Dear Melinda:

Again, I am sorry that this tragedy happened and that the pain that goes with it is, as you said, “unbearable. It has definitely changed me“.

As I understand it, two months ago, your son was found dead following an apparent suicide. You suspected that it was a homicide staged as suicide, and said so to the police. The police informed you yesterday that they were turning the case to the homicide division.

Your best friend of 5 years was not at all supportive. She criticized you for “not grieving right” and for telling the police “to look at it any other way but suicide“. On the day of the funeral, she  told you to STFU and took a swing at you: “I was in a fist fight in  front of the funeral home 3 minutes after I walked my son to the oven to be cremated… I … sent her to the ER“, you shared.

Because you were too upset to arrange for the cremation, it was your adult niece who arranged for it. Without your knowledge or permission, she (together with her sister and mother) scattered a third of your son’s ashes somewhere in San Francisco. When you found out and brought it to their attention, “they turned it into a warzone with screaming and name calling“,  and if I understand correctly, they stole the rest of the ashes (..?)

“I not only lost my son, I lost 4 other people that I thought loved me and that I cared for deeply. I’m alone now. Everything has changed. I feel numb. I can’t feel happiness, or sadness. I don’t see the colors in the world, or hear the music, or feel anything at all. I don’t know exactly what to do to feel again and honestly I don’t know that I want to. I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do.  Therapy isn’t going to be an option because I have to work.“- it’s all a shock to your system/ brain, so it shuts down and you continue to live, but minimally: you do what needs to be done (work) and feel as little as possible.

Usually, there are feelings attached to seeing colors, and to hearing music, but because severe emotional pain is attached to your feelings, most or all of your feelings are greatly shut down. To awaken from numbness, if and when you can handle such awakening, it will need to be done gradually, slowly. Doing art, like drawing, painting, sewing etc., can be forms of expression and awakening. Journaling, privately, or here on your thread, can also be a way to awaken.

And there needs to be a reason for you to awaken, to live more than minimally. It may be helping (and being helped by) other mothers/ parents who lost their adult children to acts of violence (suicide or homicide). Maybe you can join a group that provides support to young people who are troubled, young people who are at risk of suicide or of being a victim of violent crime.

Your former best friend accused you of not grieving right, but it’s been her (if she grieved) who didn’t grieve right. Your nieces and sister didn’t grieve right either: they turned perhaps feelings of helplessness, maybe guilt => anger, and directed their anger at you. It was wrong to do, of course.

You need not be alone at this time. This space here can be a place where you are not alone, as there are real people, such as myself, behind these typed words.                                I am here.

anita