A New Twist

Here is a new twist on the past.

I am dumping old emails from my work email account. We are getting ready to move to a new buuilding, with all new equipment, and we were told to do this.

As I read through the old emails from a year ago, I am horrified to discover that this is a countdown to Maris's death.

2009 was a bad year for me as well as for Maris. I am reading old correspondence pertaining to the Glenview Veterans Oral History Project, and it is bringing back all the misery I went through with that. That misery is co-mingling with the misery I now feel knowing that a year ago, Maris only had 4 more months to live.

If only I had known.....of course ,this has been the mantra all along.

When people are dying of a terminal illness, even if they are in misery, they (and their loved ones) can still make some plans for how to spend their remaining time.

It causes me endless misery that Maris may have been carrying out plans he had made for his remaining time. We will never know. The things he did that summer might have been things he had been planning for a long time as ways he wanted to spend his final time. When I talked to him about all the things he still wanted to do, I thought we were talking about what he wanted to do before leaving Hawaii...not before leaving this world.

Perhaps Maris had the foresight to plan. But i was too blind, and had no foresight. I thought we still had years remaining to us. I had no idea my son was dying of a terminal disease called suicide.

If I had realized he had this illness, I would have taken a medical leave of absence and done with him all the really important things that I needed to do with him, and that I thought we would do when he came home.

But that was not part of his plan for himself.

This is one of those mistakes from which I will never recover.

Mary Kelly, 1931-2010

Another reason I did not have time to blog was because the last few weeks were filled with attempts to help care for our dear friend, Mary Kelly, who died on May 24.

Mary loved Maris. She felt she had a special connection with him from the time he came into this world. She was devastated when he died, and I am not surprised that she has followed him into the spirit world a mere 7 months later.

The penultimate time I saw Mary, when it seemed clear she was dying, and was barely conscious, I asked her to carry my love to Maris. I told her I was envious that she would see him before I would; but that she was so blessed...because she would be seeing him.

I wonder if he met her when she passed over.

Mary's heart was so full of generous love for so many people. I am sure she is having a great time in the spirit world. I pray Maris is having a good time with her, and that they are getting caught up with each other, too.

Getting Caught Up

I have not blogged in a while.

My thoughts continue to be consumed with remorse, grief, and horror.

Every day I ask myself over and over what is wrong with me? How could I not know the extent to which Maris was depressed and suffering? why did it never occur to me that he might take his own life?

I thought depression was something people just put up with, until the day they overcame it. It never occurred to me that people sometimes die of depression.

How could I be so ignorant?

I have not read anything in the last 7 or 8 months that was not in some way about depression. Every sentence i read is a horrible realization.

Is this picture the face of depression?

To be aware of depression, you have to read between the lines, and watch for tiny clues that do not add up...and to take them VERY SERIOUSLY.

I will never again take ANYTHING for granted.