I did not mean we were unhappy with each other. On the contrary, I don't think we could be more loving to and with each other. I meant how stuck I was with the situation, without admitting or verbalizing I was stuck. Despite not feeling or verbalizing my stuck-ness, Eric saw and felt everything. He could not have a clearer mind. He has always been the clear-minded and perceptive one. He has felt and known our stuckness for a long time. There was no way of unstucking his condition. Undiagnosed, intense, nagging, unpredictable chronic pain had a death grip on my husband for years; literally and figuratively. It was a mental anguish. Eric could no longer live the kind of life he considers meaningful and worthwhile.
My husband's suicide was not due to sickness of his mind. His mind was completely clear. The fact was, he got dealt a crappy hand of cards, and his physical body could no longer sustain his drive and his preferred lifestyle. He stayed in the game for as long as he could, and played it magnificently well. Along the way, he used his crappy hand of cards to benefit many. When he was done playing, he took care of everything he could. And he folded.
Some people can pop pills, eat Cheetos, and watch TV on the couch all day long. Not my husband. That will never be acceptable for him. I respect and accept that.
My husband always liked to keep things painfully simple.
Any persons who remotely tried to compare Eric's pain - physical, mental, or emotional - to their own would still instantly anger me. I find it unbearable to listen to people comparing their situations to what Eric endured for seven years, and worked EVERY SINGLE DAY to improve. I am filled with internal conflicts. I am conflicted with feeling compassionate towards good but irrelevant intentions. I struggle to accept people's attempts to find the common ground with me; to try to relate. I struggle to see the likeness of a death resulted from a car accident to a suicide. I refuse to listen to comparisions such as the loss of a relationship - a break up or a divorce - to the death of my husband. I could not accept stories of "similar" back pain. I ought to be grateful to all those well-intended good wishes, but I am not. And I struggle with my seemingly ungrateful behaviors. Yet, I cannot fake gratitude. I am not willing to diminish and compare Eric's death to someone else's. Ever.
And so, I toil over it quietly.
My senses are hyper-ultra-sensitive. I do not want to hear others "understand." I do not want anyone to "know" how I feel. They couldn't possibly. I need my feelings be mine and mine alone. I want to suffer the loss of my husband myself. I don't want anyone to take my sufferings away. It is my loss of my husband. Let me have it.
I feel self-centered, eccentric, and alienating. I feel unnatural, yet, I seem completely at peace with it.
My close friends understand what I need. They leave me alone. They don't offer unsolicited advice or flowery commentary. In fact, they don't even try to make me feel better. Because they know - nobody can make me feel better.
I feel sad that we are no longer the unique Husband and Wife team that we once were, making a difference in our friends' lives, together. I am grateful for all that we were, but we can no longer be that team ever again. That IS the fact. We were a very special, loving team, and packed with gentle power. We could do so much good, yet our time is up. The disappearance of the Eric and Daisy team makes me exceedingly, exceedingly sad. I could not comprehend the purpose of this wastefulness. I despise the deity that would claim responsibility; the deity that would claim it knows best. The deity that would claim it is in total control. I will hear nothing of it.
I am stuck, until I decide to un-stuck myself. And I will do so when I am ready.
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| Eric and his favorite girl Kida Many moons ago, Boise, ID |
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