May 23, 2006

May 23

Spring took a long time coming this year. B's suicide took place in early fall. The winter seemed to go on forever, rainier and gloomier than almost any winter I can remember...but very gradually spring crept in. It aways does.

I haven't written again in a long while. The words just weren't coming to me. And there was so much to do, to learn, to take care of. Nearly nine months have gone by since B died...but somehow it seems a lifetime away to me. I see that as part of God's healing mercy.

The day after B died I had a lot of things to think about and take care of. My sister and I had spent that long, nightmare of a night with me talking and her listening. Morning came and more hours passed. God had crept relentlessly back into my heart, my thoughts, my emotions. Somehow I allowed Him to comfort me knowing full well that I deserved the opposite.

I now believe it was only my former grounding in the fullness of His grace that allowed me to let Him in again without any fear or distance. I clung to Him that morning...as my very Life and my only Hope.

But even at a time like that...one is not allowed the luxury of simply clinging. The day of the suicide had passed... It was already a new day and B's family in another state still didn't know. I knew I owed it to B and to them to be the one to tell them. I don't remember what I said. I know God must have been speaking through me because my sister tells me I handled it as well and as gently as anyone could have. I cared. I was concerned about how the news would effect other people... I was worried about the shockwave that was about to hit them. I'd sealed myself off from others for so long that these feelings were almost alien to me, but they were very real. The Spirit was already building a new me.

Only God kept me going that first day...moving...talking. I had made the decision to send my son to school in the morning. I know that sounds odd but he truly didn't understand any of it and we felt that keeping to his regular routine and being away from the worst of the shock and sadness would be better for him. A bit after noon I got a phonecall from his teachers. He was just back to school for the year and had been in this new classroom for only a few days. The teacher told me that he had had a bad BM all over himself and that they had cleaned him up as best they could but I would have to come get him.

Jesse had been toilet trained four or five times in his life and each time lost the ability again. He seems to have a strange condition when it comes to his bowel movements. He won't go at all for five or six days...and then he will have diarrhea for a day. Generally he somehow manages to save this for weekends. This day it had happened at school which was very unusual. Do I think it had anything to do with the tragedy? No...I honestly don't. It just happened. Somehow this seemed the hardest thing to cope with that first day. It felt like insult added to injury. Why God?

My sister drove me to the school. I remember my face was such a red, puffy mess! I had been crying all night...I was still crying. I had to walk into the the busy classroom and face his new teachers. What were they thinking? "I want you to know I'm not crying about Jesse. Jesse's father committed suicide yesterday." I was that blunt. I'll never forget their faces. They got teary and gave me big hugs but had no idea what to say. We put Jesse in the car and took him back home.

I needed to be alone for a while. I went off by myself into one of the bedrooms and I cried and prayed. I don't remember what I prayed. It was more of an internal, frantic screaming. He held me. I desperately needed to know that B was okay. He was GONE forever. So hard to fathom this. God was there with me, closer than ever before in my life, and I couldn't really wrap my mind around that yet either. I think if I prayed in words at all they were probably akin to "I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." and "Is he okay? Is he okay? Is he okay?" God held me. Exhaustion crept in and I eventually went still and dreamy.

Horror receded and softer images began to well up in my mind. Images of B talking so excitedly about God's grace way back when. More recent images of B defiantly telling me that he still believed in God even if I didn't. Most of all...an image of B putting Jesse to bed night after night after night...even during the worst of his illness, and every night ending his good-night words to Jesse with "and Jesus always loves you, no matter what!"

I remembered just then how I'd often suffered through silent bitterness when B said those words to Jesse. Our marriage was a torturous shambles and perhaps B had spent the entire day either strung out on his meds or frantically worrying and pacing and rubbing his head and sometimes crying or screaming. This good-night phrase on top of all that had often seemed ludicrous to me. Now I silently thanked God for B's beautiful testimony brought back to my mind at this crucial moment.

Finally, for the first time in a long, long while, I picked up a Bible and just opened it randomly and started to read. People may say what they like about that, but God met me right where I was at that moment and gave me an unshakeable soul-deep conviction that B was with Him. The story sprang up from the pages of how a boy child with siezures had been thrown to the ground but Jesus had picked him up, healed him and returned him to his father. In that moment I KNEW that the Lord had been right there with B at the moment of his death, picked him up from the ground and healed him of all his injuries and his illness, all worries and pain, and had returned him to his heavenly Father. Anyone is entitled to doubt and think what they wish, yet it wasn't merely the words read but the absolute conviction He fixed into my heart as I read them. It has never been shaken.