A new friend of mine, Becky Santo, who I met through my brother’s suicide is going through a terribly hard time right now. Her son died the same way last year.  I’ve been surprised how you form fast bonds in a situation like this, because the level of openness it takes to discuss the pain and other issues involved breaks down a lot of barriers.

Becky is a small business owner — she refurbishes furniture and sells knick knacks and candles and other bits of charming sunny home decor .  Business fell off with the recession, and her son’s death didn’t help things.  She thought she would have to close the store, but, friends helped her out with a move to a new location in Homewood. She was making a fresh start.  Though it is so very hard to move on, her outlook was improving.  But this Saturday, she got robbed at her new location. Ironically, it’s one of those places that you’d actually feel very safe visiting.  I suppose that was the idea, a nice low profile little boutique on a shaded street.  No one would expect it.

I’ve visited her since then, and other business owners on the street have been introducing themselves and offering to help her watch.  Still, she’s been manning the store all alone, and is frightened and simply overwhelmed.  Every time she seems to be doing better, she gets kicked off her feet again, she says.

So, if anyone is in the mood to do something just plain nice and helpful, maybe you could stop by Minerva’s in Homewood this month. It’s on Linden Avenue, which is just a right turn off of Oxmoor.  Even if you don’t buy anything, every moment a legitimate customer is in the store, it eases her mind.  And if you do find something cute, hey, all the better.

I really did mean all of that I said about needing to keep writing. However, I’ve been very adamant about keeping myself too busy to sit down and take the time to write at the computer.  If I have been at the computer, I’ve only been on to goof off and try to escape for a bit.  I’m trying to work back into a schedule now, though.  School is coming up soon, and I’ve got to get some sort of structure back into my life.  I guess I’ll just catch the blog up with where I am now.

After the last  post, I did go to the Survivors of Suicide group meeting.  All I knew is that would be hard and it would help.  It was very informal, and basically everyone in the group just took a turn updating on themselves.  The date was exactly a month after my brother died, and so painful.  My grief was the freshest, and I was the youngest person there. Everyone in the room had been in my same state just months or years earlier.  They all understood exactly what I was going through, and there was no awkwardness or expectations on me.  The outpouring of love in the room was heartbreaking.  If only these men had tapped into the strength and love in the room.

My brother told me, not a week before he died, that I was his best friend.  My heart just filled with love; I believed so firmly that was a sign that we were rebuilding that old trust again. Sadly, this is the second time I’ve had to make my peace with never speaking to him again, without so much as a good-bye from him before he deserted everyone.  So in some ways, I’ve already done this once. But the sword has two edges, because I feel like he’d still be around if I had only done something, been better to him, not thought, Oh great, more drama! while I tried to help him through his newest issues.  In fact, I’ve finally realized why I tend to blame myself for whatever happens around me.  I take control over the situation by taking the blame on myself.  If I did something wrong, I can do something to undo the situation, or at the very least, mitigate it somehow. As I’ve been reading more and more, I’m realizing that I wasn’t in the position to change his mind, even had I known it.

Blaming myself isn’t going to give me any control over this situation.  But that hasn’t stopped me from trying.  Oh, my brain knows better, but my heart has been too devastated to listen to reason.  I couldn’t have fixed it, and I’m also finally realizing I can’t will him back to life.  Seriously, this was a major theme of my thoughts. I’d go to bed, try to will time backward and the last two months into a horrible dream, and spend all my dreams trying to rewrite it.  I’ve finally moved past that bit of irrationality.

And generally, I’m having more and more good days. Every two weeks, I have a time set aside to just deal with this at the group meeting, and that helps.  While I ache that my brother can’t be here for it, life is sweet again.  My thoughts return again and again with a need to understand and make sense of it all, but it’s not the dominant thought anymore.  When the kids are playing with me, I’m not sad that they look like he did as a child, or trying to figure out how to keep them from some tragic decision 20 years hence.  I’m beginning to see more to life than death again.

Returning to blogging is difficult for me, but I strongly feel it’s very necessary.  I’ve rewritten my first paragraph about four times already, because I don’t know where to start again. I’m determined to get through this, though, so I’m just going to stick with whatever I type this go round.  Today is actually the first day in nearly a month that I’ve felt like myself.  I’m sad and weird and life is slightly surreal, but the underlying me-ness is assertive today.  That’s weird, because yesterday was absolutely horrible, for no real reason except that it was.

Most of the people who read this blog probably know by now that my brother didn’t just die, he committed suicide.  Specifically, he hanged himself.  It hurts very badly to type that out. Originally, I wasn’t going to even bring that up on here, but it’s all I’ve thought about in the past weeks, and I really don’t have to worry about protecting his privacy anymore, do I?  Much of my talk on the 7 Habits sprung directly from conversations the two of us had been having about becoming more productive, effective people, and dealing with others.

I haven’t known what to do with myself, so I’ve done one of the things I do best — research.  It turns out that suicide is one of the most traumatic of all griefs to weather.  Murder doesn’t even trump it, because with suicide, the survivor deals with all the emotions of a murder plus knowing that the very person they are mourning was the murderer.  Complicated emotions are hard to deal with, and every single thought I’ve had is common.  The most important decision I can make is to allow myself to feel them, and not torture myself for feeling or showing pain.  If I can’t talk to my usual friends, I need to find somewhere to talk.

I’ve read estimates of 2-8 years before I pull myself together.  I’ve read lots of “don’t make any big life decisions for a year” speeches.  These statements produce an angry That’s unacceptable!!! from my brain.  But I have to admit, that when I think about my plans to return to school, and think of taking the math placement tests I’ve got sitting in my inbox, that same brain screams at me that I’ve got more important things to be thinking on.  Of course, figuring this mess out isn’t going to happen, but nurturing myself and taking the time to grieve and mourn and get my head on straight is better spent now than years down the road breaking down because I sucked it up and didn’t embarrass myself.

My thoughts on blogging have changed drastically in the past few weeks.  Actually, since last week was the first week I wasn’t dealing with funeral arrangements, family, or a kid in the hospital, I should say that last week I thought long and hard about my worries about this blog and decided I just didn’t care as much about privacy or about what my readers thought about my posts, at least for a while.  Ladyglutter.com will be filled with my struggle, and I have no idea how long that might last.   While I won’t be laying my soul completely bare here, I have some major healing to do.  I’m usually very private with my struggles, but this has become so life-altering that I am really forced to be open about what’s going on, anyway. If a small part of that is working it out on the web, at least this way I haven’t totally abandoned something that I really enjoy.  Even if blogging is hard and I ramble something fierce, this way I’ll keep doing it.

As for my tiny audience, I love you guys, but right now, my foremost concern is myself. I have to get to where I can think straight.  I’ve already seen that there some people are not able to deal with my dwelling on intense personal pain.  If you stop reading, I won’t be judgemental. I can deal with it, writing is cathartic to me, even  if no one reads what I write.  I also might attract some voyeurs.  If that happens, I can only hope that the things I type will help someone else out there who is either struggling, or knows someone else who is.