no words

i've been in a little bit of a daze, thinking about someone i love.  someone whose heart is broken.  not just broken like in two.  but broken into a thousand tiny pieces.  the kind where you don't know how to hold yourself together, you can't sleep, you have no appetite, and you just really don't know how you're getting from moment to moment.  it's that kind of broken when tears are sitting in front of your eyeballs and it is some miracle that they aren't racing down your face when they aren't.

it's that kind of broken when your thoughts come and go in no order.  when you feel scattered and lost and scared and nothing seems real.  when you pray that you are in a nightmare, and that when you wake up it will all be over.  when you see and hear other people laughing and carrying on around you, but you don't know how they are doing it.  and whatever they are laughing about or smiling about just can't possibly be that important.  because your world is different.  because your world has changed. and it just doesn't seem right that the rest of the world is going on as if nothing has happened.  even the sun shining seems ... wrong.

the kind of broken you feel when someone you love is suddenly and unexpectedly no longer on this earth.

it is scary to think about ... our mortality.

it is scary to think about ... our lack of certainty.

there is no promise that any one of us will be here tomorrow.  i know this.  you know this.  we all know this.  yet we live as if there is some promise of the future.

when someone leaves our life, we recognize this truth and we sometimes talk about the fact that we have no guarantees and that we need to live in the now.  waste no time.  seize the day.

i am lost in between both of these feelings.  the hurt, the paralysis of knowing someone i love is hurting in this way ...  and the gentle reminder that life is fragile.

i always try to find the message ... the gift in any struggle.  sometimes i can't feel one without the other.  sometimes i can't feel either one at all.

this isn't the first time i've written about the loss of another person's life.  but just as each person's life is unique, so is each one's effect on the world when they go.

i know what it's like to sit in silence and awe, at a traffic light, and look around and not understand how the world is turning and how no one knows that someone i love is gone.  watching people go through drive-thrus and order burgers and somehow even that doesn't seem right.  like how can things just go on the same when nothing is the same?  shouldn't there be some kind of acknowledgement by the world?  it doesn't seem right or even possible.

i know what it's like to hold a family member who has lost her child and cannot talk, swallow, or barely breathe.

i know what it's like to hold my friend who has lost her husband, and lie in bed with her, without speaking, for weeks.

i know what it's like to ache for someone else's ache.  to hurt and cry along with and for another heart that is floundering.

i just still don't know the words to say.
there never seem to be any words that are the right ones.
there never seem to be any words that help.
at times like this,
there never seem to be any words
at all.

that's all

six months ago my friend callie left this world. it was unexpected. it was shocking. and it was her choice. 

callie's bracelet was on the table.
when i held it, from her wrist to mine,
it was like feeling the pulse of her life.

six months, in the big scheme of things, when you look at a whole entire lifetime, is not that long. 

when you look at a baby and the growth and development from the moment they're born until they're six months old, six months' time is tremendous. 

when you look at it not day by day or even minute by minute, but breath by difficult breath, it can be an eternity.

it can be a nightmare. 

and unfortunately, it can be a reality.

i spent some time recently with callie's mother. we cried a lot. we laughed a lot. how she laughed, i don't know. we listened to each other. we taught each other things we didn't know about callie. we held each other. 

sometimes it happens that we are gifted with the presence of another person and we don't know why it happens when it does ... we might not even think about it. but afterwards we know that it was necessary. that's all. we can feel that we needed to be sharing life with each other at that moment.  life. strength. love. 

as i sat with callie's mom and felt her love and heartache, there were times when her laugh or her words would sound exactly like callie.  it was amazingly freaky and comforting at the same time.  i stared at her in a way i never have before.  i remembered how we first met and how we never would have imagined we would be in this position now.

after holding each other and breathing the same breaths with our faces touching, she got up to get something to give me.  i had not come for anything and certainly did not expect to leave with anything. she knew this, and she placed a bracelet in my hand.  a bracelet of callie's.  i held it in the palm of my hand, i held it to my face, and couldn't let go of it.  again it was like the pulse of her life.  the pulse of the universe.  i put it on and have not taken it off even for a moment.  when i first had the experience which i wrote about, of sitting next to the man on the airplane, taking pictures of his bracelets representing suicide prevention, not knowing that it was just hours after callie had left us, i had no way to fathom that i would be the one wearing a bracelet of the same heartache ... same yet different ... 6 months later.

there are some things that are never the same.

no one's life is ever the same as another's.

no one's grief is ever the same as another's.

and a mother's life after the loss of her child is never the same as her life before.

it isn't an experience that she ever "gets through." 

it isn't something that ever becomes "normal."

as mothers we often questions ourselves when it comes to our parenting:  should i have done that differently?  did i get that right?  was i wrong about that?  did i handle that in the best way?  was that a mistake i just made?  am i screwing up my child? over and over and over.  

a mother who has lost her child to suicide has her own set of additional questions that no one else has. 

i am grateful for callie's life.  i am grateful for the ways she touched so many lives around her.  for those who know callie, they know what i mean, and they know that i am not sanctifying her.  i am grateful for her mother, without whom callie would not have been the person she was and remains to be, to so many others in this world.  

as i sat with callie's mom i could feel not only her heartache and her struggle, but also callie's strength and tenacity.  i could feel callie.  and regardless of anything else, i was so proud of her mom.  not everyone grows up to have such a positive lasting effect on so many others.  not everyone grows up to be a giver.  not everyone grows up and asks that their mother live near them when they don't have to.  not everyone lives with the fearlessness of callie bradley mooney.  she exercised her right to make her own choices, that's for sure.  and her legacy will live on in the hearts and minds and lives of countless other people.  and that will then trickle down to the other lives that those people touch.  and callie would not have done that and been that, if her mother had not been her mother.

i knew while we shared this time, that there were no words i could say that would make anything better.  we both talked in circles with no logical thought patterns, just whatever came to mind and came out of our mouths.  i knew there was nothing i could do.  and i can't explain why or how, but i also knew i needed to be there ... we needed to be there ... at that very moment, having that very experience.  that's all.

you know how when someone's life is over, you have things you wish you had said, things you wish you had done ... it always happens, whether you knew the end was near or whether it was a total unexpected event.  yeah i have those things too ... 

i guess at this moment, with callie's pulse on my own wrist, i just miss her.  

that's all.

suicide prevention lifeline

survivors of suicide

american foundation for suicide prevention
cards callie would love LOL

november 23 is international survivors of suicide day.  click here to get involved:
international survivors of suicide day 2013