It is amazing how things can change so quickly. This picture was taken last Easter and I look back and still shake my head in disbelief that we are now on this path. I find it so hard to accept that Adam was suffering so much that he ended his life and with so little to indicate that he was in pain.
I recently read a book called The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. The book is about a pair of Israeli psychologists and there identification of unusual patterns of behavior that defy status quo assumptions about human beings. One theory they developed is called “The Theory of Alternative States”. This theory details the need of humans to create alternate scenarios when tragedy occurs to help us reconcile what has occurred to our new reality. The tendency is to constantly run scenarios in our head where the tragedy does not occur.
Amos Tversky, one of the psychologists wrote”The present world is often surprising, i.e. less plausible than some of its alternatives. We can order possible worlds by i)initial plausibility and ii) similarity to the present world.” In other words to cope with Adam’s loss we create outcomes where he doesn’t die. If I had come home sooner or asked him how he felt then this would not have happened etc. I am sure everyone who knows Adam is going through this exercise in their heads because it is how we try to deal with it. We even do it with people we don’t know that we see on the news. If he had changed flights or if that girl had left her house ten minutes earlier. It is a futile attempt on our part to try and minimize the pain we feel due to loss. We empathize with the person who is gone and with those who feel their loss the most.
The point of all of this is that it is normal but a waste of energy and not very helpful in progressing through grief. Adam is gone and will not come back to this world and anything we could have done to change the outcome is now moot. Any “unfinished business” with Adam is now finished and all we can do is realize the futility of this type of thinking and the damage it does to our psyche. Also, we must honor the possibility and I would say extreme likelihood that the life that exists beyond death is a more compassionate, understanding and forgiving place where our actions or inaction involving Adam will not matter.
There was an article on CNN today stirred up by a new Netflix series on teenage suicide called “Thirteen Reasons Why”. The series, based on a book by the same name confronts people in a teens life whose actions lead to her choice to end her life. The article I read was titled “How to spot depression and anxiety in children”. As I read through the article and saw a lot of the symptoms Adam suffered with I wondered about how you know if your child is considering ending his life? We all suffer with anxiety and even depression to a degree but understanding the severity is tricky and it is easy to be lulled into security because of medications or to be distracted by life. One interesting point the article brings up is that talking about suicide will not cause your child to start thinking about committing suicide. It is important to be direct with your kids and make sure they are not harboring these thoughts.
It really doesn’t matter any more what we could have done to save Adam. He is gone and nothing will change that. Be at peace knowing he is in Heaven and no longer suffering. For those of us who are left let’s make sure we are effectively communicating with those we love and not avoiding subjects we should be asking about. There are no guarantees but all we can do is try our best and show those around us that we care. I miss Adam every day and would never want anyone to have to experience this kind of pain. Confronting fear, depression and anxiety and not accepting them as the norm is a good first step in caring for those you love.