5 Years Later

[KennyB]

I lost my mother to an overdose of prescription drugs on Jan 31st, 2008. I woke up to my father on the phone with 911, the operator giving him instructions to have me perform CPR--but I had done it before. I noticed her chest felt very stiff... I felt for a pulse on her neck and noticed how cold it was. I knew she was gone.

My father died two years later... The cause of his demise is not as simply stated. After being diagnosed with stage 4 liver failure and not having a hope to ever get on a transplant list ( multiple suicide attempts, drug addiction, etc. ) he was depressed and suicidal, refused to take care of himself and go to the hospital when he got a blood infection. That combined with the bottle of Vicodin he took the night he went into the E.R. eventually caused his organs to fail. He spent a month and a half in the ICU before the doctors convinced me he had no hope of recovery. The very moment my sister and I decided not to recussitate him the next time his heart failed, he coded and was gone.

There is so much more to the story obviously that I'm leaving out. Like the dozen or so times both of them had overdosed and nearly died and I had saved them before this. I've been in counseling ever since--well before this actually. I've had my own battle with depression and suicide and everything and had just started seeing a counselor two years before all this happened. He was actually the first person I called when my mother died, I don't think I'd be here if it wasn't for him.

Anyway, it's been five years since then and I feel like I've been stagnating in grief. We never got a gravesite for my mother or my father, so there is no place for me to go to "talk to them" if I want to. I feel like I've never really allowed myself to fully deal with the loss... Like I've just spent the last 5 years basically just trying to endure, practicing the "Okay well move on," methodology of getting over their deaths. I've gotten very well practiced at ignoring my feelings of missing them.

It's gotten to the point though where I can't run from it any more... For the last couple of years I've been angry about it, thinking about all they did wrong, just basically doing whatever I can to distract myself from actually missing them, wishing they weren't dead, etc. It got to the point where every little time I would be reminded of them, it was of something bad. I'd focus and stagnate on all the bad things that happened, I'd have dreams where they would be alive but there would be something wrong--arguing or something--and it would feel just like those old moments of turmoil.

I started to ask myself the same question other people and my counselor asked me... "Can't you instead think of the good moments?" The thing is, when I do start to think of the "good" moments it's so much more painful and unbearable than thinking about the bad. I guess when I think about how horrible things were, I can feel indignant that I had to go through that, thankful that it's over, relief, etc. However when I think about how I will never see either of them again, the fun times we had, the little moments... It's like it just taps into a deep well of emotion that I've long ignored.

It's funny because if you had asked me last year, I would have told you that I was "done" grieving. Now it feels like I'm just beginning again.

[bethypooh]

Kenny,

I am new to this site to because of the pain I feel...I just cant fill the void,I feel like I am becoming a dark person and pushing people away.like its easier to talk to stragers..But you need to look at pictures,think of the good times and feell....feel...and feel.Cry like a baby get it out,you have 5 yrs of holding and bottling everything inside.But first get a friend to say I need you and this is what i need to do someone you can trust,someone that will understand..I FEEL!!! remember we are alllll going through the same thing..The hurt the pain,the resements,its natrual course... :-(