every day for two years. My husband once told me that he didn't like boys, which was why he couldn't have a good relationship with them. I regret ruining my children’s lives by staying with him.

Our marriage had been a sham for years - my love for him died ages ago. He was jealous, demanding, controlling and unfaithful. Now that he's dead, I feel free. I know I should have left him years ago, but life was too comfortable. Still, I hate him for dying on me, leaving me here all alone to sort out my life after the damage he's done to both my sons. It's an irrational emotion, I know, but I can’t seem to help myself.

I feel like my life has made me insane. I don’t know if I will ever be a normal woman again. I try very hard to believe that things happen for a reason and look at the positive side of all of this, but the Lord knows I don’t know if life will ever be something to treasure. 

Since then my life has changed and I feel that a new door has opened in my life that can only lead to exciting and wonderful things. If I can survive all of this then you can too...

Namaste my fellow travellers!

The loss for words in the face of naked pain.

How can anyone ever understand how it feels to lose a child? Not in their wildest dreams can they identify with you. Before I lost my son Emile, I had no idea what parents went through when they lost a child. I try to put myself in their place and this is what I think it feels for them to look at us.

We are their worst fear personified. They feel helpless in the face of your pain. To look at such naked grief touches parts of their hearts they don’t want to know. It must be like looking at someone dying and them begging to help. Have you died before? Do you know the feelings and thoughts that person is struggling with? No, we don’t, and that is exactly why we can’t be angry at people for saying the wrong things to us. They have no clue of your unbearable pain and it will be unfair to expect them to know it. Just like you don’t know how to help someone dying, so can’t you demand understanding from someone who hasn't lost a child.

I am testament to what they dread in life. To have death come for a child untimely is the worst thing to imagine. They have no words to comfort you so they say the first things that come up in their minds. It is not because they are callous or hard and cold to your grief. They just don’t Know what you are suffering. You are their nightmares come to life right in front of their eyes.

If you haven’t walked in another’s shoes you have not felt their pain. Just like I have no idea what it must feel like to be in an armed robbery with a gun to my head, they also don’t know.  We want them to say the right things, but do you even know what the right thing to say is? I can’t tell you what I wanted people to say, because there is nothing to say.

Forgive them if they say things that hurt you, forgive them if they don’t have the answers for you. They are only human and trying to be of comfort, just like you would have done had you not been in this situation. Forgive their lack of knowledge, and pray they never learn it. When they turn away from you, it is not because they don’t care, it is because they fear the unbearable pain in your eyes.

Blessed Be and Namaste!!

You will survive the loss of your child.

I receive so many emails of parents who want to know if they are going to survive the death of their precious children. Right at this moment you feel as if the unbearable and excruciating pain is never going away. You are deeply convinced that you are going to die of a broken heart. One thing that nobody knows is that the pain is not only a mental one but physical agony. At this moment you feel that the pain is going to drive you insane. Many parents, as I did, get anxiety attacks because the whole situation is just too much to comprehend. You just can’t wrap your head around the awful truth that you are never going to see you child again. Our children should one day bury us, not the other way around. It is not the natural order of things. I was on a suicide mission after my son Emile died by suicide. I could not accept the hateful fact that he was gone. There was no way I could go on without him. I wanted so desperately to join him.

Today I am going to tell you that you are going to survive. You are facing a hard and difficult path of mourning that at times will knock you off your feet. There will be days that you feel you are making progress and then Bam it will hit you all over again. These days will hit you so hard that you will literally feel weak. Nothing in your life will make any sense and not even the fact that you have other children and people who love you will mean anything to you. Your mind just cannot reach further than the hell you are in.

The only way to get through this to a place where you can live again is to talk to someone about the turmoil and utter hell you experience. Take one day at a time, and sometimes just one moment at a time. Hold on tight because I promise you it will pass. With time the dreadful times will become fewer and further between. I know you don’t believe me and you think I am telling an untruth. But I promise you it will happen. You are not going to go to sleep with the thought of your child every night and wake up with that thought forever. One day you will go through one whole day without thinking about him or her. And that day will be such a shock to you. You will feel guilty that you had no thought about your child. That is only natural. Everything about grief is normal. You are finding yourself in an abnormal situation. Nothing about it can be compared to anything else you have ever experienced. There is no point of reference for this tragedy.

The first few years is going to be the worst you can imagine. I am not going to lie to you and say it will be over soon. However, eventually it will get to a point that you can live with it and accept the fact. Your precious child is always with you and I don’t care what anyone says, that is something I know deep in my heart. And don’t let anyone tell you that you have to feel better or they can’t come to rest. That is utter nonsense. They are in the spiritual realm now and their destiny will not be influenced by your grief. Grief has no timeline and you take all the time in the world to heal.

We can’t do this on our own. For a time I was under the impression that I could get through this without any outside help. But one day I realized if I wasn't going to get professional help I would go completely crazy. The pain was like a cancer eating away at me from the inside. I started seeing a psychologist who used cognitive behavioral therapy to treat his patients. That saved my life, along with regular meditation. The unbearable pain of losing a child doesn't just go away, you have to work at it and feel the need to heal. I know that at this moment you don’t want to heal, the thought of that is akin to being a traitor to his or her memory.

How could you want to live a normal happy life while your child is in the ground or a box of ashes? Well I am telling you that day will come. One day you will be happy again. You will never forget or stop loving you precious child, but you will be able to look back at this anguish and be surprised at how far you have come. That is a promise my dear friend in grief. Your heart will heal and one thing that helped me to this point is that I know, one day when my time is done here, Emile will be at the gates to welcome me home. But for the time I am here I will make him proud of me.

Please know that I am here if you need someone to talk to, and I am not just saying it because I know exactly what you are going through at this time. You are not alone on this journey of grief, I am walking every step of the way with you.