Well hello there folks. Going to be 20 years since my Boy hanged himself in his mother's closet in her apartment in Winnipeg. I don't forget to think of him everyday. It's a ritual for me. Many times I remember him as a young child and other times when he is a young man. He killed himself when he was 20 years old. He struggled with addiction and it finally crushed him. So I do have an issue with drug use and drug dealers. I struggle and share the pain of failure because I know in my heart, I contributed to his addiction and his death. At the same time I now realize it was his choice to make and it was a decision I had no real control over. I just wished he would have reached out to me before he killed himself. It is funny though, after all this time I should have "moved on." Moved on from the day of his death. Moved on from the regrets I relive almost every night as I lay in bed. There are so many regrets, not just about my boy but of my whole adult life. I think people expect a certain amount of lessening with pain over time. I suppose that is true. Still it does fucking hurt to beat all hell when you take the time and relive the moment.
The reason it came to my mind to express and share the feelings about my Boy is due to the Netflix series, "Untamed." Eric Bana acts as some kind of Wilderness Park cop who has lost in son. In the show he can see and talk with his child. I want that. I want to share moments with my Boy. I remember not long after he died, I was on the bus and I could actually see him sitting on the bus with me. Now I can hardly imagine the sound of his voice. I have old videos of him as a child but have not converted them into files that can be played on computer system. There are old VHS, and other videos types that are somewhere, I don't even know where they are. I always say I'm going to convert them to digital format. 20 years has past and I haven't done a single thing yet. The thing about having someone die so long ago, you know one hundred percent no one wants to hear about it. There is so much heartache out there. Why share the heartache?
A suicide took place just this past week in our Reserve. You don't hear anything about it. Usually word travels all over; "who's family is that?" No gossip anywhere. The amount of death in our community, to cancer, to diabetes, to drug poisoning (commonly referred to as Overdose), to suicide has become common place. Our community is known to have the most amount of Women to be on Canada's Murdered Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW)list. Our community is not alone with a high death rate. Many of our Indigenous communities share the heartache of family dying.
That's the thing about shared heartache, it is a shared experience, if it does not happen to us, we don't feel it. When I was thinking about Shared Heartache, and I can see how the pain can be. Still even with shared heartache we may not have empathy or sympathy for others.
Share Heartache is happening right now in the world. I was sitting with a Ukrainian Woman last week. She is now living in Canada because of the war in her country. She is adjusting to a different culture here. She is in her forties, with three children and a husband. They are fortunate to have jobs. The children have made friends and are learning English language. She has family back in her country. I also might a man from Lebanon. He moved here a number of years ago and has not regretted it. He has family still living in Lebanon. He spoke about a family member who just disappeared and they don't know if he is alive or dead. The shared heartache of loss, of war, of displacement. I don't share their heartache but I sympathize. Can I share their heartache? I can "feel" for them for sure.
I wonder if we don't share heartache does what happens to others mean anything? Mean anything to us?
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