E
ellzeena
Guest
I need a very serious word of knowledge. I had software installed on my 23 year old daughter’s computer to track her internet use (specifically AIM chats since I had to be sure she wasn’t talking to a particularly dangerous person). My daughter was schizo-affective/bipolar and on anti-psychotic meds after four hospitalizations following suicide attempts. On the morning of March 2, scrolling through thousands of links sent to me by the software in email, I saw she had been looking at a You Tube instruction on how to load a shotgun. First impulse was a gasp, then it seemed to have gone out of my mind as if I never saw it. WHO could imagine such a thing.
I was exhausted that day and had run errands. Living with someone you love so deeply and who is so ill is very difficult and her illness was coming on for years. I got back home and she seemed “normal”, she wanted to go shopping to replace her electric blanket. Shopping on her own was unusual but the day before she had gone out to McDonalds (a setup for me). She asked for my credit card because her allowance check hadn’t cleared. The You Tube video was just not in my mind. I refused her the credit card (which she took anyway without my knowledge). I gave her my cell phone “just in case” of breakdown, etc. She called me twice, both times to tell me she was fine and would be home soon. During this time (approximately two hours) she used my credit card to purchase a shotgun. She got into the backs seat of her Jeep (I usually had keys locked up in a safe along with all medications, knives, scissors, etc.) and shot herself. In her letter to me she told me how much she loved me. that I was “the light of her life”, but that her torment and suffering was too great and she had to go “to God now, to rest”. She also made an act of contrition, “GOd forgive me for my sin.”
HOW DO I FORGIVE MYSELF for not remembering that You Tube video and keeping her from leaving the house and HOW DO I FORGIVE HER for going into the same store I took her into two weeks prior, to look at the same shotgun I was “window shopping” for clay pigeon shooting (I was thinking of doing it as a hobby with a NRA instructor), to buy that shotgun for this purpose? I blame myself every day and I just don’t understand how this loving, affectionate girl, for whom I dedicated the past almost 24 years night and day as a very committed mother, COULD DO THIS? I am struggling to survive, this is something Iwill live with for the rest of my life. The loss of my daughter has devastated me. PLEASE, can someone who understands our faith and counsels others in serious crisis ANSWER THIS QUESTION? Thank you.
I was exhausted that day and had run errands. Living with someone you love so deeply and who is so ill is very difficult and her illness was coming on for years. I got back home and she seemed “normal”, she wanted to go shopping to replace her electric blanket. Shopping on her own was unusual but the day before she had gone out to McDonalds (a setup for me). She asked for my credit card because her allowance check hadn’t cleared. The You Tube video was just not in my mind. I refused her the credit card (which she took anyway without my knowledge). I gave her my cell phone “just in case” of breakdown, etc. She called me twice, both times to tell me she was fine and would be home soon. During this time (approximately two hours) she used my credit card to purchase a shotgun. She got into the backs seat of her Jeep (I usually had keys locked up in a safe along with all medications, knives, scissors, etc.) and shot herself. In her letter to me she told me how much she loved me. that I was “the light of her life”, but that her torment and suffering was too great and she had to go “to God now, to rest”. She also made an act of contrition, “GOd forgive me for my sin.”
HOW DO I FORGIVE MYSELF for not remembering that You Tube video and keeping her from leaving the house and HOW DO I FORGIVE HER for going into the same store I took her into two weeks prior, to look at the same shotgun I was “window shopping” for clay pigeon shooting (I was thinking of doing it as a hobby with a NRA instructor), to buy that shotgun for this purpose? I blame myself every day and I just don’t understand how this loving, affectionate girl, for whom I dedicated the past almost 24 years night and day as a very committed mother, COULD DO THIS? I am struggling to survive, this is something Iwill live with for the rest of my life. The loss of my daughter has devastated me. PLEASE, can someone who understands our faith and counsels others in serious crisis ANSWER THIS QUESTION? Thank you.