A warning in advance: This is different from a lot of the things I write and post here; It’s pretty heavy and involves suicide and death. If that’s not for you, then please, feel free to move on. I see this site as an archive, broadly, of what’s been occupying my mind, and this has been it lately.
It is early January in 2015. I turned 19 just a couple of weeks ago. College is far harder than I expected. I went from nearly straight A’s without much effort to C’s and B’s. I have not had much luck making friends. I am beaten down, humbled, but feeling ready to try again after winter break.
One of my best friends messages me. He has plans to make a video game and do developer diaries of his progress. I’m so excited for him — I tell him once he’s got things more set up, I can put him in touch with an artist I know who would probably be interested in helping.
It is later in February in 2015. I get a message from my friend’s brother: he died. Suicide. I nearly can’t take it. But, his family asks if anyone would be willing to write about some memories of him for the funeral — a task I can pour myself into. I write about how we met before we even started proper school. How we were in the same advanced math classes but he was always effortlessly better at it than me. How we played Minecraft for hours and hours together, building and exploring. How he showed me my first ever code in an AppleScript and nearly got sent to the principal because our substitute teacher thought he was hacking the computer. How I was worried about him in high school when he was admitted to a mental hospital, but how glad I was that he came back and seemed better.
His family reads large portions of what I wrote at his funeral. Hearing what I wrote spoken back to me was unexpectedly eerie. Writing my memories was my most powerful distraction, but hearing it come from someone else drove home the finality of it. It wasn’t something I was working on anymore; it was done and he was gone.
His friends and family take turns scooping dirt on his casket. I throw my dirt quickly, not sure what I should feel at that moment. I feel profoundly empty.
It is a few weeks later in mid-March. It has not yet been quite a month since my friend’s funeral. I get a call from my dad: My mom has been in an accident. My dad and aunt sit with me in a room and tell me my mom was hit by car while out walking. The driver was a kid who had just gotten his license and hadn’t cleared the snow from his windshield properly — an innocuous accident on most days. Today though, it meant my mom was brain dead, but still technically alive, in the next room over.
Aside from some bruises, she looked normal in the hospital bed. I remembered seeing her in the hospital once before, when I was a little younger, and she had a routine surgery. I remember crying then, even though she was fine, just at the thought there was any risk to her life at all.
My mom was undoubtedly the most important person in my life. She was one of my greatest role models of both kindness and hard work. She always made time for me, listened to me, and showed genuine interest in what I had to say. It’s common to speak fondly of people when they die, but throughout my whole life, I regularly pushed thoughts away of her getting hurt, let alone dying, because the mere idea was simply too painful.
So it felt like a cosmic cruelty bordering on a joke that I had to be the one to give the okay that removing her life support was for the best. She was all but dead — there was zero brain activity outside of her brainstem. But it was hard not to think of it as killing her in some way. I sat with her from the moment they turned off the support to the moment her heart stopped. I knew how much she loved me and cared for me, so I told her I would be okay. I thought maybe there was some small part of her that was holding on for me, but she already sacrificed so much for me, and I was never grateful enough. All I could promise then was I would make her proud, and I would do my best to be happy even without her.
It is a few days later. Sometimes I think the most helpful thing that came out of my mom dragging me to church every week was learning our favorite songs. It is easy for me to pick what should play during the service.
When we inter her ashes, I read Good Night, Moon. I asked her to read it to me so many times. I wanted to return the favor just once.
It is weeks later and I am dreaming. In the dream, I am in a hotel hallway. Patterned carpet stretches seemingly endlessly in front of me flanked by rows and rows of closed doors. The hallway is silent aside from some dull hum of air conditioning. There may be thousands of lives being lived behind these doors, or they may be empty.
My mom is sitting on a bench against the wall in front me. I run to her and fall to my knees. She asks me if I’m okay. I beg her to come back. She tries again to ask about me. All I can do is plead with her to please, please come back. I can tell she feels sorry for me, for meeting me here so soon. I was clearly not ready. She finally answers me, “I have to go.” I wake up. I have this dream a few more times, but it never changes. I know she has to leave; I know I can’t make her stay, but I am compelled to beg anyway. The final time, I know she is leaving for good. Her face tells me. I know, whatever this place is, I will never come back. This will be my final, clearest image of her.
It is months later. I dropped out of my engineering courses. I just can’t do it anymore. When I sleep, I don’t remember most of my dreams, but I remember a few. In this one, I wake up floating in a starless space. It is utterly black in all directions. I feel fear, deep and primal, but I can’t explain why. Glowing lights start to streak and zigzag through the space: green, yellow, blue. They are some far-off phenomenon. I remain suspended, alone, forced to look at these streaks of light, and I am terrified.
Some nights I have another dream. I’m walking near a forest for some reason, and my friend is there, alive. I’m happy to see him, but how is he there? He’s confused by me. Why would he not be there? He had this gesture when he heard something he just didn’t understand. It’s difficult to describe, but it was a slight smile, a slight squint, a slight head shake, and raising his hands to his head all at once. He gives me that look. “What?”
I wake up. The confidence of my dreamed up version of him makes me think I really was wrong for a moment. Of course he’s alive; I was being so stupid, so overdramatic. I even go to his Facebook page to check because it would be so perfect to be wrong. But there are the usual messages from people who miss him. I will only see his hazy, half-remembered gesture of disbelief in that forest of my dreams.
It is years later. I have this dream of space again. I used to get it a lot; now it happens a couple of times a year. I have never gotten used to it, though. I am still just as terrified of it now as I was then. I wake up, gasping and sweating. I write about the dream to try to get some small amount of understanding, to be just a little less afraid.
As I read my own words, understanding washes over me. In the dream, there is no sound. Now, conscious and in control of my imagination, I try inserting it. Beep. Beep. Beep. The lines zig and zag in time. They are the lines of my mom’s vital signs. I hold her cold hand in mine but my eyes are locked on the machine’s dark, reflective glass. Her body does not tell me anything, but the lines in the dark glass measure the last moments of her life precisely. Perfectly. I know it is a trap to focus on these lines when her life was over in practical terms a day ago, but in my dream, I willingly live in that trap. It is escape and prolonging all at once. In the dark glass I am afraid, but at least she’s still beside me. The lines shooting past me means it’s not over yet. I can have just a little longer.
It’s not a good enough reason to stay there. If the only way I can hold on to her is when I’m terrified, it would be better to let go. For me.
It is 10 years later, and I’m writing this. I have always wanted to write something more grand, more interesting about what that time in life did. What it taught me, how it changed me, maybe some advice for others. But in 10 years, I haven’t figured out how.
I recently heard the song It’s Not a Stop by David O’Dowda for the first time, and it hit me in just the right way. The titular line of the song goes:
It’s not a stop
It’s just the end
10 years ago, I expected there would be some bookend to all this. Something I could point to as the end of my grief, or at least the worst of it. I expected it would be an interlude and I’d get back on track: a stop.
That isn’t what happened. I’ve chipped away at my grief slowly, but I’ve never felt like I got back on track. I am on a permanent diversion, so much so that I don’t know what it would even mean to get back on track anymore. To me, that is maybe the cruelest part of it all. There is an ever present sense that I have changed, but I can’t say how. I can’t stop to reflect because it’s never over. I continue on, continue working to better myself, to be kind, to not let this be the end of me. But it was the end of some version of me. I’m picking up where that person ended.
