backpack

It’s been just over two years since my father’s suicide. Some days it feels as if it was just yesterday that I was standing in Whole Foods and got the call. Still on other days, it feels as if a whole lifetime has passed. I know that I have found healing, just as I know that I will never be healed. I am learning to live with his death, just as I know that I will never be at peace with it. Such is the truth of a suicide loss.

This journey has been the hardest one I have ever traveled. In the beginning, the pain was so great I carried it daily like an enormous backpack on my shoulders. It weighed me down, as I was constantly aware of the burden I was struggling to bear. My knees would buckle, I was winded and wounded.  Every step forward was a struggle. I slipped, I faltered, I begged for the chance to go back to what was. I wanted to go home to before. That backpack felt as if it was full of stones, bricks and boulders. And I often questioned just how long I’d be able to carry it, even if I’d be able to carry it. It is no exaggeration to say that it took every ounce of my strength to keep going day in and day out. It would’ve been easier to stay in bed, wrapped in my sorrow. The terrain over which I had to lug my burden, so unfamiliar and barren, only made every step more uncertain. If there were rocks upon my shoulders, it felt as if my feet were carrying them too. Others did what they could to lighten my load, but in truth, it was and still is mine to bear.

If the backpack was the metaphor then, two years later I can say that there are days I still must carry it. The truth that I rarely speak out loud is that I am in pain every single day. It lives within me and in one form or another, it reminds me daily that it is there. But I am grateful that it isn’t always so large, so heavy, so overwhelming. There are days the backpack can stand empty in the corner, and I can carry the pain in my pocket. Some days it grows a bit larger, and I must hold it in a change purse, a fanny pack or a messenger bag. It is with me on those days, I’m aware of it, but it doesn’t weigh me down in quite the same manner.  My knees don’t buckle, I can stand up straight and my stride is far more steady & strong.

Those days allow me to breathe more easily. I can live more in the present, taking in the joy, the blessings and the love that surrounds me. I can relish even the most mundane of tasks, because it feels somehow more normal to partake in them. It is a new normal yes, but it is evidence that I am surviving and even thriving.

I wish I could plan the level of pain each day will bring, or my ability to shape how it impacts me. I try to set my intentions for the day through meditation. I use breathing techniques to center myself. I sit in stillness, and I listen to what I am feeling. Some days I get only static. Other days offer me clarity. Some days looking inward is so painful I must open my eyes, and still other days I find it soothing & comforting.

No, I never know what the day ahead will bring. The morning may allow me to slip my sorrow into my pocket, but the afternoon brings with it a storm that forces me to pick up that backpack again. And still by evening, perhaps the pain has eased and I can  hold it in the palm of my hand, look at it and lay it to rest.

The point is this…

I am carrying it.  I am living with it. I have not allowed it to hold me in one space or place. No matter how heavy it gets, I have moved along this path, one that is so far from linear. And as I look back at how far I have come, it gives me the faith that I can continue onward.

The pain of my father’s suicide will always be with me. But I have discovered that I have the strength to hold it, to bear it and even to let it go. And for that, I am grateful.

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy