As many of my friends and followers here will be aware, the time around 8th to 10th September is hard for me.
8th September is Iggy’s birthday. He would have been 21 this year, but he will forever be 15.
10th September is World Suicide Prevention Day, which I find hard, because Iggy’s death, like many others, was unpredictable. It is hard to think of Iggy’s death as potentially preventable, as if we should have done more to make his life easier, or picked up on any warning signs.
Both of those dates are behind us now, and I will be moving forward and thinking about the future, and marketing my talks again.
But first, I just wanted to take a moment to share some information about my personal experience and my needs, as a neurodivergent mother, bereaved by suicide.
1) You cannot always tell what I am thinking, what I am feeling, and often it is not what you might expect. I am not constantly putting on a brave face, masking constant pain. I can still be happy, excited, joyful, and optimistic.
2) The anniversaries and birthdays are not the hardest. I know when they are, and so I can plan. In fact those days can be nostalgic and lovely. Unexpected triggers are much harder to handle. Those are unpredictable, and not many people understand how I feel. Some people do, for example, I appreciate a friend whose son died and had been in Iggy’s year at school. She gently advised me to stay off Facebook on GCSE results day for Iggy’s year group (she had struggled with seeing the other kids get their GCSE results). If I am triggered by a certain event, or song, or similar, I often do not tell anybody, but I acknowledge the feelings, sit with them a while, then move forward.
3) Iggy’s death is not on my mind all of the time, although often. I miss Iggy deeply, but there are other people in my life, like my husband and my other kids. Iggy was from my first marriage, so he was with his dad nearly half the time. I do not feel his absence every minute of every day, nor any of the other clichés about bereaved parents.
4) I do not want other people to imagine themselves in my situation just so they can empathise and say the ‘right things’. I just want other people to do all they can to help make society more compassionate and inclusive for people with differences in characteristics (especially kids and young people).
5) I DO want to talk about Iggy, what he was like, what he enjoyed, funny things he said and did etc. I enjoy seeing him in my Facebook Memories etc. I like keeping his memory alive… but I am so done with talking therapies and counselling etc, and I don’t like being bombarded with messages about the anniversaries, which can be overwhelming (I had just the right amount this time).
I am only speaking for myself with this post. Each individual’s experience of bereavement, grief, trauma, loss, is unique, although it may strike a chord with other alexithymic neurodivergent people experiencing close family bereavement.
Ausome Charlie 