Where are you now?
I see you in a vast forest, in the mountains, in the sky...
I hear you whispering in the wind, in the dancing leaves, in the raindrops…
I feel your presence at sunset, when I gaze at the stars…
I sense you everywhere!
 

How it is?
“Papa took his own life last night.”
The world, time itself, stood still. I knew instantly that I would never see him again, that we would never talk to each other again,
and it hurt so much! I was too late! I had missed him!
It is like fine sand trickling through your fingers.
On 3 September 2010, the day I learned that my father had shot himself in the night

“I was,”
that is to say “I was over, past, gone, lost”
because everything fell apart. In my impotence, I became aware of mortality.
“That can’t be true” “I miss him” “I lost my father” “I’m lost” “Everything is lost”
“I was” “It is over” “I'm too late” “Nothing can undo this” “The world is falling apart.”
 

The aftermath:
“Being alone and misunderstood”
a rollercoaster of profound grief, love, anger, impotence, pain, feelings of guilt
 

It is.
I have accepted the suicide and the emotions as part of my life.
I still cry from time to time, but that’s ok, even if it hurts.
It is a familiar pain, and contained within it there is
deep love and attachment. Sometimes it is faraway, as if it had evaporated and become a mere fact, even for months at a time.
But suddenly it’s there again, very close,
and the emotions well up again, seeking release.
That is something I allow myself, but generally only when I am alone.
In the presence of others I block,
or am too ashamed. Only rarely do I not care at all.
It is accompanying me through life. And sometimes I ask myself:
“Did it do that before?”

 

The work of the subconscious:
Dreams are not froth. They are pointers and helpers.
The Inner Way
I dreamed of suicide in the night my father took his own life: I was in the classroom at school. The subject was suicide. And there was a man there giving us live demonstrations of the various methods. It was not a bad dream; after all, it was school. But then I woke up and was shocked, because in retrospect it seemed so violent. I fell back to sleep again a few minutes later. Next day I put the dream out of my mind and went about my daily business as usual. But then in the evening I received a telephone call from my mother, telling me that my father had taken his own life that same night. While I was dreaming about suicide he had shot himself. Curiously, “shooting oneself” was not one of the methods explained in my dream.  Somehow, in my subconscious I had had an inkling of what was happening, and my dream had made me aware of this, because I must have dreamed it at the very moment of his decease. Was it merely a random association of the subconscious, a premonition, pure information, or perhaps preparation? Why was it thus?
 

My father then began cropping up in other dreams. At first I dreamed that he was still alive and that it was all a misunderstanding or an accident. Once I was even able to talk to him. In the other dreams that went on for months and even years thereafter, I saw more and more of the reality: that he drove off, that his wounds healed, or that he said he was now dead and wasn’t really there since he was visiting me from the beyond. And so my subconscious gently brought me face to face with the reality.

What I want to say is that we should lend greater credence to our dreams and pay more attention to them and regard them as our helpers as we cope with our bereavement. Dreams are the work of our subconscious as it tries to come to terms with something.

Last Words
My father had taken a pencil and scribbled two short sentences on the back of a paper plate. Those were his last words – at any rate the last words to reach us. They were also the last earthly link that tied us together. Those two lines were so important to me! Those words, being able to read those words – having at least something of him! It helped me a lot that he wrote them. I was able to hold something of his in my Hands.

What else helps? Writing, being creative. Artistic Expression:
I wrote reams and reams. Lots of letters to my father. Dialogues, thoughts, dreams, emotions. Gathering all my courage, I took a pencil and let my hand do the rest. That helped me a lot back then, and afterwards too. I kept those letters, although I could also have burned them. But years later, I saw the benefits of keeping them when I came across them by chance and read them all over again. Suddenly I was catapulted back to that terrible time and had to relive it all over again; and I realized how it is now and just how powerful such a crisis can be. But I also saw what I had been able to learn from it, and how deeply we can immerse ourselves in something. It doesn’t have to be writing. It could be painting, sculpting, singing, making music, dancing or something else altogether. I just know from experience that artistic expression is of tremendous value in overcoming trauma. Furthermore, it is a way of both enriching your own life, which really does go on, and of enabling you to learn lessons from all that you have suffered. That is my message of reassurance and support for other survivors.

Let your grief, your pain, and all the many other emotions swirling around inside you

flow into a well of creativity.
That is something that every individual can do.
It helps.

​

Sarah