What is grief? It can be so many things. It's kind of funny, and sad, and also appropriate that I got this exact prompt at this exact moment in time.
Today is my cousins birthday. My cousin S battled with bipolar disorder for a long time. He became an alcoholic like his mother. We all knew something was going on with him. He slowly started unfriending cousins on facebook. He was pulling away from everyone he loved, everyone who loved him.
He fought the demons in head for so long. He even became a decorated soldier in the U.S. Air Force. Despite his many accomplishments, his 4 beautiful children, brand new wife and baby girl, the demons won.
I remember the day all to clear. August 24, 2014 my entire family was forever changed. S had been drinking, as usual. He had become irrational and his wife got scared. She decided she needed to get the baby out of there so she could help S. While she was buckling the baby in the car the deafening sound of a gun shot pierced through the afternoon around her and she knew. She knew what she was going to walk in to see when she went back in their apartment. S took one of his many guns (that in my opinion he should NOT have owned in his mental state, but that's another story entirely) and committed suicide by a singke gun shot to his head.
S was just a few months away from retiring from the Air Force and moving to Texas to be close to his wifes family. But he never made it.
The grief that swept over my family was the worst grief I've ever known. Even when our matriarch, my Grammy, my moms mom, passed away, leaving a void in all of us that no one else could ever fill, we did not experience grief the way we did, and still do, 8 months later, as we did when S took his life.
Today is S's birthday. He would have been 38. He will never see his son become a man. He will never see his baby girl grow up. My uncle R and my cousin C, S's father and sister, don't have a son and brother to call on anymore. His mom, my ex aunt, has gone even deeper into the bottle than she already was.
How do you explain this brand of grief? How do you tell someone your cousin blew his hesd off when they ask you about your Air Force sweatshirt? How do you not burst into tesrs when you see his picture or when a Daddy Long Leg crawls across your path because S HATED Daddy Long Legs with a fierce passion?
In 4 short months it'll be one year since my family lost S to suicide. August will never be a happy month again. But I will fake it for my daughter and my nephew whose birthdays are just days before tragedy forever changed my family.
We miss you and think about you every day S. I hope your up there dancing the polka with Grammy and playing Scrabble with her and uncle M (who we lost way too young at the age of 56 in May 2014 to severe illness)! You are very loved dear cousin S.
