Child of Suicide

       The child of a suicide, that term always bothered me. My mom was a suicide. No, my mom was a woman in horrible pain, emotional and physical. When do people get defined by their death? If someone is killed in an auto accident they don’t become an accident. Even as early as my mother’s funeral I heard the term. The preacher, who had never met her, used it in his eulogy. He hoped that in the two hours that she lived with the bullet in her chest that she repented and asked for forgiveness so that she wouldn’t spend her eternity in hell as suicides must. Nice. Let’s put that thought in a fifteen year olds head, like your mom putting a bullet in herself wasn’t disturbing enough. I knew a lot about death and loss even at that age, lucky me. I had dark thoughts too from time to time, but I had my grandfather, I had the river and woods, I had books. It was enough.
      I was angry for a very long time. Not just angry, pissed, seriously and royally pissed. How dare she quit? How dare she leave me? Well, the world doesn’t revolve around you little girl. My life experiences up until that point had already taught me that. Her suicide just confirmed it in a very tangible way. I didn’t really even know her and I think that was what pissed me off the most. Now any chance of knowing her was gone, unchangeably and irrevocably gone, written in stone, so to speak.
      I’ve out lived my mother by thirteen years. The year that I was the age she was when she died was a shit kicker of a year. I never imagined myself being older than she was when she died. When I would think about being older, it was a big blank nothing. I had children, so I couldn’t just quit. I was already dealing with pain in my joints and chest that came and went with no reason at all. Same as she had. The difference was that as tired and frustrated as I got at times, I never wanted to die. I’ve come to believe that she didn’t want to die either; she just wanted the pain and uncertainty to stop.
      I have forgiven her over the years as I have faced hardships and heart breaks. Living can be hard! I have also come to know that it wasn’t up to me to forgive her. I needed to forgive her for my own peace of mind. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t need to carry that, it wasn’t mine to carry.
      I guess the bottom line is I have something that she didn’t have. I have people I care about and love and who care about me and I have the hope that it will get better