The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding.
It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.
-Cheryl Strayed
It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.
-Cheryl Strayed
The first few days, when I thought about him, I was just profoundly sad. That is where my feelings and memories would land. Nowhere else. I desperately wanted to be able to comfort him. I imagined myself sitting beside him and stroking his back. Telling him how much I loved him and that no matter what, it was going to get better. I couldn't fathom that I'd never have that chance.
This was my experience of John's suicide that first week. Excruciating pain. Also, being surrounded by the profound grief of others. And through it all, for me there was an undercurrent of being blamed.
It wasn't just John being gone. All of it was unfathomable.
The buffer I had learned to build between myself and John's illness didn't exist anymore. I could no longer put a boundary in place and step away until John felt better. John had rebounded so many times, but now there would be no 'feeling better'. There was a part of me that had always held my breath while waiting for a healthy John - my John - to return. Now though, I knew that part of me would never breathe again.
The day he died is the day I began to understand the pain of holding the thing you want more than anything else alongside the thing you will never have. Those first few days, I believed that all I had left of John was his suffering and his loss. "My poor baby... my poor baby..." I cried and cried.
Swirling around me was the grief of others. Often, other people were holding their own grief at bay, out of their respect for mine. Even my son didn't cry in front of me until the day of John's funeral.
When I was able to peek out from under my crushing sadness, it was only because so many people were reaching out to me with so much love and kindness. And I knew that this is what John would have wanted.
John lived through the devastating loss of his brother. He knew how people endured extraordinary loss. They did it through extraordinary love.
'Will I see you at smaller memorial over the weekend?'
'Do you want to come with me to the other memorial?'
'Where is that other memorial going to be?'
But, I knew nothing about the other memorial. Once again, I was thrust into a position of fending off humiliation.
How could I tell people that I wasn't invited to a memorial that so many of them knew about? Telling them that I wasn't invited would open up questions that I wasn't capable of answering.
Every time I tried to cling to the hope that there would be a limit to the reach of Jeanne's words about me, it was dashed. I was already trying to walk through a level of humiliation and shame that I'd never before dealt with. How many people knew that I was being blamed? The number grew and grew. How many people agreed and blamed me too? Often, I assumed all of them.
One person said simply:
"I am so sorry Jeanne is saying such terrible things about you."
I didn't ask what the terrible things were. I always interrupted people. My mantra was always the same.
I can't talk about this. This is too hard for me to hear.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
It's ok. It's ok. It's ok.
Half of what I said was true. Half of what I said was a lie.
My sense of self, just like my heart, was completely shattered on the day John died. If there was anything left of me, again and again I had to rip that part of me in half in order to now cope with the blame.
I have restricting anorexia. When my disorder is active, I do nothing other than restrict my food and calorie intake.
I don't binge or overeat. I've never made myself throw up. I don't take laxatives, or amphetamines, or any kind of appetite suppressant.
The only thing I do is avoid taking food and nutrients into my body.
Hurting myself in this way becomes both compulsive and comforting. I wish that understanding it would make the disorder go away, but it doesn't.
I don't binge or overeat. I've never made myself throw up. I don't take laxatives, or amphetamines, or any kind of appetite suppressant.
The only thing I do is avoid taking food and nutrients into my body.
Hurting myself in this way becomes both compulsive and comforting. I wish that understanding it would make the disorder go away, but it doesn't.
Before I was hospitalized this time, I tried day treatment. I didn't want to be hospitalized.
I told the program nutritionist that I would do anything to avoid being hospitalized.
He urged me to take a multivitamin. He was concerned about signs on a metabolic panel that suggested the beginning stages of clinical starvation.
I was desperate to stay out of the hospital, but I wouldn't agree to eat more. I couldn't agree to eat more. I did, however, concede to take a vitamin.
That afternoon I stood in the vitamin aisle at CVS and stared at the label on the back of the bottle in my hand. Eventually, I put the bottle back on the shelf and decided not to buy them.
Each daily vitamin had a calorie count of two. As far as I was concerned, adding two calories to my daily intake was too much and I couldn't think of a way to make it ok.
Two.
As conflicted as I was about whether or not I deserved anyone's love, it was with John's family that I felt the most comfort.
I knew they were not only grieving, but they were also grieving a complete John. They were grieving the man who fought his demons and succeeded, and also the man who would sometimes succumb. They were grieving both their unresolved frustration and their incomplete joy.
We all mourned the entirety of John. All or our hurting reflected the fact that John was a part of each of us, and in so much as he was in each of our hearts - we returned a part of him to each other every time we shed a tear.
It was this love for John that kept him alive, even while he was gone. It was our love for each other that expressed the gift of John's life.
There was no possible way to make the memory of John uglier or more sullied than to react to his death with hatred and cruelty. Calling into question the value of John's love and the value of who he loved - was absolutely horrific.
And I was the one Jeanne was angry at. I was the one where the blame was being placed.
I believed I was the one responsible for the hatred and cruelty. I simply could not find a way out. I believed that because the hatred was levied toward me, then I was the one responsible for the memory of John now being betrayed.
I was the one.
I knew they were not only grieving, but they were also grieving a complete John. They were grieving the man who fought his demons and succeeded, and also the man who would sometimes succumb. They were grieving both their unresolved frustration and their incomplete joy.
We all mourned the entirety of John. All or our hurting reflected the fact that John was a part of each of us, and in so much as he was in each of our hearts - we returned a part of him to each other every time we shed a tear.
It was this love for John that kept him alive, even while he was gone. It was our love for each other that expressed the gift of John's life.
There was no possible way to make the memory of John uglier or more sullied than to react to his death with hatred and cruelty. Calling into question the value of John's love and the value of who he loved - was absolutely horrific.
And I was the one Jeanne was angry at. I was the one where the blame was being placed.
I believed I was the one responsible for the hatred and cruelty. I simply could not find a way out. I believed that because the hatred was levied toward me, then I was the one responsible for the memory of John now being betrayed.
I was the one.
I think, early on, people who knew Jeanne were trying to make sense of her anger.
A friend told me that Jeanne assumed I'd pushed John's family into including me in John's services. That I was somehow pressuring them into caring about me and my son.
A friend told me that Jeanne assumed I'd pushed John's family into including me in John's services. That I was somehow pressuring them into caring about me and my son.
But Jeanne had never met or spoken to anyone in his family, with the exception of his parents. And even then, it was only once for a few minutes, a year prior to John's death. She'd never asked them for their opinions, she'd never sought out their concerns or personal experiences with John's illness or asked how to help. And she'd never asked them anything about their relationship with me.
I may have thought that I was responsible for John's death, but I knew that I wasn't making his family do anything for me, or feel anything about me. From the first day, I felt nothing but honored that his family included me in their fold.
I tried at every turn to ask John's family if they felt my words and actions honored John appropriately. I received feedback in regard to every Facebook post. I asked his father when he felt would be the appropriate time for me to speak at John's vigil. I asked his sister if the things I was planning to say would be ok for his nieces to hear.
I could not breathe. I could barely walk or stand. But I inherently understood that to do anything other than respect and support the people who loved John most - would have been wrong.
I tried at every turn to ask John's family if they felt my words and actions honored John appropriately. I received feedback in regard to every Facebook post. I asked his father when he felt would be the appropriate time for me to speak at John's vigil. I asked his sister if the things I was planning to say would be ok for his nieces to hear.
I could not breathe. I could barely walk or stand. But I inherently understood that to do anything other than respect and support the people who loved John most - would have been wrong.
I couldn't help but think of a message that John wrote to his brother David. It was several months before John died, and he posted the message on Facebook.
John said:
I hope that on some level you would be proud of your little brother and (also) how hard our family has worked to endure the loss of you.
I know that David was and is proud of John. I just absolutely know that is true. And I know also, that it was important to John that we endure the loss of him too. To John, enduring with integrity would mean responding to his loss with nothing less than love and kindness.
The cruelty and insensitivity that Jeanne was extending toward me was more of a betrayal toward John, than to anyone else. And of course, John's family knew this too. To say horrible things about someone John loved, someone his family still loved, was betraying the man they knew and had raised. To be cruel to me in John's name or because of John's pain, was the exact opposite of doing anything to honor him.
I knew that. They knew that.
Several of his family members asked me if they could contact Jeanne themselves and tell her to knock it off. Each time, I told them that I was afraid that Jeanne would be hurt by their frustration with her. I didn't want her hurt. And I was also concerned that their sticking up for me would further enrage her. What if she turned that rage toward them?
I felt helpless. How could I honor John and protect his family and inoculate myself at the same time?
I knew that this betrayal and disrespect toward John was happening because Jeanne was angry at me.
Regardless of how many times John's family and even Jeanne's own friends tried to tell me that her cruelty was a reflection of her character and not mine, I just couldn't take it in.
John's vigil took place four days after he died. In another act of kindness, John's family insisted that my son and I sit in the front pew alongside them. Shortly after we arrived at the church, his family went into the sanctuary.
But I couldn't go in. Not yet. I started to walk in with them, but I looked up and on the pulpit there was a large photo of my beautiful John and in front of it a box. The photo was taken eight months earlier, at John and I's birthday party. And in the box in front of the photo, lay his ashes.
I couldn't stay in the sanctuary. Not yet. The vigil wouldn't be formally starting for another twenty minutes. I stopped in place, turned around and returned to the vestibule. My son, concerned, followed close behind.
I remained in the vestibule until the services began. I greeted as many people as I could. Hundreds of people attended John's services. John was well loved and his family was well loved.
Still, even in the vestibule, I was having trouble. My heart and mind just didn't want to be present. I tried as hard as possible to both be there and be gone at the same time. Perhaps, I wanted to be like John in that way.
For all my trying to escape though, I simply could not hold my tears. I had been weeping all week long anyway. There was no longer any dam. Everything flooded, and especially during the night of his vigil. I would inhales sharply, trying to hold the crying in, but I couldn't do it.
Every time someone told me that John loved me, I'd buckle over. I didn't deserve his love.
Every time someone told me that he'd been lucky to have me or that I'd made his life better, I'd cry even harder. If I'd had the capacity to make John's life better, then I should have been able to save him.
In those moments in that vestibule, in between the hugs of so many people who loved John, I was also circled around by those who loved me most. My son. My closest friends. A few were some of John's closest friends too. Many had been with me the day that he died, holding me and making calls.
Eight, nine, ten people at a time. All circling around. Some standing beside me. Some standing behind me. Some in front. Everyone wanted to make sure that I would have the legs I needed to keep standing. All of them wanted to make sure I knew that the net of love that was holding everyone up was still cast in my direction, too.
But, 'I'm sorry for your loss,' was the only thing I could bear to hear without falling completely apart.
Losing John was such a loss for so many people. I could join in that club. I could include myself there. I was so sorry for everyone who'd lost him. My heart went out to us all.
There is this funny truth to being able to both see and care about the grief of others. No matter how brokenhearted you yourself are, if you still care about others, by necessity, your heart will become larger. It has too. A heart centered in both grief and love, has no choice but to grow.
There can still be beauty even in the darkest of all sadnesses. I truly believe this. I think of a quote by the author Victor Hugo, and in my heart, I believe he was right.
What makes night within us, still makes stars.
But I couldn't go in. Not yet. I started to walk in with them, but I looked up and on the pulpit there was a large photo of my beautiful John and in front of it a box. The photo was taken eight months earlier, at John and I's birthday party. And in the box in front of the photo, lay his ashes.
I couldn't stay in the sanctuary. Not yet. The vigil wouldn't be formally starting for another twenty minutes. I stopped in place, turned around and returned to the vestibule. My son, concerned, followed close behind.
I remained in the vestibule until the services began. I greeted as many people as I could. Hundreds of people attended John's services. John was well loved and his family was well loved.
Still, even in the vestibule, I was having trouble. My heart and mind just didn't want to be present. I tried as hard as possible to both be there and be gone at the same time. Perhaps, I wanted to be like John in that way.
For all my trying to escape though, I simply could not hold my tears. I had been weeping all week long anyway. There was no longer any dam. Everything flooded, and especially during the night of his vigil. I would inhales sharply, trying to hold the crying in, but I couldn't do it.
Every time someone told me that John loved me, I'd buckle over. I didn't deserve his love.
Every time someone told me that he'd been lucky to have me or that I'd made his life better, I'd cry even harder. If I'd had the capacity to make John's life better, then I should have been able to save him.
In those moments in that vestibule, in between the hugs of so many people who loved John, I was also circled around by those who loved me most. My son. My closest friends. A few were some of John's closest friends too. Many had been with me the day that he died, holding me and making calls.
Eight, nine, ten people at a time. All circling around. Some standing beside me. Some standing behind me. Some in front. Everyone wanted to make sure that I would have the legs I needed to keep standing. All of them wanted to make sure I knew that the net of love that was holding everyone up was still cast in my direction, too.
But, 'I'm sorry for your loss,' was the only thing I could bear to hear without falling completely apart.
Losing John was such a loss for so many people. I could join in that club. I could include myself there. I was so sorry for everyone who'd lost him. My heart went out to us all.
There is this funny truth to being able to both see and care about the grief of others. No matter how brokenhearted you yourself are, if you still care about others, by necessity, your heart will become larger. It has too. A heart centered in both grief and love, has no choice but to grow.
There can still be beauty even in the darkest of all sadnesses. I truly believe this. I think of a quote by the author Victor Hugo, and in my heart, I believe he was right.
What makes night within us, still makes stars.
Two hours earlier, I'd lifted the lid off of my lunch tray and seeing what was there, I promptly asked the table monitor if I could leave. But she encouraged me to try. She talked me through the worst of my anxiety and I managed to eat the sandwich in front of me.
Why did Jake even care about this? I'd eaten. What more did he want?
"So, why was lunch such a challenge today?" He asked.
"I don't think that hummus belongs on wonder bread, that's all." I answered.
"Hmmm. That sound reasonable."
"Can you tell the nutritionist that I'm not going to eat that again?"
"The nutritionist knows you don't want to eat, Chelise."
"No, I mean I don't want to eat that."
"Is there anything that you do want to eat right now?"
I sighed. He was right. There was nothing that I wanted to eat anymore. Why not start with a soggy hummus sandwich? What was the difference, anyway?
"So," Jake began, changing the subject. "It says here you're going to be getting a restraining order?"
"What? No. No, I told them no. I'm not getting a restraining order."
"These are pretty hostile messages," he said looking down at some papers in his hand. It was only then that I realized he was holding printouts of the texts that Jeanne had sent me a few weeks earlier.
"She's a hostile person," I replied.
"It seems like she's making some veiled threats, here."
"Threatening what?" I asked.
"I don't know what she's threatening, the threats are veiled. Don't you know what 'veiled' means?"
I laughed. Jake smiled then too.
"She's young," I said. Which wasn't true. She was younger than me, that was all. I tried defending her, again. "She doesn't... she doesn't know how she sounds. She doesn't care, I guess. She thinks that if she hates someone, then being cruel is justified."
He was still reading the texts.
"What does this part mean," Jake asked. "This part where she's telling you that you 'better not forget that she knows private things about you'?"
"She's threatening to tell people things that John confided in her. About my relationship with him, about my PTSD. Just... He told her things because he thought he could trust her, I guess."
"So, she's threatening to betray John's confidence - in order to hurt you?" Jake asked.
"Well, John's not here, is he? I can't make her care about him, now."
I looked down at my hands. My gaze rested on my fingers. I didn't recognize them. They'd been reduced to skin over bones with a disproportionately large knuckle in the middle of each one.
I hated that John was being betrayed because someone was angry at me.
It was an old thought, and it belied the anguish of my guilt. Like my fingers, the thought was stretched thin and reduced to bare bones. I hated that John was being betrayed. The ugly knuckle in the middle of that thought was the fact that he was being betrayed because of me.
"What did you say in response to her messages?"
"Nothing. i didn't respond to a single text. I haven't talked to her in person since John's funeral. I haven't had a phone call. I haven't asked anyone else to say anything to her. Nothing. I've never had an argument with her. Not before John died, and definitely not after."
"You mean, she sent you all of these texts without your responding to any of them?"
"Yes."
"Well, sometimes people get stuck in anger when they are grieving," Jake offered.
"I've noticed."
"So you knew her before John died?"
"I thought I knew her. A couple times I called her when I was worried about John. I thought she was his friend! I have no idea who she is now, though. Hating me doesn't seem like a good excuse to fuck John over. He trusted her. He -"
I can't finish my thought though. I'm crying, and once again, I can't stop.
"I don't know," I say, as I wipe at my nose with the back of my hand. "After I got those six from her, I blocked her on my phone."
"Good. Is there someone who knows her, who you can ask to let you know if they overhear her threatening any kind of violence toward you or your son?"
I cringe when Jake mentions my son. Violence toward my son.
My son.
"Yes. I know people who know her. I can ask them."
"Do you think they'd tell you if they heard her making those kinds of threats?"
I laugh. "People I barely know are telling me fucking everything about what Jeanne is saying. I think that if she was threatening to physically hurt me, I'd know."
"I need you to promise me that you are going to get help if she says anything about being violent, ok?"
"Ok. Ok. I will. I promise."
My anorexia is active, and for lunch I had to eat hummus on soggy white bread.
And now, I have to ask people to let me know if someone is planning on physically hurting me or my son.
How can this be the universe I am living in?
On the night of John's vigil, by the time Jeanne arrived and came into the vestibule, it was already crowded with people and I was already in tears.
There were two large photo boards set up, one of each side of the room. On one of them was the photo I'd asked John's sister to include of Jeanne and John together.
Jeanne was in line to look at the opposite photo board, so I took a deep breath and walked over to her. I knew that there was a trail of people following me. And I knew they were all worried.
But I was welcoming people and I didn't want to be rude.
I suppose I hoped that if I extended a kindness - Jeanne might begin the process of forgiving me.
When I got to her, I reached out and touched her on the shoulder.
"Jeanne, there is a picture of you and John on the other board," I began.
But Jeanne turned and walked away from me while I was mid sentence. She didn't say a word.
I took a step backward, unsure of what to do.
Behind Jeanne were other friends of ours. When I looked up at they seemed uncomfortable and immediately looked down at the floor.
My friends swooped in, pulling me away.
"I'm so sorry," one of them started saying to me.
I began to stutter a reply.
'I shouldn't have... I just... I just wanted her to know..." I couldn't complete a single sentence.
There were too many tears already. I had been humiliated enough already.
John's ashes lay in a box on a table in the sanctuary behind me.
I had nothing left. It was four days after John died, and already, I was dying too.
I think about this all the time, if I should have just ignored her at the funeral. Would that have been better?
John cared about Jeanne. He wouldn't ignore someone at an event like this.
John would have welcomed them just like I'd tried to, and that's the truth. John always operated under the assumption that fences could be mended. Ultimately, at John's funeral I wanted to do what John would have done.
Eventually, I knew it was time for me to join John's family in the front pew.
It was my son who got me there. He stood directly at my side the entire time that I walked down the aisle to that pew. He watched every step that I took. I would tell you I had no idea how I got to that front pew, but that wouldn't be true. I got there because my son was at my side, and because John's family was already there, waiting for me.
Three months later Jeanne would send me her barrage of angry and threatening texts. She was enraged when someone told her that I knew about her anger.
In the first one, she would tell me that no one else knew that she was angry, and if they did, there was only one person who could have told people. But she was wrong. How could she have thought that it was only one person?
In the first one, she would tell me that no one else knew that she was angry, and if they did, there was only one person who could have told people. But she was wrong. How could she have thought that it was only one person?
Did Jeanne not remember the day John died when she cursed at a friend of mine and then hung up on her?
Did she never consider that the public memorial she posted on John's Facebook page would raise questions about why she was so insensitive? Lots of questions?
Did it never occur to her that when she was sloppy with her anger at me and talked about it in places where others could overhear, that gossip would begin to swirl?
How could she not remember that at John's vigil there were dozens of people in the room who saw her walk away from me mid sentence, as I tried to offer her a gesture of kindness?
By four days after John had died, there were likely hundreds of people who had either heard about, overheard Jeanne herself talking, or been told directly by Jeanne that she believed John's death was my fault.
Had Jeanne forgotten everything about those days?
When I thought about that, I felt a momentary pang of jealousy. Why couldn't I forget everything about that first week too?
But then I realized that for all the pain, if I forgot about those first days, I'd have to forget about all of the love that held me up, too. And of course, I knew that the love that held me up then, was the love that was holding me up now. So, as painful and overwhelming as Jeanne's behavior had been, I wouldn't give up the memories of the love, for anything.
All of me was swept away in a hurricane that landed so hard and so fast, it knocked me into an impossible freefall.
There were so many mornings when I'd wake up unable to remember a single reason to continue with life.
And then I would remember why I had to do just that.
I'd call my son. He was my reason.
I'd often call him two or three times a day. Always trying to sound as if I had a sudden urgent question. I found a book he might like. Did he want it? I needed to know right away. I found a pair of socks in my car. Were they his? I needed to know right away.
Every few hours, I needed to be reminded why I was hanging on. And I needed to be reminded right away.
And so, it was the light of love that kept me tethered and it was the darkness of hatred that was tearing me away. I was on a constant see-saw of one or the other.
