What I've Learned in a Year of Living After Suicide Loss

More now than ever I understand that I will carry this loss and tragedy with me forever – in my memories, in my thoughts, in all the life events past and future, with all of the familiar faces and places, in all of the “what will be’s.” I will carry it with me eternally. This is what I have concretely learned in this first year.

And although what I carry and continue to work through for meaning sake can be categorized into clinical classifications – my classification for this eternal forever is still simply encased in the beauty of sadness and love, grief and love, and now one year later, encased in just love. The transformation of the ugliness of love, the transformation of the trauma of love, the transformation of the pain of love, the transformation of the loneliness of love, and allowing these to blend within me to what I am learning as solely, simply, and unconditionally – just the tender, delicate, and fierce beauty of love.

The forever of this is like blowing bubbles that float, bounce, dance and then burst into the invisibility of the air we breathe. The breath we just are/air. We are breathed and created into this life, and we are breathed out of this life – but in between the breath in and the breath out we just are/air. How we “are” is our bubble dance with life and our dance with our spiritual connectedness to ourselves and others. My connectedness with life this past year is in a one-year infancy, quietly and unknowingly revealing me unto the waking insight and perspective on how it is living on this earth, how it is living in spirit, how it is living as spirit.

My perspectives have changed, outlooks are different, deadlines for time are not what they used to be. The deadline for living is what crosses my mind – the scrutiny we place on ourselves for timeliness in our preconceived time limitations – thinking about the future, thinking about the past, thinking about the current moment – all under the constructs of a time pendulum – paying bills by a certain time, meeting an application deadline, celebrating an event on a certain day. Existing is really learning to grow in the current moment of now – the nothingness of it as it is not time – and relating that into the current construct of life, the daily activities and responsibilities I engage as a single mom, a widow, a citizen, an individual person. It is the trying intent of being mindful on a conscious level – a balance of mindful thoughts, mindful words, mindful touch, mindful intentions, mindful steps, mindful living.

When I have periods of intolerable grieving, I somehow move through the transformation of it, and I now know that I am braver than the loneliness of it. If I can allow the deep rest within me, to allow that intricate spiritual mending and allow it to occur in its own current moment of “now” – with my will and surrendered intention of it, it transmutes to love – love in my resuming some comfort in re-engaging the world as a single person without my partner, but as love in all else – to be in service and of service for all interactions of my life moment by moment, the service of empowering the love of each other in all ways unconditionally.

Follow this journey on The Muse of Wildflowers.

If you or someone you know needs help, visit our suicide prevention resources page.
If you need support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. 

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Thinkstock photo by JoseASReyes