Wasted and Wounded:

Music touches the Spirit.

I remember when I was young that my Dad loved music. Not sure when but he stopped listening to music as he got older. I don't remember when he stopped but I know it was long ago. Long before he got old. I remember the tunes he loved and he did love them. So I listen to them to this day.

This August 25 is coming up fast. It will be nine years since my Boy took his life. He made that choice. But I am not sure if it really was a choice. My friend tells me there is a Suicide Spirit that is affecting our youth and our people. That Spirit is strong and looks all over. My friend does battle with that Spirit in the way he knows how; with prayer and ceremony.

For me that Spirit is always lurking around me. I feel it every night. I feel it when I see the youth.  I am in constant turmoil over the Suicide of my son.  I wonder how my children feel and deal with it. My baby is now 18. She was nine.  Our oldest son was 24 and our oldest girl was 23 when their brother killed himself. My wife is one of those people that keeps everything inside. But it leaks out of her every once in awhile where she can't keep the sadness from pouring out. There is nothing really that I can do to ease her pain. Everyone is different. My son named his Son, Jackson Donovan Albert, and my daughter named her Girl, Aviree-Don and my niece name her boy Donovan as well. So my Boy Don lives on in his name sakes.

Me I can't get over the loss and the waste. The guilt, the anger, the loneliness. It's weird how we never think it could happen to us. Or that it shouldn't have happened to us. I mean who are we that it can't happen to us?

When I see all the hate towards us, Indians, I guess I can see in some ways how we can decide to take our own lives. I guess no one wants to be hated. We all want to be loved. Isn't that not too much to ask? People don't think words hurt. After all its just words: "we're all PC in this damn world, no one can say anything anymore".  If your whole world has been constantly attacked maybe just maybe you might understand the weight of adding one more word on it. Constant "you're savage, you're lazy, you're nothing, you're pagan, you're filthy, you're drunk, you're ugly, you're dead". Then maybe you can understand how that ONE more word might just be the one that is so damn heavy that you can't hold it anymore. I don't know but you think?

I listen to music a lot. My grandkids say I listen to old people music. What do they know, they are five and seven years old. Got to love them. I guess I escape into a little world where my Son is still here in the flesh with me with the music I listen to .


I sure miss my Mom and Dad. I talk to them and Don late at night when I can barely breathe.

Suicide is a beast for sure. We never expect it to hit us, but what do we know? We're only people. 

For me, the pressure of killing myself is felt. More than not. I know I have so much to be grateful for and stay alive for. Still when you are wounded, you feel the pain more so than the love.

"When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb."

For me, the child is gone, the dream is gone....