Pain

I have posts to catch up on--I need to post about our fun (or lack thereof!) in Montreal, and I need to do my weekly pregnancy post/update. Hopefully I will be feeling up to it tomorrow. But not today.

When we were in the car, making our way back home yesterday, we received a devastating and unexpected phone call.

Sadly, we have lost a member of our family to suicide. This person was not immediate family, but very close family nonetheless. Honestly, because of the circumstances and out of respect for my family, I do not want to go into further detail.

The bottom line is that my family is in pain. Horrible, gut-wrenching, heart-aching pain. And although I have been deeply affected by this death, there are others who have been impacted so much more severely--and I am trying to be as much support as possible.

We are broken.

Thankfully, I have not experienced many "kinds" of death in my 27 years of life. Still, I think that aside from losing a child, suicide has got to be the worst way to lose someone. There is so much sorrow. There is so much anger. There are so many dark thoughts. There are so many questions that will never be answered.

A work friend of mine took her own life on May 6, 2003. It was the first time suicide had touched my life and I was completely thrown by it. I carried the pain and questions with me for months. Healing was definitely a process, and it was a long one. So, in a way, I've been through this before. But not like this. The death was not that close to me.

It is now.

I hurt, but I hurt mostly for the other members of my family. I ache for them, as they have spent these last few days in anguish. The hardest part is that I know the pain will never go away for them. It will change over time, but it will always be there. Their lives have been forever affected.

So I pray. I hug. And we cry.