Dear Journal,
I know it’s been a few weeks since I posted after I told you that Jack and I got engaged and I am sorry but it’s been hard to sit down to even think or gather my thoughts like I like to when I write to you. But let me explain…
I guess there is just NO way to say it but bluntly.
I am not sure how such joy can turn into such sadness in just the blink of an eye. Like I said, it’s been a few weeks since the funeral and I am not sure how to even begin. I know I need to, because writing in you has become my soft place to fall, a place to perhaps even help me remember someday. But this is something that I don’t need to write down because I know I will never forget these last few days.
I don’t know how to even write it except to just say it. Liz is dead.
We were going to tell her about our being engaged that night of the day that they found her. I guess Rachel had been keeping in touch with her. The pattern usually was Jack would run to her from wherever he was. Even another state going to school. But I was the one who’d stopped him from doing that. I thought I was protecting him. I thought that I was helping them break a bad habit and to stop the madness. I didn’t expect her to kll herself.
I was ironing what I was going to wear that night. I was so happy. I was suprised that a lot of my friends were not thrilled about my news about being engaged, including my mom who kept saying that we should have a LONG engagement. I just knew that Liz would be happy for us. But I wanted to be firm with her and set up boundaries. I kept thinking about if we had babies how I would feel uncomfortable leaving them with her and how I didn’t want to feel that way about my own mother in law and now I didn’t have to worry. She was gone. I would never have to worry about that again.
I kept looking at the clock. Jack was over an hour late. Finally his dad called me and said “Keri honey, I am sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but Jack’s mom died, he will call you as soon as he can.” At first I thought something had happened to Jack but his dad is a man of few words and cut to the chase. I just hung up the phone and crumpled to the floor and stayed that way sobbing and remembering Liz from the beginnng, the fun times, and the long talks and then the not so good times and the times Jack had shared and wondered what I was thinking butting in. I just hated myself for a while and was feeling so guilty.
In the days that followed Jack was stoic. We’d learned that she’d taken a lot of valium but not a lethal dose so we don’t think that this was another actual suicide attempt. The findings were that the combination of alcohol and valium is what caused her to die. But I couldn’t help but think if I had just stayed out of it and let Jack go when he wanted to, and bring her the stupid cat food she might still be here. No. She would still be here. I wonder if Jack felt the same. He was being so sweet to me but I couldn’t help it. I truly felt that I killed her and Oh Dear Journal, I am just so sad for Jack and for me and for Liz and for everyone. I can’t stop crying.
keris journal 