Grieving Notes

By Al Vigil

Everyone —each and every person, will experience grief in their lives. The irony for suicide survivors is that the grief will take place in life because someone you loved chose to end their own life.

Sometimes grief is described as work. It can be a process. It can become a journey —whatever description is used, everyone will go through it. Grief is an inescapable part of being alive. It may not seem fair, but it is real ...and it always brings change.

Change that is a multi-faceted response to loss. The feelings and emotions brought to you are numbness, disbelief, denial, despair, sadness, and loneliness.

Grief can come like a rushing wind that can blow our lives into devastating proportions. Recovery can be difficult and painful. Or grief can come like a gentle breeze that can be felt like a slow movement that subtly makes it a painful presence.

The winds and the breezes of grief will have no limit to their direction, time or intensity. You will feel the air move around you at un-expected moments. You may even feel the presence of a loved one for many years after they've been gone.

During the days of early mourning and during the later time and years of lasting grief ...there are only two things that you can do wrong. Those two things would simply be to hurt yourself or someone else.

Our days of 'early mourning' for our daughter Mia, are long past. It has been many years since she chose to stop her life at the age of eighteen.

But, our grief for her death still continues. We still think of her often —probably each and every day. We grieve for the children she never had. We grieve for the nieces and nephews she never met and loved. My wife Linda, and I, even grieve for each other, —Mia will never know us as the senior-parents that we have become.