| mary c cain |
| Rea mom of Emile | Dissociation |
One of the scariest things I experienced after the death of Emile was dissociation. At the time I didn’t know what it was and I thought there was something very wrong with me. I had this weird feeling that I was disconnected from myself. I was disoriented and walked into door frames, walls and furniture. It felt like my body was an entity on its own and my mind was hanging somewhere above just following myself. This weird state of emotion caused me to have acute anxiety attacks.
I was convinced I was in the grip of insanity and hanging on by a thread. I was sure if I let go I was going to be lost into space and would never return. One day I looked into the mirror and I didn’t know the person looking back at me. It was not that I changed in any way, I just didn’t know the person staring back at me. There is no better way to describe this, I was not familiar with that person who looked at me from the mirror. It felt I could talk to her and she would answer me back. I was absolutely terrified of this and knew I had to get help.
I read countless books and one of them gave the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I recognised the signs as the same I was experiencing. I knew I had to get help and started calling clinics and hospitals for a trauma counsellor. Thank goodness I found one and she helped me to centre myself again. The shock of seeing Emile dead under the tree was too much for me and caused my mind to rebel against the images that plagued me. I thought I was losing control of myself and that I was going to land up in a mental asylum. This was the most horrific feeling I went through.
People think to lose a child is just another kind of loss but the fact is that the shock of that appalling sight hits you so hard that you lose yourself in it at some stage. To see Emile dead under that tree with a rope around his neck was too enormous for me to take in. It was the most gruesome thing I had ever looked at and it shocked me so fiercely that my mind just didn’t want to accept it. It could not be my son, it was incomprehensible and my mind didn’t want to register what my eyes saw. I thank god for giving me the presence of mind to seek professional help, or else I don’t know where I would have been today.
| Rea mom of Emile | A bond of Love |
A mother’s pain when you lose a child is not something that can be reasoned away, it can’t be explained in words for people to really understand the girth of it. When you lose a child it feels as if you have been abducted and left on another planet where people don’t understand your language and you don’t understand theirs. If anyone has the time they can read up about it. To lose a child to suicide is likened to the suffering of holocaust survivors. Can you imagine trying to placate those people with all kinds of word of wisdom or advice? I think not, and that is exactly the way for parent survivors of suicide.
The horrific pain you live with every day of your life is the worst thing that anyone can try to survive. If you have never lost a child there are no way you can ever understand what we go through on a daily basis. Just like a little child who is raped, so is this also not a natural way of things. When you parents die you are an orphan, when a husband dies you are a widow. Why do you think there is no word to call a mother who lost a child? Because it is not in the natural order of things. You carry that child for nine months, you give birth to him and nurture him all his life. You take care of him when he is hurt and you kiss the pain away. You pick him on your lap when he is small and you comfort him and make him feel safe and loved. Have you ever seen a mother Not help her child when he is in pain? It is an inborn instinct to protect our children and when you find yourself in the situation where you child is dead you feel absolute helplessness.
You feel incapacitated and useless as a mother. It is so easy to tell me to think about the wonderful and happy memories I had with Emile, but do you know? That hurts as well, it rips my heart out that there will be no more happiness for me to be had in this life with him. Your heart never heals and only a scab forms over the wound that can be ripped off by any little memory of Emile. I try to live with this as best I can and be there for other mothers who find themselves in this same situation. Because only a mother who has lost a child can really and truly understand what another is feeling.
This is not something that can be fixed, nothing can ever fix my heart.
I miss him every day of my life. I wake up in the morning with him on my mind and I go to sleep with him on my mind. It is not just that my child died but a whole future I was going to have with him is now a big black void gaping in front of me. There is a bond between a mother and a child that can never be broken, it is so easy for people to say to me that I must think about the wonderful place he is in now. I don’t want him there in that place, I want him here with me. However, I can’t and I try as hard as I can to live with this. I will always love my son and nothing can ever take that away, so nothing can ever make me feel better about it.
I wish someone will understand what I am trying to say here. Nothing you can say will ever make it better for me, nothing at all. Not all the wise words or good advice in the world will ever take my pain and longing for my son away. I don’t like to feel this way, if I had any say in the matter or if there was any way to do it, I would not cry about him and I would be happy and have a great life without him. It is impossible because I have tried for almost four years now and it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately.
| Warren Guneratne |
My precious son committed suicide on 28/1/08. It took us all by surprise as we thought he was happy and very connected with his group of friends and in life generally. He returned to college and was focused and was doing very well. It was something he had wanted to do.
The day he committed suicide, he lied in bed close to me for a few minutes, I sensed something was not right. He got out of bed, hugged me and said I love you mum and told me he was going out to have a cigarette. Instead he got into his car and drove away. I thought he was going to visit a friend.
It was not until the police arrived with the terrible news that I realised his worried mind took over.
Life changed from that day. I cannot image my life returning to what it was before this incident. IHe was my baby son, I lived for him, we were life best friends and now my best friend is gone forever. I tell me him daily that I want him by my side when I died his hand will reach out to mine and will continue our journey together again.
I have made a memorial garden for my son, and tried many ways to cope, but the grief takes over in the end.
Rea I understand exactly the feelings you say you had when Emile left, I am still going through it. Nobody seems to understand that time means nothing, getting over it will never happen. We just learn to have two faces towards such people. In fact, I feel worse as time goes by; I long to hug my son one more time.