Walking Beyond Horizons

By D. Evan McCormick

At twenty in Brooklyn, NY. An icy insolation overcame my heart when I realized the religion I grew up to love, was against the very essence of truth I was experiencing. A volunteer at a free clinic doing hospice care. Torn between what I was taught and what I was learning. Exhausted by an upbringing full of violence. I decided to put my whole life in the hands of an unknown horizon. A death of my entire neural imprint of what is right and wrong began to disintegrate into ashes. No family. No friends. Only my awareness and life force. I walked beyond a horizon. The experience was more like walking into a wall. A force of fear saying no. You can't. Stop. It's too much. Walls fed by fears are horizons to walk through when stepping into fear and out the other side. Courage grows. Knowledge becomes wisdom. Steps show up leading our heart to choices.

That is about all we can do. Have choices. Life is a flow we can't control. We can though, choose what quality of awareness we would like to cultivate. Choosing a quality of compassion, for example, can pour pain into understanding. It can make a violent past become a resource that strengthens compassion. Choosing to empty pain takes steps. Moment to moment directing our attention to where the pain lives in our body, how it stimulates thoughts that arise from old beliefs. Then we have more choices. Am I worthless? Am I asking this because I have turned my pain into fear? Is my fear directing my thoughts? Choices with pain show up when we decide to face our pain.

Fast forward to the days when I became a father. After years devoted to exploring personal pain and the beliefs tying fear to behaviors. Experiencing freedoms I didn't know I could have when a teenager or young adult. Finding incrediable joy as a dad. Watching my son grow and learn how to face his fears too, expanded my heart's ability to love beyond horizons.

Then at seventeen my child committed suicide. What now? He had neurological challenges. He was brought to therapists and specilists. He was having an allergic reaction to a medication. He was struggling with fears. At seventeen, it is natural to question life. To wonder, even worry, what will I do next after high school? He wanted a relationship. He wanted to fall in love. He wanted to stop the feelings of worry. So much goes into an abrupt end of life. When a person ends their physical life, only they know the pain that made that decision.

Meanwhile, I am here. His dad. This blog is an attempt to vulnerably reveal the common feelings and thoughts that happen when a child commits suicide. If you are like me, a loving parent who becomes wrapped up in confused and in unspeakable pain - I hope reading this helps you know you are not alone.

I draw on my past healing. I talk openly about how pain moves through our life. I reflect how conflicted I feel at times - so much personal pain has been processed, yet this death of my son - is not a pain to walk away from. It is a pain I want to take with me into my next horizon. A pain I don't escape, rather bring - many times drag - into each step rebuilding a faith in what is loving, good and ultimately, healing. I want this for my son. Who I know, wants this for his family.

It's Sunday. I feel a tense pain in my gut and immediately think of my son. He is at his mom's house and sick with an eye infection. I send him a text. I love him, can't wait to get him tomorrow. I get a message back - love you dad. I'm ok. Feel weird though with this medicine. This all happens in twenty minutes. I go to my phone to check on him again, but a call from his mom shows up on my phone. I answer and I hear her voice say, He's dead. I don't know what to do.

When I joined a grief online group a few months after this call. I heard a lot of these kinds of events. If you have had an abrupt death of a child, you know what I mean. You are doing your thing, then a call. Or a person at your door. Or ... it doesn't matter, the shock is what pins us to the ground. Suffocating in our tears, grasping for their presence, split in a million pieces, scattered in the explosion within this kind of news. I went to his mom's home, held his dead body in my arms and screamed from the top of my lungs his name, over and over. I remember the police officer standing near just looking at me, I yelled at him too. Yelled to stop looking. To give me space. I was melting into a pit of pain. A hole. A descent into darkness where all I felt was a free falling with no escape.

Pain is a falling sometimes. It is endless when unknowable. This is also called suffering. A suffering heart has no where to go, except more pain. Then, I named it. I immediately set my boundaries for this collapse. I will not curse the unknown. I will not abandon my loved ones. I will get as much help as possible. I will reach out to love even though I have no idea what that means. I remembered a saying I would often use when supporting dying clients, Like it or not, you are loved.

Like it or not, I am loved. Like it or not, I will walk through this pain. Like it or not, I will feel the edges of the universe ripping apart. I will cry, but I refuse to let spirit die. This was first month kind of stuff going through my head. Maybe you have your own mantras. The point is to move shock. Dive into shock, shake the violence from your heart.

Why?

In the beginning there is extreme shock. Shock has a location in the body - the physical heart. Our heart actually undergoes a change of shape when struck with an abrupt loss. It twists. Yep. The muscles twist from a full open musculature of two ovals meeting in a center, to a knotted twined up cramp. Heart break is a realistic phrase, a physical thing we feel emotionally and for the heart, physically. This is what shock does - twists the muscles of our heart into a cramp, sends stress hormones through our blood stream producing restless nights, limits our gut receptors to catch and digest nutrients and psychically - throws our thoughts into disorder.

In ancient energetic medical systems shock is disorder. Our brain can tell us more. When my son died, my brain physically ached. Being a dad meant mapping my son upon my neurons. An actual map of my son is felt physically because physical chemicals have molded to experiences - memories - events - called son. When he physical disappeared, my brain ached because it didn't know what to do. Where is he? Where did he go? One day he was here to hug. To joke around. To take walks. To listen to. Sit with and watch a movie. To prepare for an everyday future with him. Then, poof. Gone.

My brain, like yours, is programed to map objects upon its chemical roadways. This does something - it tricks our brain into thinking an object is permanent. Stable. Forever going to be there. Yes, our brain makes it seem that once mapped, forever present. This is a trick because that isn't how nature works. Life is impermanent. Temporary. Objects come and go. Relationships end. New ones begin. Life is a cycle of beginnings and ends. Our mind rides the chemical map of our brain like it is one long forever experience.

This is part of shock. Suddenly faced with impermanence. Holding his shirt. Packing up his belongings. Putting his ashes in a box. Throwing away what I wanted to keep into my future and what I didn't want to see anymore - free of his voice, his smile, his big blue eyes.

Shock is an abrupt change of direction. Life is flowing one way, then suddenly goes a completely different way. So yeah, of course the heart tightens up. It is fearful. It wants to hold on to something tangible.

When I used to walk with people into their death through hospice, this was one of the greatest pains they would share - that there is really nothing permanent in this physical realm. Our dimension held together by things, objects, falls apart. That chair you love, that car, that house, that money, that status, that family, that child, that body of yours - has a beginning and an end.

This is why physical reality needs to have parameters for our faith. Faith that is dependent on things will become exhausted, burned out and ruthlessly cynical if we don't transcend the impermanence. Forcing life to stay the same way only solidifies shock. Hardens a tight heart in a knot. Refusing to walk to a new horizon.

This is why, we ask why. Why - this question becomes like a hell world. Why why why. No answer. Why did he do that? Why God? Why universe? Why just keeps going. This is what I mean by parameters. I had to eventually say to myself - why ask why. It doesn't work. That question is not the path to answers. It's like looking out at a rocky shore filled with hard hitting waves. A dangerous place to swim. Why is like this, a dangerous rocky shore we can't swim, or we will die spiritually. There are just some places we can't go. We have limits. We need parameters, an outline of limits. Having a parameter allows our mind to go inward. Find out where we can meet ourselves - our sense of sanity - our ability to transcend impermanence.

Meanwhile, I didn't get a lot of sleep. Intruding thoughts about his death often startled me. Guilt comes on strong too. If I have a day where I didn't become consumed with his memory, sure enough at night time my heart would twist up and say - how dare you. Are you forgetting him? Losing his presence? The answer is yes and no. This is part of grief. I haven't hugged his physical body for years. My brain has created more roads leading away from holding him. New connections. I miss him terribly, yet the immediate shock of wanting to hold him and tell him it is going to be ok - has untwisted into new ways of communicating with his presence in my life.

I'll get into that soon. For now, if you are like me, missing your sense of permanence - Remember it's ok to sleep more often. Walk around like you don't know how to participate in everyday life. Fumble around bumping into things. Dazing off into the unknown. Please though, stay present with your parameters. Refuse for now, asking why.

Community

When starting in hospice care I said a lot of ignorant things. For one thing, I was twenty lacking life experience and many of my patients were over eighty years old. Not a lot I could say that would touch their years of wisdom. It was also during the early 1990's when I began. A time hospice was radically changing from a formal medical treatment into a comfort based humanistic approach. Emphasizing that death is not only a physical event, but also an emotional and spiritual experience. Rather than trying to save the patient from death, hospice began to look at death as a natural transition. A shift occurred focusing on ways to bring in community support, facilitate self realization through dying and empowering the patient legally. Philosophically, a linear sequence of stages in grief became levels we experience all at once.

Listening became a foundation for assisting a physical body that is dying. What does this person need internally? What are their emotions saying? My training became an exercise in how to read between the lines, listen to what is underneath the rapids of emotions. I took active listening classes learning how to slow down my ready responses to pass over hard to hear feelings. I found teachers that challenged my instinct to make everything ok.

Eventually I learned that when a person dies, so does the family and community. I began to realize that death is intertwined with those who love and have lived with the patient. While caring for the patient, I learned to spend time listening to their family. Hearing what is also dying for them. Death catches a family in what hasn't been processed. When one of my teachers was dying I spent time with him writing letters to those he hurt in his life. A letter to his son still impacts me to this day. As my teacher wrote his letter, his tears and anger released. He never felt good enough as a father. Made mistakes. At his funeral I talked to his son and asked if he read the letter. Yes, he said. We hugged and he said - I learned to forgive my dad. I always worried though, would he forgive himself?

I need to ask myself that question. Have I forgiven myself? Can I let go of my mistakes? The thing with suicide though, it is easy to leap into confusing logic. They died because I wasn't able to save them. They died because I wasn't able to unlock their pain. Suicide brings this out in a parent. It is like a wrestling match with logic - no it's not your fault - and confused pain - it must be my fault because.... and then the list of reasons.

The first year after my son's death I daily read our text messages. How close we were. I said things I wish my dad said to me, yet it didn't save him. No matter how good or attentive I was as a father, my son made a decision. It was his decision. It was his life. It was his way to end confusing pain.

I say all of this because of one reason - people. If you are like me, a child you loved and bent over backwards care giving and listening to - dies - people will say the shittiest things. Not because they want to, but usually because they don't know. Ignorance around death is built into many cultures. Especially here in the United States. I had to learn this when doing hospice. Listening to grieving families share with me how rude or mean people can be when you have a loved one die. Death, like I said, uncovers what hasn't been processed. The fears of a community immediately show up when faced with the topic of death. It is easier to pass over discomfort than face it head on.

I won't sum this up just yet. Instead, I'll pause with this idea. If you know someone who has had a death in their family, please do this - listen. That's it. You may want to say something to help, don't. If you need to do anything, drive over to their home and sweep their floor, make some food or sit on the couch and let their head rest on your shoulder. We as a community, don't need to give answers. We only need to be around. Refuse saying, If you need anything just call. That is crushing. Our friend experiencing death doesn't want to call for your help. It can feel like a burden or oftentimes, the energy isn't there to call you. Instead, call them and say, I'm coming over with food. Or call and say, I'm all yours, tell me anything or nothing at all - I just love you.

Remember, death of one person is a death the whole world experiences. We can deny the pain, or courageously show up and walk with them to a new horizon.

Isolation

When my son died so did my sense of confidence. Solid feelings that made up my foundation of self crumbled. It was like walking on a firm ground that suddenly let way into an endless avalanche. I would wake up in the morning and try a positive thought, then a memory of him would pop in and I would fall to peices. The whole day spent in and out of crying, numbing out, restlessly grabbing onto anything I could do to keep myself in the moment and out of intense sharp feelings.

As I fell apart internally, isolation began to happen. Shame helped with this experience. I was taught that shame is based on lies. Where guilt is a positive feeling, producing action to make something better. My shame was based on hiding. Keeping feelings of worthlessness tucked away so I could wear a mask. A face of strength and sense of being put together. I knew it was happening, but something inside of me didn't care anymore.

Not caring about life happens with grief. Despondent. That is the word. Unable to gather enough energy to care. Thoughts came to me - he's dead, so why care? He's gone and now I have to live in a world that both has a hard time with death, but also suicide. My shame wanted to hide how I wasn't powerful enough to heal my son.

You can hear the lies, right? That I am so powerful, so so mighty, that I can control life. That is the big lie I had to face. The lie that was feeding shame. The shame that wanted to hide because I failed. A sense of failure that started to isolate my heart from opening up to support.

I didn't think I could control life, generally. I did though, want to control the outcome of my son. I wanted him to grow up to adulthood. I wanted him to experience having a romantic relationship. I wanted him to travel to places he talked about - for him it was Japan. I wanted him to move to a place, have a job, enjoy his own things and friends and life. I wanted that to happen and I couldn't make it so.

He wanted those things too, yet also made a choice when extremely stressed out and depleted. I couldn't control those things either. I couldn't control every movement he made, ensuring his life would follow what I think is best.

The lie. Control. If I don't control what happens, this bad thing will happen. This was the crumbling feeling that occurred when my son died. His death brought me to this internal death. The death of fearfully trying to do everything I could to save my boy.

What helped the isolation? Going vulnerable. Asking for help. It is hard for me to do that, especially with my history of pain. If you are a father, maybe you know what that is like trying to put on a mask of togetherness. Having all the answers. Being in charge, in control. Those are lies though. Lies that are nourished in a culture where men are taught to hide feelings. To hide emotions. Hide the vulnerable. The fear is appearing weak. It is easier, we think, shutting up and getting to work. Be the strong one. Anything but that other option, feelings of weakness.

Getting support, learning to be vulnerable, teaches us that the real lie is this - strength comes from denying our emotions. The truth is that feelings and emotions are actually our source of strength. Hiding, shame and isolating is an endless loop that keeps us weak. Keeps us from emotions that only want to be acknowledged, honored and released. This does something amazing, gives us energy. Come to find out, it takes more energy to hold up a mask, hide and deny feelings. It takes less energy to notice the feelings, vulnerably allow them to arise and release. When we do this, energy replenishes our immune system, gives us clarity, nourishes our soul.