Mine To Carry, Not Mine To Carry.

For 729 days (almost exactly two years) I've been trying understand Gordon's choice to end his life. I've gone every way around it, thinking what if? why didn't? how could I have? I've done the I should haves, the I could haves. I have known from the beginning it was not my fault, and yet I felt responsible for his actions. I have always been that person who struggled to get it right. Get what right you ask? Well all of it. As if by getting it right I could control things. Hint, hint...we really don't have control of what life brings us. We only have control of how we respond to it.

Here is what I've learned. I will never understand the illness that causes one to take their own life. I cannot fathom such darkness. I did as much as I could to prevent his decision, but ultimately he was responsible for his illness and his actions. None of us has that much control, has that much power over another. Most days we struggle with controlling our self.

So how does one find the forgiveness within to let go of the feeling we should have done more. Done less, done things different? How do you accept that you can do everything possible and still have a tragic outcome?

Visualize a person sitting on the floor and sorting life into several baskets. For a long time the person carried everything, every little thing, in their basket. All the worry, the responsibilities, the hurt, the struggles. Even burdens they had no capacity to handle. The weight of the basket is enormous. It is exhausting. Truth is the basket is only meant to hold one life journey. Visualize that same person taking the weight of someones else's choices out of their basket and giving it back. Visualize that over and over, giving back what is not mine to carry. Giving responsibility to who ever it belongs to. Bit by bit releasing the weight of the journey. Letting go what one had no responsibility for, or control over.

This letting go business sucks, in case you didn't know. Letting go of dreams, expectations, plans, desires of the heart. Then as a survivor of suicide loss, wrap all that up in grief, surround it with stigma and cover it with regret.

I don't know, and will never know why he could not see the light and love that was available to him. Intellectually the answer is mental illness. Emotionally it's not so easy to explain. 

So I struggle and I pray for direction. I let go of what is not mine to carry. I trust in the process even when the outcome is unbearably painful. I believe in the light, I lean into it and as I am able, I share the light.