I'm not sure how to feel about it, or if it even really matters.
Storytime... when we were entering our 20's I lost a childhood friend to suicide. Nobody saw it coming. He was one of those people that had a way of bringing people together and making them feel accepted... very popular with a lot of different groups. Always happy and positive... on the outside. I remember him best as our star pitcher. That dude carried many games for us and had a way of uniting the team. One of those laid-back type-A's. Always on top of his game, but accepting of everyone. You wanted to be like him. We all did.
I don't think his mom ever recovered. A while later I had an opportunity to sit down with her and talk about things. I shared with her memories of him growing up and just what kind of person he was to all of us. I wanted her to know of the impact that he had on people... to see that he will never truly be gone from the world so long as we're around. At some point in this conversation, she said to me something I will never forget. She said "It is only through the things that people like you say about him that I have come to know what kind of person my son really was." It was a bittersweet moment. I think that she wanted to cry, but she didn't, and the pain I sensed in her was beyond tears. I can't imagine what it's like to be in that position... having to bury your own son and carry the grief and the guilt of feeling like you didn't know enough. I think she probably very deeply regrets not being closer to him. I'm sure that she blames herself for what happened... tells herself that maybe if she was there more he might have reached out instead of, well...
She now honors his memory by wishing him a happy birthday on his facebook. And people do still show up to toss up some positivity. Personally, I can't be seeing that. She's been doing this for nearly 10 years. Maybe it is her way of making up for lost time. I find it too painful to look at. The only times I've gone to look is when I've been very low myself, as a reminder of what can happen. I would say to myself "That will never be my mother."
Another friend of ours, his best friend, also never recovered. He fell off in a downward spiral spanning for years. He sought help and we all tried to be there for him, but in the end he fell off of the face of the earth and nobody even knows if he is still alive. It just... it changed him in ways that many of us who still talk cannot fully grasp. It's like for him, there is nowhere he can go that is far enough. Nothing is strong enough to take that pain away. I know what it's like to be in so much pain that you literally can't live. But to go through it continuously for years on end, with nothing really working and no end in sight... that sounds like hell on earth. I'd take anything to make that stop. I can picture the desperation. And in searching myself for answers to it... I just don't have them, you know? There is no guaranteed way to be okay when that is where you're at.
I think having to move on from your own child in that way is a different kind of grieving. I have lost people, too. Too many. Too many more since then. But meeting with her, I sensed a different kind of pain. You can say it is not healthy and that she should try to move past it. And generally I agree. The truth is just the truth... all you can really do is try to live with it. But I also think there are many ways to do that. So as much as I might find something like this very strange and off-putting, I don't feel like I'm in any position to judge. The only thing I have gleaned from my experience is that there are some kinds of pain that you just never, ever forget. You never truly move on. If something like this can be of some use to someone who is suffering through that, I can't begrudge them that. I think it's very much in the realm of personal morality. I may say that for me it is wrong and unhealthy. I truly think that it would be. But at the end of the day, when it comes to the pain of other people, I'm not the one who ultimately has to live with it. Nobody is forcing this option on people. They have to choose. And I think that is on them to do.
Maybe it's true that this mom hasn't been getting the help she needed. I think it is obvious she has not been shouldering the grief well. But who's to say what options she may already have exhausted to even be considering an option like this? How desperate do you need to be to do this? You just don't know. I can't imagine what must be going through her mind, or what life is like for someone like her to undergo an experience like that.
