It’s hard to believe that 10 years has passed since Erin took her own life. At least that’s what people have been saying to me. They must not know that it really isn’t hard for me to believe. It’s an ache that doesn’t go away a year, month, week, a day I wear it like underwear. I’ve stopped asking why and I’ve stopped blaming myself. She made a terrible choice one night and my life and many other lives haven’t been the same since. Erin suffered and struggled for years with depression. She tried for years to manage it with medication and they would work for a while but she seemed to always get sucked back into the dark tunnel (that’s how she would describe it) and it would win every time. The constant trial after trial of medication caused her to experience periods of “hypomania” the last three years of her life – which in my opinion was a good thing because she dreaded the tunnel and had warned me after the last bout passed that she couldn’t bare another. It was very hard for some of Erin’s friends and even family to understand or for that matter believe that Erin suffered from depression because she was so full of life. She truly was the most beautiful, giving person I have ever known and she was radiant and passionate about life and tender and devoted to the people in her life. But she suffered in silence and only let a very few like myself know what was really going on.
It may be very hard for some to read this. I had to go and identify Erin’s body at the hospital Morgue. I rushed over to the Oakville Hospital believing that some terrible mistake had happened and it would NOT be Erin. Understand that I was not in sound mind at that time. As I looked down at Erin’s body sorrow filled my soul but like something out of a fairy tale I thought that if I could just hold her and kiss her she would magically wake up. After a very long time and a hundred kisses Rob, my husband, said “let her go Sherry”.
Sorrow, rage, fear so many emotions – I was so mad at her. How could she do this, how could she do this to Mum to us? It was a feeling of darkness I had experienced once before. You see, I’m no stranger to tragedy. Erin jumped off the 12th floor balcony of my Mother’s apartment – the very same place where my father fell off 6 years before. [read more about Our Dad]. What was going on in her head, in her heart to decide to end her life? How horrific were her final moments? These questions and so many more will forever go unanswered.
