I am sharing what I have learned after losing my beautiful man to suicide in the hope that it helps someone else, in the hope that there can be some meaning from this tragedy. Grief is profoundly personal. I hope the bravery of my sharing my own experience will help others pull through.
Grieving, so impossibly painful and raw – both physically and emotionally.
The shock, the suddenness, the disbelief, the numbness causing such body and gut-wrenching reactions.
The body: shakes relentlessly and uncontrollably; unbidden tears cascade down my face; howls emit from the pit of my stomach like from some deranged and unseen beast; my stomach twists in knots sending me running to the smallest room, trying desperately not to disgrace myself.
Days spent focusing on surviving each minute, one minute at a time, unable to envisage nor comprehend existence beyond that current moment in time.
Days spent paralysed with anxiety, fear and incomprehension.
It is so desperately lonely attempting to make sense of the inconceivable, unexplainable, unforeseeable and unimaginable; trying to heal a broken heart when a chunk of me has been ripped away, never to be returned.
And worst of all there is no factory reset nor rewind button to change what has been done in that one momentary flash in time with irrevocable consequences.
At the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, for victims of Japanese imprisonment while building the Burma Railway, some prisoners were lucky enough to receive memorial plaques. Most spoke stoically of bravery and giving their life to God and the Queen, for the better good et al. Here are some examples: ‘We Loved You Dear But God Loved You Best’; ‘A Service Nobly Done. You May Lie In Foreign Lands But We’re Proud Of You, Dear’. But one really stood out. It simply said ‘Some Day “Tom” I will Understand’!
I grieve because I have loved;
I grieve because my significant love has been taken from me;
I grieve because my hopes, plans and dreams going forward have disappeared.’
What can I do to help stem these senseless losses and reduce the ensuing grief?
What as a people can we do?
What as a nation can we do?
Words by Michelle
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