Another mother; another son

Today I sobbed like a child, as I have so many times over the last fortnight, as feelings of loneliness and despair washed over me. At times I feel so alone in my grief. I search endlessly for someone to help me for I am so scared of the intensity of my feelings. I feel like I am drowning, or slowly dying, and no one is noticing.

I reach out in all the places I know for someone to come and hold my hand. I feel that no one is listening to my pleas; that even those who love me are turning away from the confronting spectacle that is me begging for a release from this pain, and bargaining for my baby's return.

Of course, this is not the truth of my situation, but my interpretation of it nonetheless. In actuality I have many people in my life who love and care for me and who are doing their best to help me. The lonely part of this is that countless of my friends and family are doing their very best, but that even their best efforts and their most generous gestures don't even begin to afford me relief. Who or what can help me if those who are trying everything they can, cannot? There is no answer to this question, for no one can help me. As I can feel myself unravelling, helpless to stop it, so too can they only stand by and watch that tightly wound ball of feeling go frantically in every direction, searching for its end.

Then, after a day like this, I find this video. There's a mother grieving here, too. Her son committed suicide at the age of sixteen in a remote and troubled aboriginal community. His death was one of many unnecessary and tragic ones that are happening around her. They are public deaths, witnessed by children and families. This mother was helpless to stop her son's death, though she feels the same regrets as I do that she should have done more or done differently to have prevented it. Those things keep her up until 3 or 4am she says, and I begin to think I understand some of how she feels.

But I don't. Not really. How can I? She, too, feels, alone, yes. But she doesn't just feel it. She is alone, much more than I ever will be. She has not had a shred of counselling. She has her remaining family members, but as the story mentions, there are not many outside of that willing to help her or the other young people who are suffering around her. No professionals to diagnose and treat her trauma. No one trained to help her pick up the pieces.

I watched this video and I cried more because I could not imagine how she faces each day in the absence of the very real support structures that I take for granted. If I can feel this much pain and loneliness despite all of the assistance I have been provided, how much moreso must she be suffering? An indescribable amount. An insurmountable amount. Where does this women find hope that things will be OK? How does she live with the image of her son's violent death when she wakes up every morning?

I wish I could ask her all these things. For surely she has things I could learn - things I should learn. Things we all should learn so that we can think of them when tragedy strikes us and realise that the lightening has hit harder somewhere else first.

This mother - and all the mothers I've come to know who are missing their children tonight - are in my thoughts, and my tears are for them, also. As much as I wish for help, I also wish I could be the help they need.