Trigger Warnings all over this journal

If mention of a suicide sets you off, stop reading now and go enjoy the meme I filled in instead.






I hope I did that right. Trigger warnings didn't exist for me until this year, and I'm not sure how to do them.

The hits just keep coming in life this year. You may have seen my journal last week about the shooting on my street. Well, that only came after 2 deaths in the family, one aunt in April and one in May. Now, the widower of my aunt who passed in May decided to take a gun and end his own life yesterday.

I'm a huge pile of conflicting emotions right now, couldn't even go to work, I'm such a mess. I feel like I failed as a niece by not stopping by enough, or calling enough. I feel like I failed as a therapist, because, shortly before my aunt died, he had a spinal operation to help him walk better and reduce his pain. I'd told him he was now walking better than he has in a year, and he himself said he had less pain, but I feel like I didn't convince him, or he wouldn't have done it. I'm angry at him, because he set it up so he would be found, which was good, but also that the State Police would go to my only surviving maternal aunt and scare the heck out of her, and so that my father would wind up having to lock the house up after his body was removed.

I feel so bad for his children, they each offered him to live with them, even if only for the prolonged recovery from his surgery, but he was adamant that he would not live with either of them. Even though he should have loved it once his pain and grief eased, to see his grandchildren and great-grandchildren more, since both his children live out of state. He was always an avid hunter, and his son lives in Idaho, for pity's sake. The recovery was going well, he could have participated in this fall's hunting seasons, from a physical standpoint.

His father also committed suicide, and he helped me through when I attempted it 12 years ago, he can't have not known what this would do to everyone who loved him. I just don't know what to feel. I've been in that emotional place, I wish I could have helped more.