Almost a month has passed...

Last night I attended a "survivors of suicide" group at Dane County Mental Health. Heading there, I felt fairly solid... I was praying, processing, and, I thought, proceeding.

When I arrived I was warmly greeted and entered a room that soon filled up with about 15 people. As the group did a "check in" I felt that now-familiar deep feeling of grief starting to build up again.

By the time it was my turn I could hardly speak. "It's been nearly a month now..." was all I could gasp. My grief was still raw -- like a deep wound within me.

But thankfully I was in familiar territory. Everyone around me knew the pain I was feeling... some members of the group had been coming here for years... often after a child or grandchild had taken their life. Many of them were still experiencing the raw pain of a family suicide.

I feel like a person who has not only been shot, but been "machined gunned!" It has been a series of emotional wounds from my grandaughter Allison's death in a traffic accident three years ago, to Sabine's cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant, my daughter Yumi's deployment to Afghanistan, Sabine's cancer flaring up earlier this summer and now Matt's suicide... How much more, Lord?  I am remembering your promise of not sending me more than I can bear...  I hold you to it, God!!

I don't want to feel like another Job (well, I don't because he seemed never to get angry at what was happening to him) but Job didn't have a suicide on top of everything else!  Maybe that would have made him angry!

My sense is that these events are going to take me a long time to recover. And, as I mentioned to Sabine this morning during our walk, I will not rule out one-on-one counselling on top of all the other prayer and support I feel from friends and family.  Anything to get through this.

Sabine tells me she thinks she is better able to handle this because she knows she has little time left and cannot afford to spend it in grief or anger.  Matt had a choice.  It was not an accident and his choice, no matter how we see it, has now brought peace to a most troubled life.

So, I try and practice my preaching: to pray, process, and proceed. But it is easier said than done. It is so easy to get stuck in anger (or as one person said last night, it's not anger, but RAGE!) and, yes, blame.  I can easily shift into the blame-game.  There is plenty of blame to go around but all it will do is drag me down into that pit.  The old saying is that you should never wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty yet the pig loves it!  Still blame has a sweet taste to it...

All of us who are struggling with a family suicide are surrounded and buffeted by all these feelings -- anger, rage, blame, sorrow, sadness, guilt, "what ifs," and deep, gnawing grief. We name it. We talk about it. Through this we are supported and loved. We lick our wounds... we go forward... even if ever so slowly.