@lowtide So heartbreaking for all 😢 Prayers for the Highest Good for all concerned and may all draw comfort and be able to speak of him and share memories as celebrate his life and grieve together.
Perhaps, having dealt with this brilliant life, the takeaways of knowledge and living with autism and depression? Your brother and family can do outreach helping others with what they have learned as they lived with it. When we take our pain and transform it to helping others facing the same challenges we have lived through we get the gift of healing ourselves and getting back more than we gave.
All of you will be in my thoughts and my prayers as you all go through this great loss.
🙏🏻❤️💚💜🙌💜💚❤️🙏🏻
@lowtide I am so sorry for your and your family's loss of your beloved nephew. I feel the pain of it in my heart and wish I could take it from your brother, to lighten his heavy load. That is a lot to bear.
Would you all be able to get away to somewhere as a family? I'm thinking a place in nature, preferably with physical activity that gets you out of your mind and into your body. The therapeutic benefits of being in nature have been proven again and again.
Does your brother have a daily structure of interacting with people outside the family? Is he able to see a therapist to help craft a routine, even the most basic one? I worry about when people who have been through such devastating events have too much time on their own, alone.
I wish I understood why life can bring us such great shocks.
Sending you love and healing prayers.
@lowtide, I am so, so sorry. There is nothing in this world that is more difficult than losing a child. I could go on and on over what it takes to deal with such a loss. First, for all of you who will be supporting them, listen to them, no matter how hard it is. We sometimes go off the deep end, and sometimes we're in denial, but having someone to listen without judgement helps. Each parent will grieve in their own way, which may be different from the other. Each will have a timeline that is different as well. In my case, having so many other parents around who had also lost children who were dealing with the same issues, was eye-opening. We all reacted in so many differing ways. No way is right or wrong, as we're each individual, unique. One parent may need to talk, while the other finds it excruciating to do so. This may make it difficult for one to talk to or support the other. This is where friends and family come in. Be the ear and the shoulder for each, in the way that they seem to need. There are groups for bereaved parents like Compassionate Friends, which some find helpful. Know that this isn't something they'll ever get over. It is something that with time, trial and error, they'll learn to deal with. There is no way around it-they have to go through it. My ex thought that he could escape it by work. When that didn't work, he turned to drinking nightly to cope. It took him 24 years to get sober. It is painful, hard work, but you can't out run it or hide from it, much as some try. Realize that just like their world changed forever the day they became parents, their world has again taken a drastic step into another direction. Their lives can go on, be happy, and normal (whatever that is), but it will always be different. How long it takes for them to get there is variable from person to person. There is life before and life after losing a child. While they are on this journey, there will be waves of grief. They may think they've got a handle on it, only to have something, often something small and trivial to others, upset the whole apple cart. This is normal. They are not alone. It will help them to know others have survived such loss. The first year is the hardest. There is a first for everything-first holidays, first birthdays, first anniversaries. It will take them time to figure out what works for them on such occasions. One of the things that helped me the most was to imagine what I would tell Monica if I had passed and she was left behind. I knew what I'd want for her, so I knew what she'd want for me. It's hard to take the advice you'd give your child from heaven, but that's what they'd want us to do. They want for us what the same things we would want for them. If there is something I can do to help, please ask.
@jeanne-mayell, as others here were talking of Coyote recently, I felt from him that his mother was doing ok. Not spectacular, but as well as could be expected. Do you hear from his parents to know how they are doing?
Tomorrow my dear friend Antonia, is having a difficult and dangerous surgery. Tomorrow may decide her future. Please pray with me for her. Please send healing for her. She has ovarian cancer and it's third stage. The surgery is six hours long - -three hours to search and remove whatever must be removed from her body to save her, and three hours in which a second surgeon comes in to put her back together and sew her up.
She is a kind and strong person who heads our community garden. She loves nature and plants and is kind to everyone but also tough. But this summer has been the most difficult and painful of her life.
I am seeing her in surgery with angels attending every minute, directing the surgeons' throughout, infusing her body with healing strength. I am seeing the operating room filled with angelic light and Antonia recovering fully.
@jeanne-mayell I'll be praying for both of you. Please keep us posted of anything we can do to help. 🙏🙏🙏💕
@jeanne-mayell May healing angels guide the surgeons tomorrow and may they hold Antonia, you and all who love her in the days to come.
@journeywithme2 I agree with you that helping others who share a similar experience is so healing. I hope and pray they will be able to take that path. Thank you for your kind response. I appreciate you.
@gbs You and I think along the same lines. He has recently developed several friendships that I hope will be comforting to him. He couldn't do things he would have enjoyed because he didn't want to be too far away from his son. Now I think he is going to transfer that into not being able to be far from his wife. He does enjoy nature and walks and thank goodness they have a lovely pup to care for and love on - and walk regularly. And they are all in therapy, thank goodness.
Thank you for your thoughts. You are very kind.
@lowtide, I somehow just now saw your post about your brother's family's tragic loss. I am holding them all and also you, dear beautiful friend, in healing light.
@Cindy's loving advice is so deep and good. Thank you, Cindy for your words. They may help many.
My thoughts to you, low tide, are about the experience of losing a loved one to suicide.
I lost my first husband that way, and while the pain was beyond anything I could have ever imagined, I learned over time that the pain of a parent was so much more to bear. The pain of a sibling also may be as rough as a parent. I hope his sister gets the help she needs and doesn't suffer through this alone and far from home.
First they must deal with losing their child, the one they had devoted their lives to protecting. Then they must deal with losing their child to a death that was caused by someone, and not an accident.
The name they give this form of death is a misnomer because it is likened to a murder. The medical profession needs to find a different name because it gives the wrong impression and does an injustice to the victim and his family. That aspect is also just so difficult for survivors to cope with at a time in which they are already reeling from so much.
Death by suicide has been misunderstood throughout history as something a person knowingly does to him or herself. That attitude is as incorrect as the ancient attitude that mentally ill people were possessed by evil spirits.
Suicide death comes from a mental illness, an affliction. It is the illness that ended his life. It was death by means of suicide. We should never say that a person killed himself, and never let others say that. We should say instead that he died by suicide. It more accurately reflects what happened.
Also, I learned back then that for every person who dies by suicide, an average of five people are deeply afflicted. That was 40 years ago that I learned that. Today, I imagine the number of afflicted survivors of suicide has been found to be larger.
I am picturing all of you surrounded by angels, loving and listening and helping you all to heal. And I pray for this boy's spirit, that he finds peace at last.