Nearly one year ago, I lost the will to live

It wasn't that I was suicidal -- I didn’t have the will to die -- but I didn’t know how to live anymore. Life lost its sparkle. The pain of Charlie’s death - a child whose depressed mind I had worked every day of the previous five years to heal, left me empty. After investing all I had in her, I felt entirely deflated. I failed my only job that mattered. I lost the centre of my universe, the sun in my galaxy. There was nothing but darkness without her. My relationship to death changed that day, something that I will write about in a future chapter of Life after Charlie.

I remember meeting up with some friends about a month earlier. “How are your kids?” they asked. After two years of covid lockdowns, we had somewhat lost touch. My answer was always, “they’re alive, so that’s something.” Usually my response was followed by an awkward laugh on their part. “No, I’m serious”, I replied. And I was entirely serious. I would wake up every morning, grateful that today my kids are both still alive. That was all that mattered. Until one morning, I couldn’t say that anymore.

~ Warning: Rant ahead ~

For most of my mum life, I have been fighting to get my kids the mental healthcare they needed, starting with James when he was about seven. Somehow James managed to get through the tough years, thank the gods. We learned, after Charlie died, that James nearly didn’t make it but, unbeknownst to Charlie, she saved his life.

Mental healthcare in Canada and around the world is woefully inadequate. That Charlie’s failed suicide attempt in October 2021 led to a week in hospital was unforgivable. She needed months of therapy, not a week of meds editing.  Not only were meds alone ridiculously insufficient, despite her insistence that the meds weren’t helping, the doctors didn’t change her prescription. After she died, I found her meds. Because no one was willing to listen to her, she stopped taking those useless drugs as soon as she got home. I will never not feel bitter about the fact that our governments don’t give a shit about kids like mine. If they did, they would adequately fund mental healthcare. Charlie would have been able to spend months in hospital instead of a useless week and perhaps she might still be here today.

~ Rant over ~

Anyway, here I am 11 months and a week later, no thanks to our public healthcare system. I am here because of James. I am here because of Carl. I am here because of my sister and my brother and my parents and my nieces and nephews and friends. I am here for them. I am not here for me. Grief stole my joie de vivre and now I am searching to find it again. It is my family that demonstrates to me everyday that finding my joy, learning to accept that my grief and happiness can co-exist, is not an option for me — it is an imperative.

I have been listening to Anderson Cooper’s All there is podcast this past week. I’m nearly always in my car or on a solitary walk when I listen to podcasts so when I cry, I can do so unreservedly, without worrying about the impact of my emotional messiness on those I love. In the case of Anderson’s podcast, this is just as well.

The first few episodes I have thus far heard have spoken to where I now reside with my grief, nearly one year after Charlie died. There is pain that never goes away. One simply has to accept it as part of a new reality. It resides right next to happiness. It’s like that old theatre exercise, “yes, and”. Yes, I live with pain in my core being, and I am learning to feel some modicum of happiness too.

When Charlie died, the pain was all I could feel. Even if I wanted to feel joy, I couldn’t accept it because there was no more room in my proverbial heart. Pain filled all that I am. As time passes, I still find the pain is always present. When in a shop, the cashier person says “how are you today?” my first thought is usually "crummy, but I’m not going to ruin your day by telling the truth". Instead, I respond, “not too bad,” which feels like a good compromise between what I really feel and an out and out lie wherein I would smile and say, “great, and you?”.

“Not too bad” is about where I am today. Sometimes I ache intolerably. At other times, I think to myself, “I’m okay today. I haven’t even cried yet”. I am aware that the “okay” moments are increasing and the "not okay" moments are fewer. More importantly, I am learning to say “I’m okay today” even when I did cry because I am learning that happiness and grief will always reside together. Grief will never go away but that doesn’t mean that the sun can’t shine too.

As we head toward the anniversary of Charlie’s suicide in a few weeks, and, Christmas one advent calendar later, I, together with Carl and James and our family, am thinking a lot about Charlie while attempting to balance that with experiencing happiness too. We’re going to spend the first week of December on holiday, remembering Charlie and making new memories, hopefully happy ones. Then, we are going to try our best to enjoy what James has described as our first “real” Christmas, because last year is a blur for us all.

My hope is that these days may be both happy and sad. In some way, may we be grateful for the sadness because it is against that dark background that happiness shines the brightest.