I never said goodbye

Tuesday, 07/26/16, 4:21pm

I was feeling sad about Adam today. 

Before he died, I had envisioned this possibility of the future. A time when our kids are older and we amazingly have more time to focus on us and other people. A time where maybe Adam would live with us or decide to live in a group home in Colorado. A time when we'd see him regularly and the kids would have really important relationships with their uncle. But. I will always have this horrible pit in my stomach feeling that we never did enough for Adam before he died. Never did enough to help him, never did enough to show our love for him.

Those feelings will forever haunt Nasser and I even though we know that sometimes we didn't do more because we were keeping our kids' safety in mind. And sometimes we didn't do more because Adam wouldn't accept the help we tried giving. It's still hard even after we try to balance our what if thoughts.

I've been meaning for quite some time to attend a grief group that I found soon after Adam's death. It's a "sudden loss" group which seemed fitting, but I still don't know how well I'll connect with everyone else because I still have not gone. They meet twice a month, but between travel and summer plans I haven't had a chance to go. I could go tomorrow, but it's also TK's birthday so I don't especially want to leave while we're celebrating with Nasser in the evening. Still one of these days I'd like to attend.

Really I'd like to find a grief group that is deaths related to mental illness, because for me, that's the part that has affected me the most. His illness, the connection I felt with my own illness, everything feels related back to mental illness. Perhaps it would have been different had Adam not had schizophrenia much of the time that I knew him. 

There's a picture I recently came across of Adam. It's one I took on his 21st birthday, at our last bar of the night. Every new picture I see of him, especially one I haven't seen before, is precious now.