The Room

Every day I go in the room. The little spare room that I put many of Kaitlyn’s things in. I go in there daily because there are more than just her things in there; there is my printer, my picture albums, some of the items we buy from Sam’s in bulk and a closet with some of my clothes in there. Also every day I am home I open up the mini blinds in there to let the light in as I do all of the rest of them throughout my house.

But that room has so much of Kaitlyn in there. It’s the room that was Kaitlyn’s when she was born, until the day Stephanie moved out and Kaitlyn got her big room. That’s where Kaitlyn’s bassinet was, then her crib, then her little bed. Bedtime stories were read in there every night until she was too old to be read to. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…..” was sung many nights by me to help her to sleep. (Though she never had trouble sleeping, we just liked to do it). The piñata was hung in there just because she thought it was pretty, never to hold candy, the sombrero from Disney World’s Mexico showcase hung on the wall after she got finished wearing it. The SpongeBob Square Pants characters that she drew hung on the walls for years. Harry Potter books were read in the little bed that was in there. A bookshelf with all the books she loved was and still is there. (We love books in our family and there are bookshelves everywhere). And every single night before bed she prayed, “Down I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”

Though after Stephanie moved out and she moved into the big room and she made it her own, the little room contained so many of her things. The medals she won, the pictures she drew, awards, old books and all the things I didn’t put away. Eventually all that was put away when I redecorated after Kaitlyn went away to college. It took me 3 years to be able to put all those things away.

Now it’s still Kaitlyn’s room. Instead of all the things spread out and on the walls of childhood, what is in there now are pictures she once hung on her apartment walls, pretty things she had hanging up, pictures of her family in beautiful frames, including her trip to Africa. A beautiful old looking cabinet that the tiny Vizo TV sat on. Her desk that she bought to study for her medical exam complete with the lamp and the metal cat her friend Neal bought her. Also, on the desk is a wind up clock with the time stopped at 12:20 that is never wound up. In the corner are stacks of containers with all her things in them. Not the things of childhood, but the things of her young adulthood that should not be there. They should all be in her apartment. Her dirty clothes basket is beside those, complete with all the clothes she left in there, never, ever to be washed. On top of the containers are albums of her pictures of her young adulthood, and memory things I typed in my blog and put in binders. On the floor lie her purple running shoes. They look as though they are waiting for her to step back in them and run several miles. Beside them is a brand new pack of socks that have never been opened. These are special socks for runners I suppose because they are the kind to keep your feet dry. She probably got them at a specialty store. They could not have been old because she ran all the time and they would have not stayed in that pack long.

I look at these things that should not be in there every single day. I use the room, so I go in there. Sometimes I pause to smell her clothes, look through her pocketbook or billfold; I sometimes just stop in front of her desk and put my hand on the back of the chair and just breathe in her scent, and sometimes I do not because I can’t bear it and wind up in the floor crying about the unfairness and injustice of such a person not being on earth anymore.

It’s been 6 months since Kaitlyn took her life and I still cannot comprehend such an incomprehensible thing. My beautiful, sweet, intelligent daughter, who I thought was an angel here on this earth, so easy to love, so easy to give love, who was right in the spring of her life. She was at the jumping off point of having a great career. She was right in the middle of living her dream. The angel I thought was happy was not happy at all. And my world is upside down and I have no equilibrium in my life, no course of action, finding myself unable to believe what I perceive to be true ever again.

The pain of loving someone so intensely, to wrapping your world in the hope for their happiness, to feel such a bond with your child who was so exceptional and brilliant, and then losing them is a pain that defies description. The person is gone. You can’t do anything with them anymore. You can’t talk to them anymore. You can’t hope for their future anymore. They are GONE. And that truth and that realization is the worst pain that any human being can endure, or at least try to endure.

Everyone that reads my blog and suffer depression or suicidal ideation, please try to think of what you leave behind. No matter who you are, someone loves you and more often than not, many people do. Look at my blog and see what a shell of a person is left behind in the wake of my daughter’s suicide. There is however, something inside my shell, and that is pain that will never go away as long as I live. I am not angry with Kaitlyn. I know she got so far that her pain was all she was thinking of ridding herself from. Also, I know by her note that she tried for many years not to do this thing because she knew it would hurt us, but she could bear it no longer. So to some of you who think of taking your life, please get help and if you have and you still feel that need to end it all, please think of what you will leave, and hopefully it won’t be too late for that thought to make a difference.

I looked on her documents on her computer yesterday and I found a document entitled, “Bucket List.” There were 10 in the list. In this list included #1 become an MD, then get married, then have children, to write a book of poetry, and I can’t remember the others off hand, but those were at the top. She never got to do one single one.

So I look at the room; the room filled with so many goals, ambitions, dreams, and memories, and see them all packed up and stowed away. My bright, wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, driven, ambitious, sweet daughter; all her life packed up in containers, her sweet scent permeating the room; that room and nowhere else. That room and all it means makes life so hard and so painful and intolerable. No such thing should ever be. No such thing should EVER be.