One of the most helpful things I read early on in my process of recovering was that if someone experiences a sudden or tragic death of a loved one, they may actually experience Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, especially the first several months of their grieving process. The symptoms of anxiety, shock, flashbacks, confusion, and inability to sleep will sound very familiar to someone who has been told their child has died by suicide, (or any sudden death), or worse, someone who has discovered their child's body after they have committed suicide.
I'm not sure why it helped me so much to read this fact, I think it partly just validated how awful I felt. Also, it was something I had known about and understood a little bit, so in my foggy existence of grief, I could put a name to the complex and numerous ways I was feeling. Sadness is an expected result of losing someone we love, but the number and complexity of the things I was feeling went way beyond sadness. Also, I knew that everyone realized and anticipated that I was feeling sad, but how could I even begin to explain everything else I was feeling, especially when I could hardly keep a grip on my own thoughts.
So, emotional trauma is a given, but the mental exhaustion which came and went made life very difficult. For example, there were moments I could set out to do a list of errands or make phone calls or make decisions very well, only to be followed by a moment when if someone would say to me, "is this black?", I really couldn't say, "of course it's black." Furthermore, what you really want to do in those moments, is scream, and say, "how do I know if it's black, I didn't even know my son was going to be dead this week, so how can I be sure if it's black!" And beyond that, the even greater desire was to say, "who cares if it's black, or yellow, or orange, or purple, why would I possibly care about your question?" Yet, somewhere in my mind I knew that it wasn't fair to be so erratic with the people who were trying to help me, and often held myself in check. After all, they would see me doing what looked like a great job, calmly planning my son's funeral, how could they know that within a split second, I had just slipped into a whole different mood, and just wanted to scream.
Mentally, being a suicide survivor is uncharted territory, for the person and all those around them.
If you look up the physical symptoms of PTSD, you will recognize the facets of grief even more strikingly. Ironically, I found out early on that my son Jason and I had been saying the same thing to ourselves...that we felt like someone had just punched us in the stomach. This became known between us as the "punched in the stomach feeling" which did not go away for a long time. Some days were better for him, some were better for me, and on some days we were both in trouble, but we could simply look at each other and say, I'm having one of those punched in the stomach days, and we would know exactly what we were saying.
Grief is very physical.
I guess in a weird way, this is our body's way of taking care of us. If we could mentally grasp how sad we were right away, it would be unbearable, so that a touch of shock and fogginess gets us through those first days and weeks. And, our body's unwillingness to complete a normal days worth of tasks, gives our minds time to process what we need to face in small increments, when and how we can.
As I am writing this, I realize I don't know what to say to those in the initial stages of grasping the loss of their child or loved one, except that no matter how unbelievably horrible it feels, you do live through it. One time when my father was having a serious health problem in the hospital, and the nurses would come in and ask him what he needed, he would say, "I need a 'knock-out' pill, I just want to be unconscious". I guess he had the right idea. There comes a time when you just wish you could get a "knock-out" pill, and not be awake and conscious to face the next moment, the next decision, the next greeting of someone that you know will make you even sadder, the next card or item that makes you miss the person so much for a moment you really can't breathe.
If I could, I would give everyone who has lost their child a whole bottle of knock-out pills to help them get through. But I can't, so I can only offer the thought that it will get better. And as much as you don't believe it, say it to yourself anyway, "it will get better". Sooner or later, in weeks or months, at some moment you will be going through your day and suddenly think, "I feel almost human again". Or, you will find you can smile or laugh at something, even if just for a moment. And when you do, you need to know that it is okay, and that if you believe in afterlife as I do, it's what your loved one has been waiting for so that they can be happy too.
I am telling you about this to try to say that what you are going through is recognizable to others. It may be helpful to look up information on PTSD, just to validate and make sense of the complexity of what you are trying to survive. It may be helpful to ask others to read about it too.
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