First I blamed the feckless girlfriend. Then I blamed the pain doctor for prescribing all those opiates. Then I blamed myself for not hiding them better. Then I blamed the doctor who told him to amputate his leg. Then I blamed my self for not finding a surgeon who could offer a better prognosis. Then I blamed the doctors who didn’t notice the abnormal bone growth. Then I blamed myself for not getting him out of that fake hospital sooner. Then I blamed the first surgeons who didn’t care about his complications. Then I blamed the rehab facility that threw him out instead of accepting the negotiated fee from the insurance company. Then I blamed his father for screaming at him when he got thrown out. Then I blamed myself for taking him to the rehab place. Then I blamed myself for letting him go to spend one night at a sober house. Then I blamed the rehab place for not letting me know he was withdrawing from benzos and might be feeling psychotic. Then I blamed myself for not intuiting it. Then I blamed the lawyers for dropping the lawsuit against the rehab place. Then I blamed Social Security for denying him disability benefits. Then I blamed myself for not knowing the girlfriend was crazy. Then I blamed myself for going out to dinner when he was secretly planning to die. Then I blamed myself for not treating his depression when he was a little kid. Then I blamed my mother for having me so I would end up having him and then failing him.
Then I blamed him for not saying goodbye to me or taking me with him. Then it starts all over again.
This is so incredibly sad.
..a lot of the time neither fork in the road is a good one.. or will take you along a pleasant scenic route.
Regret is the ultimate proof one has a soul and is not a sociopath. All that you can do is embrace those nearest even warmer.
I really, really wish there was something one could do to make this all better.
like dru, i wish there was something, anything to do to make this all better. my heart goes out to you.
gosh what Dexter has said is right plus what if you had accomplished all of things and still it happened. What if none of those things changed would have changed anything, then what. How could Max have said goodbye to you, he couldn’t, he loved you but regardless of all the care and love in the world he couldn’t bear it. He found his version of peace. I wish that I could do more for you but please try to find some tiny piece of peace even for just one minute today. Much love xx
I love you and I’m here for you always.
I can’t say anything xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
i can’t imagine how dreadful this inner torment must be. it sounds utterly unbearable. losing a son must be living hell for a mother which i can’t compare my experience to but i can offer the hope that the heavy black shitfilled burden of grief (that i found would fill my heart every morning when i would wake and realise he is still gone), that burden will ease, time lifts that weight. my grief for my brother has never gone away but it changes, the weight lifts. my mum, my dad and i all emegred from the fog eventually and i hope this is the same for you too. sending as much love & good healing vibes as is possible thru the keyboard zap zap xxx
I wish I could give you a hug. Cyber hugs don’t really cut it but it’s the best I can do…
Keep sharing. Sometimes it’s the only way to stay on the right side of sanity. God bless xo
I wish this wasn’t so painful for you.
Love to you Sister.
I would love for you do something loving for yourself. I hope you can look for reasons to appreciate yourself. Just a little bit of love for you, from you, will ease your pain. You are lovable, and you are loved.
This is not easy, and it is very sad, and I don’t want to preach, I just want peace for your heart.
There is no one to blame, and I believe you know this.
I will keep sending you loving thoughts, and so will others.
I’m so sorry. I can certainly undertand your process, though – perfectly reasonable for the loving survivor.
As the reverse (a child who lost their mother when they shouldn’t have), I have to fight to keep myself from letting similar thoughts haunt me.
Above all, try not to blame yourself. That’s the worst kind of blame because noone can really take it away and so it goes unchallenged, and grows stronger everyday until it devours you.
Stay strong, and know that no blame lies with you; none whatsoever.
Much much love,
Lighting a candle for you today, Sister.
I’m sure this just made my heart bleed a little bit. There’s nothing I can say.
All of my love, my thoughts are with you xxxxxxxxxxxx
xoxoxoxox! So sorry, I wish I had some better words for you…
I’ve never met you and yet I think about you often and I hope for peace in your life – someday. When you are ready.
My heart goes out to you. I wish I could say something to help. I hope with time that you can work this through. xoxoxo
I wish I could hold your hand.
It’s heartbreaking. I’m so so sorry, and I love you!!! I’m sure in time you will play that cycle out so often that you will zoom through all those thoughts so quickly and wordlessly it will be like a twitch, and then you’ll be on the other side of it taking a big breath and continuing with living your life. As cliche as it sounds, you know he’ll be alive forever in you. Stop thinking of how you could have done things differently and take comfort that you created such a beautiful person in the first place.
Your words, and emotion, and longing, and vunerability have brought me to tears. There is nothing we can do but love you and for you to know we are here.
xoxo
Darling, darling, darling girl. It’s not your fault. It was his decision. I’d be in exactly the same place. Hugs and all the good energy. And nothing is ever wasted. Ever.
I know there is nothing anyone can really say to help you. This is unthinkable, unknowable, by anyone except someone living through it.
I know we are all so very, very sorry.
I hope for you that you are eventually, gradually, able to let go of the guilt, the blame, although I know you, I know why you do it. You’re a woman, a mother, our job is to save the world, to think and see and know everything. I do the same.
Maybe some symbolism would help: put one “blame” away every week, or if that’s too soon, every month — write it on a piece of paper and burn it, or on a rock with a Sharpie and hurl it into a river, go to the top of a mountain some where and scream it at the world. And start with the ones you aim at yourself.
You did your best with what you knew; that’s all anyone can do. As much as it hurts, you can’t see and know everything; you couldn’t save him because he didn’t want you to, but you can save yourself, and be there for your other son, who needs you, too.
Every week in church we chant, then meditate, then to end the meditation, the pastor says “Now it is time to open our eyes and be with what is, as it is, where it is…” and we all say “and so it is.” To me that is the biggest challenge – to be with what is, as it is, every day.
Hugs.
I’m so sorry.
You loved him. You were proud of him. Both those things are so absolutely irrefutably clear. You wanted to save him. You couldn’t. In the end, those of us who have survived childhood can be responsible only for ourselves.
When someone is depressed, nothing anyone says can save them. Everything–every kind word, every expression of love, everything–goes through a filter that twists it into something vicious and false and insincere. The sufferer has to choose to get help, to take the treatment, and I say it as someone who has been there.
I think you’re right to be angry at Max. He should not have done this to you, or to any of the other people who truly loved him. Others may also be to blame–people and institutions who failed him in other ways, like the hospitals or the crazy girlfriend who egged him on, if that email you published is any indication. But you, who loved him and wanted him to be happy, wanted the best for him…you are not to blame.
No one ever gets over a death like this, but I hope someday you find some peace, and that the feelings of blame subside.
You are loved! I, too, will light candles for you and Max.
Oh Sister, I’m so sorry. That is such an unbelievable load to bear. Suicide is near impossible for anyone to deal with, let alone those that feel it’s their only way out. My mother has tried many times and I have also talked her out of it many times. When it’s at it’s worst, there is little you can do besides being there for the person and/or locking them up. It’s so hard to find solace when life just continues to let you down but I just try to think of it this way: the loved ones you have lost wouldn’t want you to be hurting so much and blaming yourself for anything. They may not have thought that at the time they took their life, but they are definitely thinking it now that their own pain has subsided. And they are probably feeling guilty for the pain they are now causing you. Life is too short and precious to be taken over by guilt. If you can let it go, you won’t just be helping yourself and your family, but the loved one that has passed as well.
We all wish you well, we wish that wishing you well could begin to help.
It isn’t your fault, SW.
*hugs*
Try hard not to blame yourself. You couldn’t do things any different to the way you did them because you didn’t know. No one can predict the future, from the sounds of things you always did your utmost best for your son.
Lots of love xxx
Keep your process until you no longer require it, but blame it on a smiple twist of fate.
I hope this doesn’t sound like a cliche but when my father died of lung cancer just before he turned 60 I was completely devastated but knew that he was no longer in pain, no longer suffering. I hope that you find find some comfort that Max is no longer in pain. The love for your son clearly shines through your writing, you were meant to be his mother, he was meant to be your son, you never failed him. xx
I don’t know what to say Sister Wolf…
As a fellow mother my heart goes out to you. You are in my thoughts.
Love Esme x
Shit, Joanne. It’s terrible. I live with a heavy burden of guilt myself and it’s a vicious cycle. I think you did everything a mother who loved her son enormously could do. Ultimately Max made his decision, and it wasn’t your fault.
it seems to me that he made a lot of people happy with his music (and in other ways I dont know anything about) and if you have recordings of the music…you don’t need to say goodbye or be entirely without him. art never dies and he’s preserved himself in it, be that for an abstract audience, or for you, for the person who loved him and loves it more than anything else in the world.
and music is the best communicator of any human medium because its physical and mental. so maybe you can’t go with him…but you can visit him.
this is what spirituality is to me…but maybe its just annoying to other people. maybe getting annoyed with me might distract you from thinking through the cycle though?
I think about you all the time.
I hope my good vibrations for you make it all the way to CA from CO.
I think everyone here has brought up valuable points. But you will always question what could have been done better, it’s a part of the human process. Winterbird said it better than I could have.
I’m not sure that any advice that anyone proffers will make anything better. You are so obviously loved and appreciated by many people. Hopefully, that realization is enough to bring you at least a little bit of peace. My heart goes out to you.
If it only could be anybodies fault…
I wish that way to closure wouldn’t be so painful.
My heart goes out to you sister, you are a good Mother and it’s just awful , awful , awful what happened your beautiful son. Rage on and rave on as much as you need to, but know it’s not your fault sister, none of it is your fault.
There will be good days and there will be horrendous days, do whatever you need to, to stay sane and let the healing in.
You have numerous friends whom you’ve never met, who’ve been touched by your wonderful, truthful, warrior queen qualities.
You go easy on yourself sister,
Ax
I’ve not been on this site for several months and am only just now catching up. I am speechless. I have no words.
this was not something that was within your power to control or prevent.
you were a fantastic mother and max loved you to pieces.
he had some really beautiful moments in his life. it wasn’t one long series of terrible tragedies. he brought joy to the people around him and inspired a lot of love. a lot. you raised a great kid.
what happened could not have been the result of any single one of those things in your list. i doubt it was even all of them together. it had to have been something else, his own thing.
Oh Joanne, my heart breaks for you. Benzo withdrawal is so dangerous and can make people lose their minds. I pray for Max and you regularly. Hope all is as close to okay as possible with you.
*hug*
I don’t have words – I can’t even imagine how you feel all the time. But you have articulated it so heartbreakingly.
Sending good thoughts and hope your way.
I’m so sorry. This sounds so awful to live through.
Please accept my deepest sympathies.
As someone who attempted suicide herself, I kind of speak from the other point of view…I mean, I can’t possibly comprehend your suffering , but I can offer my humble experience for a bit of support. After a struggle with depression and many attempts, I almost succeeded in committing that permanent solution to a temporary condition. When I woke up in treatment, my parent were besides themselves with hysteria. They were just like you. They blamed themselves, the world, and everything in between. I survived by the millionth of a chance. Sometimes I think what life would have been like if I had succeeded. My parents would have been devastated, like you. When I realized this it prompted me to get myself out of the hole I was in. I never wanted my death to harm my parents. I love them. As I’m sure your son loves you. If he had been given the chance to see his act in retrospective, he would have lived. The person who deserves blame the least is you.
Best wishes.
I’m sorry.