Six years later. A Saturday again. How different my life is now. \u00a0Today, I am grateful to just feel sadness.<\/p>\n
An excerpt from my still-in-progress memoir:<\/p>\n
“On the morning of May 1st<\/sup>, I woke early.\u00a0 It was as crystalline a day as last year\u00a0 \u2013 the air fresh and full of spring smells, the light extraordinary.\u00a0 Molly was still asleep beside me \u2013 we\u2019d watched a movie in bed the night before and I let her stay.\u00a0 As usual, the dog and cat acted as my alarm clock, looking for food and attention.\u00a0 I slipped out of bed to attend to them.\u00a0 I fed the cat, filled the kettle and put the leash on the dog.\u00a0 There was now a curtain over the door to the garage, but as I passed it, I saw in my mind’s eye, the scene of the previous year.\u00a0 I continued out, following the dog as he made his way along the weedy area next to the black-topped street.\u00a0 I breathed deeply, inhaling the earthy smells of the spring morning.\u00a0 The new leaves of trees were vibrant green and light pouring through to the street created patterns of movement.\u00a0 How I loved spring!\u00a0 Maybe today I would go buy flowers for the garden.\u00a0 That\u2019s something I could do.\u00a0 I would plant them in a different place than last year.\u00a0 Too many ugly memories near the other part of the garden.<\/p>\n Back in the house, Molly still slept.\u00a0 I found some incense I\u2019d bought in Kyoto last summer, dug through the kitchen junk drawer to find a lighter, and went out to the garage.\u00a0 I spent the year scurrying past the door, quickly getting in and out to retrieve a shovel or rake.\u00a0 This morning, with the light pouring through the windows, I stood beneath the beam and lit the incense.\u00a0 I waited there until the thin purple stick turned to white ash, thinking of Ian, forgiving him.\u00a0 I felt calm and peaceful as I watched the stick turn white and crumble onto the cement floor.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope you\u2019re at peace, Ian.\u00a0 We\u2019re okay and \u2026we forgive you for what you did.\u201d\u00a0 It was the closest I had come to praying in a long time.<\/p>\n I wanted to think of him as being at peace.\u00a0 For a long time I thought of his suicide as vindictive but gradually I was realizing how much pain he must have been in \u2013 a pain existing long before I even came into his life.\u00a0 I used to berate him,<\/p>\n \u201cLook!\u00a0 You have everything: a beautiful daughter, a supportive wife \u2013 we both love you.\u00a0 You have a house, your own business.\u00a0 Why isn\u2019t it enough for you?\u00a0 Why do you keep risking it all for this drug?\u201d<\/p>\n Of course he couldn\u2019t answer. But I imagine now, that none of it was enough because none of it made his pain go away. He was trying to escape what must have been a terrible, deep anguish and Molly and I were collateral damage \u2013 it was never really about us \u2013 was it?\u00a0 This pain prevented him from thinking of anything but getting free of it \u2013 through drugs and finally, death.\u00a0 I wanted to understand what the cause was – something in his childhood?\u00a0 I searched my memory for what he told me about his past but could remember nothing to explain his troubled soul.\u00a0 On the other hand, I knew he\u2019d been traumatized by his days in the British Army in Northern Ireland and stints in the Angolan other places secret wars were fought.\u00a0 He refused to tell me more saying it was too horrible to talk about although he made it clear he had killed people \u2013 did this haunt him?\u00a0 In the early days together before he was using drugs again, or at least before I knew about them, he would sometimes wake in a cold sweat worrying he hurt me in his sleep.\u00a0 I urged him to go to talk to someone to get counseling.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is some guy who has sat in an office all of his life going to make of what I have been through?\u00a0 The things I\u2019ve seen, the things I\u2019ve had to do?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to talk to anyone about this stuff.\u00a0 Especially you.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want you to know, it\u2019s too terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n And I never pushed him.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to know either.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Six years later. A Saturday again. How different my life is now. \u00a0Today, I am grateful to just feel sadness. An excerpt from my still-in-progress memoir: “On the morning of May 1st, I woke early.\u00a0 It was as crystalline a day as last year\u00a0 \u2013 the air fresh and full of spring smells, the light … Continue reading May 1st<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[15,5,6],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-light-between-shadows-excerpts","tag-garden","tag-memoir","tag-suicide"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-2Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}