There is a Reason for even our Darkest Days

Posted by Molly

This week I've been having trouble sleeping.  The start of May always makes me feel a lot of anxiety.  And it's starting next week.  Don't get me wrong - I love spring, love the end of the school year, love being outside with my kids and barbecuing and all that fun stuff.  It's Mother's Day that stresses me out.  This year marks the 15th Mother's Day I've spent without my mother.  And, honestly, it doesn't get any easier.  I'm 42 years old and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and want my mom.  I don't think that ever goes away. 


My mother was a remarkable woman.  She was beautiful and charismatic and kind and hilarious.  She was also manic-depressive during a time when mental illness was not something people talked openly about so she ignored it and refused treatment.  She was an extremely religious woman so when she took her own life it was shocking.  Even though she had been sick, none of us ever thought she would be suicidal because it was against everything she believed in.  As the years have passed, I have come to understand that it was not a decision she made in her right mind.  It was something she had fought with everything she had in her for so many years and finally the darkness that plagued her became too much and she lost her fight just like people lose their fights with other life threatening diseases.  No one every blames someone who can't fight their cancer - so why do we blame people who can't fight their mental illness?  I don't.  And I don't think God does either.  He gave her that disease, he watched her try to fight it until eventually it beat her ,and when that happened I truly believe that he forgave her and she is waiting for me in heaven.  I cannot believe anything else.


I share this because recently I have had several friends who have lost someone to suicide.  It's a terrible way to lose someone because you're left wondering what you could have done and if it was your fault.  You're left devastated but also angry.  How could this person you loved do this to you?  My first child was born 8 years after my mom died and I remember staring at him in the hospital and thinking "I will never leave you....how could she leave me?".  But as I began to raise my own children, I realized how hard it was.  And then I thought about how much harder this job would be if I was constantly fighting a paralyzing form of depression.  I wished she was here so that I could tell her how proud I am that she fought her illness for so long and raised my brothers and I with so much love despite the internal demons she was constantly battling. 

When someone dies, especially when they die in such a terrible and unnecessary way, it's natural for us to want to ask why.  I am someone who tries not to do that because it usually seems like there is not an acceptable answer so I just trust God and try to carry on.  Everything happens for a reason, right?  Sometimes we just aren't privy to what that reason is and that's when faith comes in.  Losing my mother to suicide when I was 27 seemed completely unreasonable to me for a long time but I get it now. During my recent bought with insomnia, I've had a lot of time to think and suddenly it came to me.  In the quiet darkness of night, I realized that in losing my mother, I found my calling and my calling is as a friend.  How lucky am I? 

You see, the loss of the most important and wonderful person to ever touch my life, gave me a kind of empathy that has helped me be a better friend to others. Growing up in a family that was very fractured made me someone who looked to outside relationships to fill voids.  And it made me someone who was very sure at a young age that if you want your life to be a certain way, you have to go after that life yourself.  That's what I've done.  I have made the family I always longed for with Bobby and my boys.  And I have loved friends as if they were family because I don't think you have to be blood related to receive that kind of love from others.  If I'd grown up in the perfect family, I may not have understood what it was like to feel loss and loneliness and pain and my life might be very different today.  I love my life - the good, the bad and the ugly - and I thank God for helping me see how the hard things helped me develop into the person he wanted me to be.  Don't get me wrong - I'm so flawed.  We all are.  But there are two people who always are able to see the good in us....God and our mothers. I am so thankful for both.