We would have been together for 19 and married for 14.  Curse the would have been’s in the aftermath of death.  I was still fresh with the grief of watching my mother lose her long and painful ebb to dementia when my husband began his dance with all that haunted him. He and my mother were very close-and maybe that triggered his internal pain.  Maybe he stood in the threshold of all he ever wanted and all he never did, too long.  Maybe he stood frozen in time, not ever really knowing how to become who he was. Maybe, as people say when someone commits suicide, he is no longer in any pain.

I hate when people say that.

It was painful to watch him find the balance of holding on to himself as father and husband and letting go of a little boy who carried too much pain and trauma.  I never loved him more than when he was able to put words to what mattered-and what hurt,and I never ached more than watching him struggle with his own set of sacred scars.  I have those now, as does our daughter.  These will be the scars never spoken about on a blog, in a chapter in a book, or shared with the masses.  I could never break that vow of holding all that was sacred-and all that still remains, and I never would. So I lift the burden and tuck it away-dealing more with the shared pain, and what will always remain sacred.  Once you are a member of the sacred scar club a window is opened into what we all share.  Pain. Loss. Complicated grief. We share our own set of would have beens.

Thank-you for sharing your pain.  Thank-you for keeping me in the loop of life that is still alive with love and still comes with circumstance and consequences. It has been through the compassion of sharing the collective pain of life I have been able to further embrace the grace and healing.  We have pain. Not one of us is absolved.  Not one.  It is the shared pain of the living that has allowed me to further embrace the journey death offered up on shit platter.  My life is not the way I thought it was going to be-however, this is my life now. The would have beens creep in and out when I least expect it- offering up memories of what was through the smells, sounds and tastes of living and loving.

I have come to understand letting go. Let me rephrase that:  I am getting better at understanding letting go.  A part of me died on September 2, 2014 when my beloved and well loved husband took his life.  It has been haunting, traumatic, painful, confusing,isolating, incredibly sad and tragic. There is no other way around it.  There are scars I will never speak of because they are etched in the marks left in the deepest part of my heart and soul. There are days I can not scream loud enough or long enough.  There are days the frequency of sorrow is too loud for me to contain.  There are also days I laugh and embrace what was without the pain of what is….I can step in- I am stepping into this day, this month, this year. This is my dance.

This is now my story.  My daughter too has her own story, her own haunting, her own unanswered questions.  We work on these knowing the answers may never come. It is a weird dance of ours. Mother daughter two step: middle age and teenager, happiness and grief, milestones and new beginnings; shared pain and separate scars.