Hi.... I've decided to write about my Journey through grief as a survivor from the losses of suicide. I'm not a good writer, but I can write poetry well. Please over look any misspellings and punctuations.
On February 14, 1981, I went to a Valentines party that I really did not want to go to. The guy kept calling me and finally I said I'd go under two conditions. One, was to take me home when I'm ready to go. Two, do not be drunk. He said ok, so I went.
I sat in a chair the whole time. I noticed a nice looking guy come in with his date. He sat beside me and we talked for a while.
When I was ready to go home, the "guy" was drunk and did not take me home when I wanted to leave.
About a week later, I asked a girl at work to call the man I met that night and see if he would go out with me. She did and he said, "I don't want anything to do with any of the girls there except the one who sat in the chair. Yippee for me! He took me out on a date. We went to the Western Sizzler and had a steak dinner. I could hardly eat because not long before I met him, my right lung completely collapsed, twice! I had to have a chest tube put in both times. Seems like all I did was cough.
I had warned him that I was sick when I was born and I've been sick ever since. But he didn't mind and I thought that was special. Of course he didn't want me to be sick.
We got married a year later. We were married for 29 years, 1 month and 25 days. We were together for 30 years, 1 month and 25 days. It just wasn't long enough for me. However I am thankfull that I had the years I did with him.
He and his dad worked together for 32 years from what he told me. His dad got sick and passed away while in the hospital. But before he passed away, my husband would come home and would sit down, raise up his hands, and say "I think I'm having some kind of a breakdown." His hands were shaking. I would hold him in my arms and tell him how much I loved him. But it got worse after the passing of his father.
The last year of my husbands life went down hill. Everyone told him, "it will get better". It didn't, it got worse.
My husband made good money, but when the economy got bad, his business went down hill. He would go several months at a time without getting paid. Eventually our money ran out. Our house was in foreclosure. Obama was the president. Bank of America wouldn't help us. Several times we went without heat and hot water. We lost our health insurance, life insurance, home phone, internet service, cell phone and more.
About a year before I lost my husband, he left for work as he did everyday. I always called him around 10:00 AM. He'd call me after lunch and before he left the office to come home. I called him around 10:00 AM. He wasn't there. A few hours later, he still wasn't there. I had a bad feeling. 6:00 PM came and no one had seen nor heard from him. I had to call the police and report him missing. At 8:30 PM that night he came in the door. I had just hung up the phone. I had called all the hospitals to see if he was there. I don't know how to describe the look on his face, but I asked him, "Where have you been?" He said, "Do you really want to know?" Yes, I wanted to know! He said, "I was at Stone Mountain. I climbed it and stayed there all day and did a lot of thinking. I was going to jump off and kill myself." I cried and hugged him and told him that I loved him and I couldn't live without him. I needed him and he needed me! That night we talked a little and he promised me that he would never take his own life and I made the same promise to him. He also agreed that he would call me every day when he got to work. That way I knew he was ok. He did call, for a while.
The last year of his life, we talked a lot about death, burial, cremation, prayer, God and many other things. He told me that he wanted to be cremated. He didn't say where he wanted his ashes to be.
Every now and then he would still come home, shaking and I would do the same thing, hold him in my arms and tell him how much I loved him.
He began to lose weight. He lost 30 lbs and he wasn't a big man. He would say things to me out of the blue, like "Don't ask me to make you anymore promises." What in the world did he mean by that? At the time I had no idea.
One day we were sitting together on the front steps. I asked him if he prays. He said yes. I asked him if he believed in God, he said yes. I asked him if he believed that Jesus died to save you from your sins and give you eternal life. He said, "I guess." I took that as a yes. I told him do not give up and keep praying. He just looked at me and said, "God isn't answering my prayers." I told him that God hears you, but He will only answer your prayers in His time.
When my husband was about 8 years old, he woke up and couldn't find his mother. He had a younger brother and sister still asleep. He heard the car running in the garage. He went in the garage, opened the car door and his mother slid, she was gone. I've heard two stories. One was that she slid to the side and knocked him down, two, that she just fell against him. My husband called his daddy at work and told him.
I just cannot imagine what it would be like to be 8 years old and find your mother dead, from suicide.
I believe suicide runs in families. You may ask, why? Keep reading and following my journey and I'll tell you.
