Despair: Walking Through the Fog

By Alison

“Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.”
— Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Despair

What happens when your world comes crashing down? All the plans you have made with your loved one about your future together are now gone. How do you move forward? How do you explain everything to the kids – while staying strong and not just crying? How do you keep yourself together while speaking with family and friends? The biggest question, how can you tell them he died from suicide, without feeling you weren’t good enough for them?

So many feelings and thoughts were running through my head when I found my husband, David, lying on the floor in the shed with a gun by his head. I just didn’t understand what happened – where did we lose our ability to communicate? Why didn’t he think he could talk to me about what was happening to him mentally? I thought our bond was stronger, I thought we were stronger together.

After I found him, all I could do was cry, cry, and cry some more. Everyone that was in my house from the paramedics to the investigators – I kept asking,‘What do I tell my children?' None of them had an answer, and at that moment all I wanted was an answer. There were no notes, no audio, nothing left on his cell phones, computers or in our fire safe box. I was looking for some hope to hold on to, something that he left behind to tell me why, but nothing.

Walking into the office

I was heartbroken – I barely slept or ate – had a high level of anxiety with depression. I was a walking nightmare while living in a horrific dream but managed to still function to a certain degree because I held on to my children and their happiness. Within a day, my work had our resource help line reach out to me and they set me up with a grief counselor. At first, I did resist about seeing someone because I’m stubborn and don’t like talking about my issues with other people or being judged. But with everything that happened – I figured, what do I have to lose at this point, my life was pretty well messed up now.

Walking into my first grief counselor appointment I felt awkward. I gave myself a pep talk saying, ‘I’m not going to cry, I’m going to hold it together, be strong.’ But guess what happened? After I sat in a chair in her office, within the first minute all I did was cry for about ten minutes straight. I could barely get any words out, and she sat there and let me cry. It was strangely enough comforting to be crying to someone who didn’t know me, my husband, or what happened on that tragic day – the pity for what happened to me wasn’t in the room, she was there to help and listen, not tell me what I should do or think. Although, she ended up referring me out to a psychiatrist for medication, apparently, I needed a little more help besides her.

Never thought I would need this much assistance to gain mental clarity, get rid of my anxiety/depression and help me get some sleep. On no occasion, would I ever believed I would be in a position that I needed this much support with my mental health, plus have to pay them to listen to my story. What the hell (sorry for the cussing, but it seemed fitting for the question) happened to my life? I really thought I was losing it by having a grief counselor and a psychiatrist, but I needed the medicines so I can sleep again and function as close to normal again for my kids.

For the next several weeks, I was walking through the motions of life. I was meeting with the counselor, psychiatrist and the estate lawyer (yes, he was added in as well). Nothing excited me, I still had nightmares, I kept seeing the same scene over and over in my head of my husband in the shed. I tried to bring our life back to normal, but he was still missing, and he wasn’t coming back. 

The remembrance 

When it came to planning his funeral, I passed it off to David’s family. I was not capable of making a single decision and I honestly probably wouldn’t plan or bury him for a couple of months, because it wasn’t something on my ‘to do.’ Maybe I thought the longer I would wait, he may come back to life (like those crazy stories you read about an individual being alive in the mortuary).  I did manage to plan his ‘Celebration of Life,’ probably because there was no body, it was a group of people gathering to remember him, and all I honestly had to do was ask his brother and several friends to speak about him. No thinking, no planning, no decisions – something I was perfectly capable of achieving.

His funeral was arranged beautifully, with great scriptures, singing, and remembrance of David. They would ask for my opinion while planning his funeral, but I truthfully had no opinions – I was literally a walking zombie for a very long time that just went through life. I self-doubted my thoughts, ideas, and actions because he was the person I would always speak with on what to do and I lost my confidant. 

The only thing I mentally objected to was when I was reading his obituary and it said “David loved and adored his beautiful wife (his life partner).” Excuse me, what? After reading ‘life partner,’ I just wanted to scream! How can you write life partner in someone’s obituary who died from suicide? Life partners are meant to grow old together, live life together, be each other’s rocks and cheerleaders, they are supposed to stay with you all life long – not end their life on purpose without speaking to you about it – that is not a life partner. Luckily, I was still in no form to argue or state what was on my mind, because my heart and soul was crushed.