10 years on - "Bex Took Her Life"

Bex would have appreciated that May 13th, the day she chose to take her life was in the midst of Mental Health Awareness week, (if it had been around in 2005) as well as Friday 13th, of which I am sure she was well aware.

This year, 10 years on, the grief I feel has a different flavour today. The tenderness and tears, is held in the field of and my awareness that it is MHA week, and also touched by reading this morning of someone who chose to take their life because (the trigger was) that they could not afford the Bedroom Tax ..... 

I do not know what the trigger was for Bex to decide to take her life (though the 1st two weeks of May 2005 gave me many many insights) Nothing in all the wonderful tools I have been blessed with over the years could hold the ripping thru and meeting the raw direct experience of that pain.

Today as I created this offering of my love for sister, and the tears streamed wet down my cheeks, I feel .... sad, and ... grateful. Sad that Bex felt that the only way out was to take her life, and grateful that I am still so touched by being able to feel how this was then, and how it touches me still and , possibly, that in all this a gift of her death, was to teach me to be just a bit more compassionate.