Limbo

A few weeks ago, I was speaking to someone who had lost a daughter through illness.  She spoke of going to as many as three different support groups, and had found them helpful.  What caught my ear, is that she said one of the groups was very informal and was composed of parents who had lost one of their children more than two years before that.

I think the week she told me about it, I was feeling particularly...something. 

I feel this something just a little bit all of the time, and a lot every once and a while.  I am at a loss to explain it.  It is nothing terrible, not sadness, not despair, not depression, nothing that interferes with my day to day living.  It is just a very vague, underlying, undefineable gnawing feeling of floundering just a little bit, as if the ground has become slightly less solid under my feet.

I know it has to do with Erik, although it is quite frankly more about me. 

If forced to define it or try to figure it out for myself, I guess I might say it is that ever present subconscious presence of knowing.  Knowing that no matter what I do, or how far I come, or how much I look like everyone else on the outside, I am forever different from the majority of people on this earth, for while the numbers are so much more than we want them to be, the percentage of people who lose a child through suicide is very small. 

Sometimes when I hear others talk about their children, or see others with their children, especially adult children, I think to myself, I think, "Oh, you get to be a regular parent, one who doesn't lose their child by suicide."  Or I just plain think, "Oh, you are a normal parent, it won't end for you in this bizarre twist of fate."

And the worst part of it all, is that as time goes by, it doesn't get better, it just stays, like some pesky little annoyance of the insect world buzzing around my ear, that I can't see, can't squash, and just will not leave my side.  And the more time passes, the more I know it is never, ever, going to leave. 

So this is very frustrating.  After so much "working through my grief", after rebuilding, after all of the conspicuous ups and downs of the first two years...and then three...I am left in this state of Limbo.  I am not figuring out what to do about this.  I need a support group!!  Or advice!!  Or some sort of epiphany to help me accept the something feeling and let it go.

I am grateful to be past the worst of it.  I as always assure others it is possible to feel better.  But today I am "fessin' up".  This is not perfection.  This is not heaven or hell.  This is Limbo...and it can feel a little lonely at times...

(If there is anyone out there who feels themselves in the same predicament, please remember my
e-mail address is at the side of this blog, and feel free to drop me a note, especially if interested in an informal cup of coffee.  Thanks!)