It sounds really cliché to say that there are many layers to a bereavement, but it’s true. Perhaps even more so with a bereavement by suicide. It’s been three years and (as is probably quite evident from this blog), I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around any of it. And then there’s trying to support the kids through it.
It’s been too easy to forget that while I have the benefit of life experience and context, they do not. Our individual griefs have moved at difference paces. Sometimes I have raced ahead wanting to forget the past, and they have pulled me back, wanting to linger there a little longer.
Yesterday I went upstairs to find Nathan sobbing. He’d found a note J had written to him, in the middle of a half-used sketchbook.
Nathan, who was 9 when J died, navigated grief in a way I could relate to. I could look at his face and get a rough idea of what was going on. He would get sad, he would cry, he would ask questions and ask for explanations. His glassy eyes or wobbly chin would send advance notice that he was upset, or wanted to talk.
Dylan was 11 and his autism meant he grieved completely differently to the rest of us. He grieved in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. I had to learn to steel myself. He would state what was on his mind, regardless of where we were or what we were doing. With no ability to gauge whether his words might unintentionally hurt.
He didn’t cry when J died. He must have heard my mum consoling Nathan, telling him that it was normal to cry and it was good to let it all out. One bedtime Dylan said to me: “Everyone is crying, I feel like I should be crying, should I be crying?” I said to him that everyone grieves differently. Not crying didn’t mean he loved J less.
Dylan came to the funeral, he said he wanted to and I knew he could handle it. I felt that, for him, seeing the process and being a part of it was important. Again he didn’t cry, even though everyone around him was. He helped lower the coffin into the ground. He told me later he lost his grip a little, and was worried he would drop it (though his granddad was keeping a close eye on him, right behind him).
Quite early on, occasionally he would say that it was “good” that J died. It meant that I left him on his own at the house for brief periods of time. It helped him build up his independence. Tough to hear, but I would be lying if I said there aren’t times I think about the positives of J leaving us. Being released from the grips of his mental illness and the relief that has brought. I keep those thoughts to myself. It doesn’t feel socially acceptable to voice out loud the fact that sometimes I’m glad he’s gone. Dylan simply doesn’t have that filter, and says what he is thinking in the moment. I love him for it.
Some extracts from the first six months of the journal I wrote to J:
12/04/2022 – Of course when we told the boys that you hadn’t made it, one of the first things Dylan said was: “What are we going to do with J’s car?” followed swiftly by: “If we keep it maybe it could be my first car?” He was also angling after your phone*, but I put him right on that one soon enough. (*J had a ‘brick’ phone, the polar opposite of the smart phones teens these days demand).
24/02/2022 – The boys are back. Dylan is seemingly fine, they’d gone bowling with C’s family and I hadn’t twigged that they’d only just recently been bowling with you, the day before you died. I asked Dylan if it was OK and he said “I miss J, but…. Meh!” and I said, “What do you mean ‘Meh’?” He just explained that it didn’t bother him that they’d been there with you.
29/04/2022 – This morning Dylan told me that the house feels lifeless without you. He said it wasn’t the same before you moved in, because we didn’t know you then. But that you were fun and now the house is quiet.
28/08/2022 – I was really ill for three days, Monday until Wednesday Then on Thursday I had no temperature, just the stomach cramps. By Friday I was fine. So I decided to keep my promise to take the boys into London.
We went to the Imperial War Museum and to HMS Belfast, I think it may have been a bit ambitious for one day. Me and Nathan got up at 6:30 to walk the dogs, and then we had breakfast, got ready and set off just after 9, with me carrying a backpack with five books – two each for the boys and one for me. It was a really lovely day, Dylan was so interested in it all.
There was a moment when we were walking from one escalator to the next to catch our tube and Dylan, completely out of the blue said: “Do you miss J? I miss J.” How does his mind work? I can never work out what he’s thinking.
5/10/2022 – A couple of weeks ago, on a Monday morning on the way to school, we’d just dropped Nathan off at Breakfast Club and Dylan told me that when they were both outside in the garden the day before, hanging the washing up, he’d looked up at the house and seen you at the window. He said: “I know I couldn’t have really seen him so maybe I imagined it.” Why didn’t he tell me on the day it actually happened?
31/12/2022 – While we were in St. Lucia over Christmas one evening Dylan said to me: “You know J’s body, I think it would still be there, it wouldn’t have disappeared yet.” Completely out of the blue, caught me off guard. I said: “I’d rather not think about it.” And he then continued to say: “In some ways I’m glad J died, otherwise I wouldn’t be left on my own when Nathan has football, as J would have been there.” I had to go into the bathroom and cry for a bit before pulling myself together and brushing it off.
Over the three years I’ve learned to not take his comments personally. To breathe, remove myself for a minute or two, and then ask him to elaborate, or simply acknowledge what he has said. It’s not always been easy, but I’m getting there.
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