“When someone you love dies, you don't lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time, like how the mail stops coming.”
~ Simon Birch
The Sick Room Part 2Only after 22 months later, i got the help from my two sons and finally went in and pulled out the walking stick, the wheel chair, cleared up the cabinet drawers of all the (expired) medicines, syringes, gloves, adult diapers...... and converted it into a nice cosy little Guest Room that also doubles up as an extra TV Room for the boys or their friends.
I had this room closed for most of the time. Some days i leave it ajar slightly. I am not sure what i'd really wanted to achieve by doing that, perhaps hoping that i may catch a glimpse of him again from the small opening, suffice even if it was possible only through a figment of my imagination.
I enter quietly into this room, often sat in the same corner in the darkness on nights when i had missed him so much,
so much. The yearnings were intense, so intense that the prospect of escape via suicide often dances in seduction before me.
I am not sure which was the reason that had stopped me from executing the plan because it really wasn't that hard. Was it the fear of God or just plain sense rationale?
Fear of God because after spending months surfing and exhausting pages for keywords relating to like death, dying, heaven, hell, suicide, Near Death Experience(NDE)..... i must have read thousands of articles by now, of stories and testimonies that i am convinced that the result of the only place one will wake up after committing this act of suicide never varied throughout.
In a world where variety, dazzling options and choices are often put to us everyday and yet, for such an act, only ONE gloomy place awaits. There isn't another halfway house or better option housing plan once you get there. It is a one plain, give it to you straight, "Hell". "Hades" in Greek, or "Sheol' in Hebrew which is often used to as a poetic metaphor for a place for the dead, or some studies say, not place but simply means death. And it is
not a pretty place.
I read of eternal fires licking out at those who are there. It is a place of pitch black darkness, of fire only creating shadows but not light, of sulphur, stink of rotting flesh permeating the air, of worms or maggots that won't die nor scorched by heat, non ending torment and doom that send terrifying screams from the deep belly of the earth where gnashing of the teeth are reserved for those who are condemned to live there. And there is just one long way down into the pit with no way out,
for eternity.And Ben.. and my mom.. isn't there. They, along with all who have been called 'Home' are with God because they have accepted His gift of Salvation. They are in an eternal place where i long to be because it is a place of LOVE where light blinds out every hurt, pain, fear, unforgiveness, disappointment, tear, sorrow, sadness and suffering.
And if my search is right, as like
Laughing Wolf's comment quote by Helen Keller in the comment box of my last post , it is true that only Overcomers will enter into this final resting place, a world so beautiful, it is beyond human comprehension or description.
So my
rationale is,
If i kill myself right now because i really wanted and (needed to) be with Ben only to find myself in a
different world altogether from him
for eternity,
now that would be a grave mistake, wouldn't it?
Nevertheless i still went about to set many things in order as if i was preparing to make the transition for my children as painless as possible if i were not there one day when they wake up.
But day after day, i wake up. I hear the birds singing outside my window when i open my eyes, i see the sun returning home in the evenings. I tell the Lord, "I am ready when You are.. " but i still wake to yet another day and then another.
It feels void, parched for miles and miles away on a wide, free expanse of space. Like the earth and heavens just meet each other out on the horizon and you can't tear them apart. You walk on shifting sand so you never quite know how to retrace your own when the day is over.. You just merely exist. It is a sad meaningless existence and i am in it.
I think i pretty much died the day when Ben died. It was as though Someone had put a full stop in the middle of my book that still had many more chapters left going.
I became more grateful and appreciative of the handful of people left for whom i could call
my friends today. All these while, the friends or family relations whom i liberally call mine were actually
Ben's friends or relations. Now i realised that's
not the same thing.
I am writing because i am journaling my own journey of losing someone i love very, very much. I sometimes feel like i need to apologize to all who have to listen to my heart speak aloud. And i thought, maybe i should write about something fun, something everyone will take to easily, something superficial. Then i thought again, '
No. i will write what my heart wants to write in its own time. If it chooses superficial, then, i would want my heart to feel the pleasure, writing superficial.'I will continue to write and express my heart for as long as it needs. If you have lost someone and find a spot in which you find familiar, know that it makes another one of us in this great number. I hope that my boldness does not offend anyone as it is never intended to be so.
NitWit1 (she's far from it, you can tell from her humour) of
Coward's Corner said in her comment of my last post that "
So much of your grief journey parallels my Father's when Mother died, although there are decades of age difference between you and him.."
That i think is because
grief is what happens to your soul. It knows not age. There is a universal pain that one can always put a finger in it to say, "
I know that one too even though the details of our stories may vary." And we have yet found another gift of humanity. Compassion. And that's when we shed a tear for a stranger when we learn of their own loss.
fl
'
Grief is what happens to your soul. It knows not age.' ~felicia lam
Is that you and Ben dancing when you were both disguised as polar bears?
Love Renee xoxo
September 16, 2009 9:13 PM
Yes, Renee. How did you guess?
September 16, 2009 9:41 PM