DIFFERENT LEVELS OF KNOWING

I was driven by these horrible moments to realize something had to give. Things could not continue the way they were. I was going crazy with worry and it was not making things any better. I needed to look for a different way to be with Andrew and myself.  

I had been seeing a Jungian therapist since just before Andrew went to the Citadel. I also did group psychotherapy work and I was learning a lot about myself. It was hard to bear and hard to bare my new understanding of just how immature and unaware I am. The good news is it looked to me like I did at least have options.

        

           However, learning about these options and putting them into play as my default setting were two very different levels of knowing.  

IMPOSSIBLY HEAVY

How does life and all its complexity work together to get the specific outcome that is our personal reality?  I know at times after Andrew got sick, I felt myself wishing he were gone or worse yet dead. 

Then hated myself for wishing such a thing, but feeling unable to tolerate the intense anxiety I experienced when I was around Andrew, always waiting for the next shoe to drop.

          How can you be someone’s mother and wish them gone or dead? It was impossible for me to see that I was externalizing my own anxiety and a large part of it was being projected onto Andrew where I had zero control over it. Also this projection and those of the rest of the family were making Andrew’s burden of the family angst impossibly heavy.  

CAUSE OR BLAME

 In reading and hearing about the last incident where the father shoots his son in self-defense my heart broke for the whole family. After Andrews’s suicide, we were all besieged with what ifs. 

 I guess all disease is a family disorder and certainly all deaths.

My children often disapprove when I assume responsibility for collaborating with Andrew in his illness and death. They say things like “Mom, you can’t blame yourself”.  I counter with, “there is a difference between cause and blame."

         I make this distinction because to me blame requires a conscious intention to do harm. I do not feel blame for Andrew’s death.  I do not know what caused Andrew’s disease and death but I do believe that the family that we were played into the dynamics of Andrew’s life and death both consciously and unconsciously. 

GETTING RELEIF

We have friends and neighbors whose children died from overdoses at home, turning the home into a crime scene. Another friend’s son shot himself, so the parents were unable to view the body. The three examples in the paper that I listed yesterday encapsulated some of my worst fears for Andrew and me while he was alive.

That he might end up in prison, that he might accidentally injure another person. Once, the police arrested Andrew for driving the wrong way down a busy highway after medicating himself for sleeplessness.

           I was so thankful that he was not injured and that no one else had been hurt, but very anxious that this might happen again. Talking to Andrew after this incident,  I knew that he would not intentionally take such a risk. I was also aware that with the severity of Andrew’s symptoms, sometimes getting relief was the only priority.  

LIFE BY MISADVENTURE

      I did not think it would be possible to feel lucky in relationship to Andrew’s death. After reading about the horrors of other people’s stories, I feel grateful and relieved that Andrew was never violent except in the end to himself.

      Andrew’s method of suicide seemed more thoughtful of himself and of us. His death was not even ruled a suicide because at the time of initial investigation no note had been found.

      The police report read death by misadventure. On the other hand, was it life by misadventure?

WHY DO PEOPLE COMMIT SUICIDE?

IN THE NEWSPAPER

     On the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer of July 28, 2011 there was an article about three schizophrenic men. A 46 year old was in prison for responding violently to taunting, actions that he does not remember the next day. His 75-year-old father is the first to admit that his son did wrong but says he needs to be in a hospital and not a prison.  A 23-year-old man fatally stabbed his parents and twin brother. The third, a 17 year old, attacked his policeman father with a hunting knife and after a struggle, the father shot him with his service revolver.

     I was so sad for these families and so grateful that Andrew’s disease did not take these paths.

HEARING IS HEALING.

I guess it is not really doing less. It is more about being available to others, to notice things, to speak with them and to myself.

 It is a stretch to search for resonance with others’ feelings and to have patience, and to appreciate how they are different from me. Because this is not my default setting, it often requires great discipline of me.

I am encouraged to keep practicing by my increasing awareness of how wonderful it feels to have more options for myself. My normal reaction is to listen long enough to offer a response that has more to do with me than them. It is often about what I know and what I can tell others.

My dream personality is to be comfortable enough with my own frailty to allow others theirs without having to fix it. Not to have to say everything that comes into my head, not having to move quickly, to be able to be still and really hear my complete self and others. Hearing is healing