The Demons Won…

Letters

 

Dear Pooh,

Today is 2 weeks since you made the choice to leave us. You were only 28! You left me, Dad, Danny, Bobby, Michelle and your children, Mikey & Maddie. That doesn’t even include the rest of the family. We know you had an addiction problem and we tried for 10 years to help you fight the demons. We helped you get into rehab when you asked for the help. We were more than willing to help you again and again until you were able to be strong enough not to give in to the cravings, the urges, the demons.

I am so thankful for the 7 months you were clean between last year and this year. And then the demons beckoned and we lost you first to them and then to the darkness. I have so many good memories but for the past 2 weeks all I can see is your face when we found you. I have nightmares, I can’t eat and Dad moved back to NJ so now I’m here in Florida with no family. Michael is helping me as best he can but he doesn’t know the grief I’m feeling. Losing someone to suicide is so much different than losing someone to cancer or even a heart attack. There are so many unanswered questions and no funeral services. We will have a memorial service next month when I go home for the birth of your nieces new baby. This was supposed to be a happy event. You’ve taken that from me. Now I will be there for the baby but then I have to help our siblings and Father plan your service. What you did was selfish. I understand you were in pain and missing mom and felt as though you couldn’t live without her. Now you’re with her and we’re here trying to process all of this.

I’m reaching out for help because I can’t eat or sleep. I’m having nightmares that are jolting me from my sleep and I wake trembling and crying and my heart feeling like it’s broken and never going to work again. I’m so thankful for my friends but even they are unsure how to proceed with me. I need to find a way to process this so I can get back to living. I have to live my life and in doing so, I hope you’ll be there watching over us all. In time, we will meet again but I have too much to live for to allow your untimely death to ruin that for me. I have enough issues with the fibro, problems with my legs and everything else to allow your suicide to break me. I AM strong and I WILL survive, for both of us. I love you and will miss you every second of every day.

Always,

Donna

 

Dear Danny

Letters

Dear Danny, it’s only been 4 days since you took your own life. I’m so sad and im angry with you. You left me an only child. You left me to take care of mom by myself. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I’m sad because I didn’t know that you were hurting so bad. That you thought this was the only way out. No one knew, everyone is shocked. We don’t understand and we will never have an answer. I’m sorry you we hurting. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I wish you would have reached out to me, to someone, to anyone. If I had one more day with you I would ask how you were. I would ask if you were happy. I would tell you how much you meant to me and tell you how much I loved you. I would do something silly just to hear your chuckle. I would tell you how smart you were and how I always looked up to you. I would tell you that no matter what I would always be here for you. I’ll never be able to tell you any of it now because you chose to leave. It’s not how it was supposed to be. My head hurts from crying. My eyes won’t stop. My heart is breaking…..

Debbie

 

Hey.

Letters

It’s a weird thing to say, huh? Hey. Like you never even left. I must tell you, that you made yourself die, but you left me here dead. I think I’m part alive part dead since you’re gone and I don’t know how to heal. I’m so hurt, and so HOLLOW, I don’t even know if I have anything left in me. Some days are okay, and some are awful. I don’t know how to cope with it, how to handle it, how to calm down, nothing. I’m so angry, but so sad at the same time that it makes the appearance that I don’t care. I think our mother is angry because I haven’t been at your grave for months I think. I hope you are not angry, but I just can’t go. People would think that since your suicide is a year and a half ago, things would be better now, but they’re not. NOT A LITTLE BETTER. Sometimes worse I think. And I’m angry and I’m disappointed and sad and horrified and scared and empty and depressive and hollow. Just hollow. I know it’s not okay, but I can’t help it. I don’t know how to help myself and no one else helps me. You see, you left, and my mother, our mother, is left without a son. And she is heart broken. But I…I sometimes have the feeling that I lost a brother and a mother. I know she is trying her best, but things are just not working. How could you break our hearts like that? I know I judge you too much, but what are you expecting? You, who are my older brother, who should protect me my whole life, who should spent the most of time in my life with me, left me, and broke my heart the most from all the people that ever broke my heart. And I’m angry because I know that I could have helped you. We all could. You left a group of people who admire you behind you, and we all could have helped.

People say that they feel their near dead ones with them, that they feel that they are present and that they are watching over you. I don’t feel that. Where are you? You said you loved me, yet….I don’t feel you. Or maybe I don’t let you near? Because I’m too angry and I can’t forgive you.

No one ever asks me how I’m doing, you know. Everyone says ”How’s your mother? Take good care of her, she’s hurting now, having a hard time.” Of course I will take care of her, because my broken heart doesn’t matter. I’m just your sister, right? I can’t be that hurt, right? But I am. I am broken and I am torn to pieces. I’m a shadow of what once used to be a human and guess what? No one even cares, because I’m just your sister.

Sibling-less-ness

Guest Post

Sibling-less-ness. This word I use to describe my feelings of loneliness, my missing my siblings, my alone-ness. It’s the feeling which causes me to cry or being jealous of my friends and co-workers who have their siblings to see and talk to. My feelings that my siblings-in-law are poor replacements for my brothers.

I lost my older brother Jimmy on Feb 25, 1999 age 18 when I was only 11 years old. This was a shock and something that effected my life for years. While his death helped to shape me into who I am, it no effects me in my life on a regular basis. Even when he was alive we had a rocky relationship.

I lost my younger brother John on Jan 27, 2013. He was 20 and I was 25. He was a post-deployment suicide. That military knock on the door at 6 am was one of the hardest things I will probably ever experience. I feel part of the worst of it was standing with my mom and asking what happened hearing that he had been found hanging in his room by his roommate and mom’s response “NO THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE BECAUSE I FOUND HIS BROTHER HANGING DOWN THERE” as she pointed down the stairs.

This started my alone-ness, my sibling-less-ness. I had already dreaded the question “How many siblings do you have?” sometimes it was 2 sometimes just 1 brother. A couple of weeks ago it was “I have 2 brothers in heaven” Today with my school-age day care class (25 kids ages 5-12), I told them “I have 2 brothers but am an only child”

Elizabeth

“I move the stars for no one…”

Guest Post

You left approximately May 25-26th 2015…After the worst fight we have ever had. Going a few days with out speaking with you wasn’t anything new after a fight, but this time it was physical, you said “say one more thing” and I did because I was so tired of you not living life, not being who you should be. You stormed and the rest is history. I know you missed mom, but 7 months isn’t long enough to get through things. 2 weeks isn’t enough to get through anything. My heart is so empty, a great big empty. Yes, your squishy is doing her thing, but she has terrible night terrors and I am not sure if it’s because you were so angry and methodical when you decided to exit or because she genuinely knows that you aren’t alive. Babies do have that uncanny knack for seeing things…You could have just given things more time, moved, changed zipcodes…You were NEVER alone!!! The pit in my stomach feels like it will forever be on a spinning ride and there is only momentary relief. 7 months since mommy died and now you are gone…Damn all the Drs that perpetually kept you in the system, damn me for fighting with you, but damn you for thinking this was the end. Maybe for you, but for us- its only the dreadful beginning…Day by day, minute by minute, I am having a thousand emotions. I will never leave because I do love my life. I just wish/ed that you found that same love. Whatever it was. Maybe I am to blame, maybe you are. I am not sure and does it matter now? You are gone, girl. And your niece doesn’t have you, your family, friends and Daddy don’t have you and I certainly don’t, either. But I miss you like crazy, you stupid girl. Maybe in time I can forgive you for dipping out this way, but for right now…I am so miserable that I just can’t find solace. Even in my own child.

Erica

 

I miss you, Steve

Letters

It has been a little over 2 weeks since you left the ranch. God, if I had ever known it was this bad I would have been there for you. I think there were many things not going right in your world and it was time for a change. There is a huge part of me that wishes you had taken me with you. That wouldn’t solve anything. I am very worried about Debbie. She does have a counselor. I am very glad for that. She has kids and grand kids to help ease the pain a little. I hope it works. It is a second by second process. This has been a horribly sad day for me. I have cried a lot today. I miss you a lot today. I am so hoping you have peace in your life now. I pray for that. Take care of all my animals on the Rainbow Bridge as you will.

Jane

 

Am I the Only One?

Guest Post

So, I wanted to go ahead and write up a summary of my experience with my brother’s illness and death and how it has impacted me and the way I see myself and the world really quick. I hope there are some people out there who can understand and maybe share my feelings so I don’t feel so alone and selfish anymore (that’s kind of been my default setting since my brother first went to the hospital when I was about 5 years old…). I was the oldest, three years older than Alex. He had the odds stacked against him from the start, he was born prematurely, and on Friday the 13th to boot! I was 3 years old when he was born. He was an adorable baby, all blonde hair and blue eyes. I honestly don’t remember much before he got sick. When he was 18 months old, he got sick and my parents rushed him to the E.R. I remember being at my grandparents house and hearing the call for the Life Flight helicopter on their police scanner. He was taken to a pediatric hospital and diagnosed with a brain tumor. After that, he spent more time in the hospital than home (though he did go into remission once, it didn’t last). Of course my parents stayed with him most of the times he was in the hospital (That is something I understand and don’t feel resentment for, he was little and sick and in pain, of course they had to be with him) and I spent most of my time when they weren’t home with my paternal grandparents who became basically my second set of parents (they were amazing and I am thankful every day that I had them there for me). Alex died on Memorial Day, 1993. He was 5 and I was 9. I remember that day more clearly than any other moment of my childhood.

A few years after my brother died, my parents got divorced. I know this is something fairly common when a young child is lost (though from what I understand, my mother wanted to leave before he was born but was talked out of it), and I’m actually thankful they didn’t stay together, none of us were happy when they were together. They are both happily re-married. I lived with my dad after the divorce, I was always close to him, and to this day, I don’t hear from my mother much. She moved to Canada and I’m lucky if I get a phone call from her twice a year (my birthday [when she remembers] and Christmas).

I know no one in my family ever wanted to make me feel less or unimportant, but my entire childhood was about Alex. What can Alex do, where can Alex be, how well he’s doing. Even after he died, he was always one of the most popular topics at family gatherings. Because he was so rarely home after his diagnoses, I never really got to know him, and even now, it’s hard to say I really loved him (which makes me feel like the worst person in the world). Even today, even with my dad, who I KNOW loves me more than anything on Earth, I still feel like people would have been happier, or better off if it had been me that got sick. I know in my head that’s not true, but my heart still feels it.

To this day, I feel unimportant. That I don’t matter. That if I dropped off the face of the earth, sure, people would be sad for a bit, but my friends, my family, they’d all move on and rarely think of me again. I’ve had these feeling since I was 5 years old, and this is the first time, at 31, that I’ve ever truly expressed them. And my heart is racing. I feel like a horrible person. But I had to let it off my chest.

 

Thanks guys… -Emily

 

Taking back 27

Guest Post

 

On June 27, 2011 my only sibling, James, took his own life. Every day since has been different and I’ve learned to construct my “new normal” since I’m now an only child. Six months later, December 27, 2011, my paternal grandfather passed away. He and James shared the same name, and attending two memorial services, exactly 6 months apart, and hearing two very different versions of life for the JWK’s was excruciating.

Each June 27 and December 27 my aunt goes on a trip to “Take back 27” and this year I’m joining her, along with my mom and another aunt. I have mixed feelings on if this will work, but I’m remaining optimistic it will.

 

-Michelle