Missing in action.

I have been missing action.

I can say that it has absolutely been with good reason.

Shortly after my last redemptive post about Paying it Forward ... life came a crashing.

Just when you think things might mellow for a while ... WHAM ... you get hit between the eyes and it takes some time to see straight.

I think I am beginning to see straight. Or at least I am trying to.

I find it odd to utter the words ... I think because things like **this** aren't supposed to happen in your family - it only happens in those other dysfunctional families ...

But here it is - my brother killed himself. He is gone. I won't ever see him - in this life - again.
He leaves behind a family riddled with pain, questions, anger and blame.

I have said before that suicide is a selfish act. I haven't changed my mind there - - but I do not blame him. He did not have the strength to go on and the pain that he lived through was more than most could have endured.

At the same time - I am so flippin' mad at him for not saying goodbye. For not letting me know that we were ok. For not releasing his children from their guilt. For allowing my parents to wallow in the grief and dismay of having found his wounded body.

I don't think he intended any of that. I think he just needed out - which I understand. I just don't like it. at all.

His death has made other things seem so pointless. frivelous. It makes life cloudy for me. I am not sure what to do, where to go ... I don't know how to stop the hurt, the hurt that I am not sure I deserve to feel. Such a long story ... such rapid and brutal ending.

Don't wait to mend ways with someone you love ... it can be too late. Even if you can't have them in your life - make peace - for their sake, as well as your own.

Peace ~ Frannie

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad. ~Marcel Proust

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake. Psalm 79:9 sake.