Wrapping up a life

Ian and I flew to Edmonton yesterday so that I could help my sisters wrap up our mom's life. Ian came with me so that I wasn't alone and had someone to lean on.

A part of me still didn't feel like my mom was really dead until I got here and saw her apartment. I'd never seen the apartment before - she moved since I was last in Edmonton - and first I had to get used to the fact that this is where she lived and that she really was gone. Every time I looked at something and imagined my mom living her life I started crying.

The Medical Examiner has confirmed that my mom killed herself. There were lots (hundreds) or partial pills found in her stomach, and she left a note detailing what she took. She took the pills between about 6:30pm and 10:30pm on December 1 and died sometime early in the morning on December 2.

If I'd called her on their wedding anniversary I would have been the last person to talk to her... if she answered the phone at all. There's no way that I could have stopped her from killing herself.

We found her daily diary - kind of a list of what happened every day - where she talked about how she was so unhappy. I wish I'd known how unhappy she was.... one of the reasons I'm crying so much is that I can feel the sadness and desperation in her things. The tragedy of the whole situation is overwhelming. I hope that if she's still out there that she's out of pain and is feeling less lonely and unloved.,