This Very Hard, Very Awful Week

There is something complicated that happens when you learn that a loved one has lost their battle with depression.

You feel shock and then a sadness because they are gone.

You feel guilt, wondering if there was something else you could have said or done to help them hang on.

And if you're me, who struggles with my own depression, the next thing you feel is fear. What if I am not strong enough and one day, that same battle takes me, too?

I'll be candid. I'm not handling this well. I move between the guilt over not saying enough of the right things when we spoke to make him stay and the sadness that sometimes there isn't anything to say to change someone's mind and fear my own depression will be what takes me out someday. Either way, it all just leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach.

Goodbye and safe journey, Scott. May you finally be free of the pain. May you finally know the peace that has eluded you for so long.

As for me, I'm clinging to this life I have with every ounce of strength that I have. I am being open and honest with friends so they understand when I am having a bad day. I am taking a mood stabilizer to help mitigate the emotional highs and lows. I'm in counseling, seeing a therapist and finally making a real effort to move on from the trauma of my past.

In other words, I am not going to quietly accept my fate and leaving this life by my own hand. Oh, no, that will not be me. I am doing everything I can to convince the me struggling that life is always still worth living. Because I have so much still to do.

Life is so, so good. And I want to stick around for it.

A Loss So Great, It's Impossible to Comprehend.

Today, I'm thinking of 9/11. I remember watching the news and hearing, ultimately, that more than three thousand people were killed. It was horrible, and shocking, but mostly unbelievable. I could't grasp the truth of so many lives lost. Three thousand people? What would that even look like, if all those people were standing next to each other in an empty field. I just couldn't visualize a loss so large.

My anguish and sorrow came later, when the incomprehensible numbers were replaced with the individual stories and images. Instead of thinking that three hundred firefighters were killed, I had to think about a single fireman who left behind a wife and a son on the way. Instead of the six police officers killed, I thought about the one who refused to leave the side of an injured man and ended up dying there with him.

When grief is so large, it numbs me. But the small, personal losses find their way through. And now, I feel the same thing happening again with the deaths in Newtown, Connecticut.

I can't wrap my head around the reality of a large number of six and seven year old children killed by a gunman. It's so heinous, so unfathomable, my mind simply won't accept it. But reading the names and seeing the faces makes it all too real, and each of them feels like a new pain in my heart.

Knowing who they are is painful, but we owe it to them to remember and honor the lives they led. And our grief is the price we pay - willingly - for having known and loved them for a time. Each time I hear a name, see a face, and learn about the person and their life, I will grieve again. And I accept that.

Today, the tears fell for two of those lost, Emilie Parker and Victoria Soto. One was a child who believed in Santa Claus and angels and brought joy to all those who knew her. The other was a schoolteacher, a young idealist who believed that teaching was her way to change the world.

It's possible to not feel the loss of twenty-seven people, because the heart just can't handle that much pain. But it's not possible for me to see these two, hear their stories, and not grieve for them. Today, I'll honor them by holding them in my heart and celebrating the wonder that was each of their lives.