My late husband’s birthday and death day are the same week in September. It’s always a rough week.

As July approaches, it's on my mind more and more...this year, even more so, because I cannot get past the fact that I will have been without her as long as I had her. When she died, no I never thought then that I would even be around for that day, but it's looking like I will barring an unforeseen catastrophe.

I'm sorry for your loss

I suspect it always will be.

I'll be thinking about you come September. The rough times are rough.

Two pictures of her, turtles, her keys (she had a key ring with her name on it), other items. So, yes. In my office I have the picture that we put on her casket times 3 along with the garland for her flowers, which says "We love you Bekah." My counselor can see them when we Zoom. He mentioned today that it was like she was on my shoulder.

I think I've done just everything to deal with her loss. The facts don't change, and the milestones hurt, and I just have to feel it, cry over it, share it, and carry on. I'm generally quite functional and reasonably happy. and then there's July, and this one is huge.

We are here for you.

I, too, have suffered the loss of an adult child. It hurts. Terribly.

But knowing others care & are willing to talk in difficult times takes the edge off a bit.

I'm glad you are able to talk about what you are feeling & I love your shrine!

Thank goodness for DU & therapists!

And very glad you are writing about it - writing always helps me, too

Writing has saved me. Along with counseling and the tincture of time.

conveys the raw pain that neither tears nor screams can extinguish.

Belatedly, I am sorry for your loss.

Take care of yourself.

doin' my best!

love your screen name by the way (i imagine your parents calling you that when you were little)

Sending 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗 for you dear barbtries and Bekah.

Last edited Fri Jul 1, 2022, 05:03 PM - Edit history (1)

…in response to your post.

Your poem is eloquent, and your question about why is unanswerable. I once saw a bumper sticker that simply said, “Shit Happens.” Not at all eloquent, but it is the only answer I can ever find for circumstances such as these.

I can very much relate to what you are saying about reaching that point in time someone has been gone longer than they were here. I was the older of 2 kids. When he was only 23, my brother Tom died in a scuba diving adventure gone wrong. This was 1978. In 2024, he will have been gone twice as long as he was here. I’m 71. He would have been 68 in May. He is forever 23.

One of the strange things about this kind of grief is that the loss can feel as if it happened 10 seconds ago and forever ago, all at the same time. Tom has been gone so long that it sometimes feels as if I imagined him.

Being bereaved is an invisible wound. No one can tell by looking at us that we are wounded - our skin doesn’t turn blue, we are not using crutches or wearing a cast, we don’t have portable nasal oxygen running, but we are injured and struggling nonetheless.

Thank you for sharing Bekah’s name. I will think of it every time I read one of your posts.

i know we don't get to know why. my theory is that after we die we still don't know but it no longer torments us. After she had been dead for some period of time, when the question Why Bekah? bubbled up, sometimes I just told myself, Why not her? It was random. Something that would never happen, happened, and we lost her just like that, never to see her again.

I'm so sorry about your brother. You have insight into grief that most people don't. It's complicated. It doesn't actually end. I've come so far but for whatever reason this milestone has triggered me in a big way.

I don't even know if my emotional distress is not influenced by other things that are going on, such as women having had their rights stripped from them a week ago. Almost everyone I know has been made unhappy by that. Also, I am in NC and her bones are in CA and all of a sudden I'm thinking about hopping on a plane just to visit her on the 19th. But I had decided not to go home until after my son's wedding in Oct.

I don't know it all sucks. I'm so thankful for this forum. I really wish nobody understood me. I wish no one ever had to walk this walk. But sometimes, those are the only people who offer true comfort, because they get it.

as long as she was here.

In 2017 my 30 year old son took his life. He'd been dealing with depression, well hidden from his parents and most of his friends, so it came as a huge shock. But I may not live long enough to have him gone as long as he was here.

And I think how you lost your daughter was vastly worse than how I lost my son. I love you.

I am so sorry. I don't think it's worse for me than for you. Back in the beginning I would think of all the ways it could be better, could be worse, for instance, it would be better if she got sick and we got to say good-bye. It would be worse if her killer was never caught. and so on. But in the world of bereavement, these distinctions mean nothing. It is not valid to quantify anybody's grief or level of pain. There is simply nothing worse in life than losing a child. That's what I think. It turns nature on its head.

It happens a lot, when it feels as if it should never happen at all.

Love to you.

You are so right.

But this is what I say: As sorry as I am that my son took his own life, I actually have a lot to be grateful for. One is that he didn't do anything messy, like with a gun. Nor did he jump off a bridge (a distinct possibility as he lived in Portland, OR) so we'd never know what happened. He took something, that he'd apparently gotten over the internet, and was found the next morning by his roommate. So he also didn't languish in his apartment until neighbors complained of the smell.

I think it would be vastly harder to lose a child to some kind of accident (car, boating, whatever) or to some disease, or worse yet (in my opinion) to being killed by someone. Especially in a school shooting.

He chose to leave this life. I wish he hadn't. The night before he took his life, he called me and we talked for well over an hour, discussing things we'd never talked about before. I realized much later that he'd called me to say goodbye, without actually saying that. Our last words to each other were "I love you" and that means a lot to me.

And here's what I think of as the best part. He left behind a note (although it was dated some four months earlier, which raises the question of, What was that about? In the middle of it, he made me laugh out loud. What a gift from him, right?

And love back to you.