We wanted our lives back. We’d devoted 16 years to David and his needs, his doctors, his medications, the schizophrenia that had drained the life out of him and taken every bit of strength and skills the rest of us had to get by somehow. We’d visited him when he was in a psychiatric hospital regularly, supported him when he lived at home with us as well as when he moved out.
We were still reeling from David’s death and somehow, we had to pick up the pieces and begin to put our own lives together again. But how? We spoke to one another a lot. We knew that as a family we would always be there for one another, and most important of all, we realized that we had only two choices. We could easily slip into a depression which was not a scenario we wanted to face, or, slowly and very carefully, we could try and start living without the shadow of schizophrenia in the background. But we would always miss, think about and talk about David.
I think that this was one of the hardest things we’d ever had to do. I felt as though I had a label on my back saying; She’s David’s mother; you know, the one who committed suicide and I felt as if I had no sooner got used to my other label; She’s the one whose son is in a psychiatric hospital.
And so, another coping process began and always, I remembered that it’s not what happens to you in life that counts, but how you deal with it
