Well, his wish for her finally came true, only, this wasn’t quite how we had planned it.

Early this morning at just after midnight: The porch; My daughter; “The Frog“; THE FORGIVENESS; The very few people who will ever understand; My heart; MY GOD … IS SO GOOD. I am blessed. She is strong. No other words. That’s all.

ATLAS FALLS

The push is always part of us, and gravity’s never a friend. Deciding on who we can trust and finding our way to crescendo to the unknown. We’ll never make it outside unless we unlock the past and release the future that we’ve left to die. For too long we’ve taken placebos, but the unknown is awakening. Don’t give up now! There’s already so much at stake! If Atlas falls, I’ll rise up and carry us all the way. No we can never look back. Return to the salt and the sea. The quiet is only a trial and I will not take the placebos ’cause the unknown is awakening. But I will crescendo. Don’t give up now! There’s already so much at stake. If Atlas falls, I’ll rise up and carry us all the way. It won’t hold me down … the weight of impossible days. I’ll stand tall. I’ll rise up and carry us all the way. Keep moving forward now. Keep your head above the clouds. I’m right with you. I will lift you. Just hold on. {Shinedown}

I’ve been a fan of the late British philosopher, Alan Watts, for quite some time. This particular lecture was my very first exposure to him and I’ve since listened to him as often as possible. His thought-provoking messages and ideals have a way of making you wonder, or as is the case with me, confirming what you already believe to be true.

Watts was known to be incredibly imaginative, if not stubborn in his vision, but at the same time open to the concept of “open-mindedness“. He was “black and white” and GREY, just like me, so, I feel a certain alchemy and connection to his spirit. I’ve had both my kids listen to him now, and they, too, are appreciative as they learn, grow, and expand their minds from his theories. If you’ve never heard of him, I truly hope you’ll find him as fascinating as I do. It’s really nice to listen to him in a quiet, candlelit space with a blanket, a German Shepherd, a handful of snuggly cats, and a cup of Joe! WINK, WINK! Just sayin’!

I DID IT!

I am now “ASIST” (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) certified. I’d say it was an emotionally tough 48 hours, but that wouldn’t be quite true. There were definitely a couple of moments when I felt myself potentially sliding backwards, like during a video reenactment of a 911 suicide call with the sound of a double-barrel shotgun being loaded and death certificates being filled out on the widescreen. Still. No tears. Not a single one. I refuse to look back with sorrow, agony, or regret at the devastation in my life.

I only want to look ahead!

In addition to the life-saving skills I learned, the most powerful takeaway wasn’t skill related at all. You see, when I walked into that facility it was packed. Forty something people were all there to be volunteer trained, and even some who traveled to Dallas from other states to teach the class. Keep in mind that an inventory of the trainees revealed “regular people” from many different jobs, professions, statuses, and groups. While some, like me, had either lost a loved one to suicide or survived an attempt of their own, most were not in either category. It was a random group of concerned citizens who truly believe that suicide is a serious and growing epidemic society is facing who just wanted to find a way to help. It reminded me, yet again, that this world isn’t as dark and lonely as it often seems, and there are still good people in it.

While I pray to God that I never get that call and have to put these skills to use, statistics say that I probably will. I’M PREPARED! God allowed me be broken so that I could become a Light in the dark and live a life of use to others in His name. I am bound and determined to maintain every SINGLE ounce of the resilience I’ve fought so hard to earn going forward and for the rest of my days on this Earth.

TELL YOUR HEART TO BEAT AGAIN

You’re shattered like you’ve never been before. The life you knew in a thousand pieces on the floor. And words fall short in times like these when this world drives you to your knees. You think you’re never gonna get back to the you that used to be. Tell your heart to beat again. Close your eyes and breathe it in. Let the shadows fall away. Step into the light of grace. Yesterday’s a closing door. You don’t live there anymore. Say goodbye to where you’ve been and tell your heart to beat again. “Beginning”. Just let that word wash over you. It’s alright now, love’s healing hands have pulled you through. So, get back up, take step one. Leave the darkness, feel the Sun. ‘Cause your story’s far from over and your journey’s just begun. Tell your heart to beat again. Close your eyes and breathe it in. Let the shadows fall away. Step into the light of grace. Yesterday’s a closing door. You don’t live there anymore. Say goodbye to where you’ve been and tell your heart to beat again. Let every heartbreak and every scar be a picture that reminds you Who has carried you this far. ‘Cause love sees farther than you ever could. In this moment Heaven’s working everything for your good. {Danny Gokey}

… because who else could I possibly blame for the current state of my broken but still beating heart? How else could I possibly explain what isn’t happening to me in the wake of all this devastation? While driving home yesterday it hit me once again, that yes, it is true, I AM A WARRIOR QUEEN! Let me tell you why …

Most of you probably already know that my husband took his own life at “just before midnight, Thursday, August 22nd“. But what you probably don’t know is where he did it:

Exactly .3 miles from the throne he abdicated in the subdivision being constructed that abuts ours.

Keep in mind that the entrance to this subdivision is at an intersection on the main thoroughfare between the very small town that I live in and the larger neighboring one. Since the majority of my time is spent in the neighboring one, unless I make a consorted effort to avoid that intersection I love to hate so much, I have no choice but to traverse that road often multiple times daily and come face to face with THESE gut-wrenching, sobering facts:

“That” was the last road he traveled.

“There” was the last turn he ever made.

“Those” were the last things that befell his dying eyes as he headed towards his fate.

I’m not gonna lie, in the immediate weeks that followed his suicide, I avoided that road at all costs and had made a firm pact with myself to NEVER drive down it again. After all, what person in their right mind could under the circumstances? So many of my people were highly concerned for me in that regard, and rightfully so.

But here’s the deal …

It’s not me … it’s Him! I’m tellin’ you, people! IT’S HIM (and the “ghost gang” He’s got covering me 25/8, 366 days a year! Call them angels. Call them spirits. Call them whatever in Heaven or “Somewhere” other than here that you want. All I know is that “whoever they are” or “whatever they are” is very, extremely real to me, and for that, I am infinitely thankful.

GHOST

There’s a ghost. There’s a ghost inside of me. Not like those draped in old bed sheets. Saying “trick or treat”. Different. Oh, this ghost is different. Not one that leaves me scared to death. But one that puts my fear to rest. Oh, holiness keep haunting me. Oh, you’re my hope, you’re my peace. Ironic in a way.  I’m no longer afraid. And the ghost is to blame. There’s a ghost. There’s a ghost inside of me. Not something from some campfire story. Where I’m terrified to sleep. Opposite. This ghost is quite the opposite. He came just like a welcomed friend. And I was comforted. Oh, holiness keep haunting me. Oh, you’re my hope, you’re my peace. Ironic in a way. I’m no longer afraid. And the ghost is to blame. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. No longer afraid. {Mercy Me}

Having proceeded with this trip despite the literal and metaphorical ashes he left us in, I’d decided that this would be the perfect place to spread the first of his ashes. Not only because this was supposed to be his trip, too, but more so because it’s somewhere he belonged. Although he never lived here, after having traced his ancestry to find out who he really was, much to his surprise, he’d discovered that he was of predominantly European descent. So, when we stumbled upon the beautiful brook that runs about The Blarney Castle gardens, we just knew it was the perfect spot!

Since his “blood” never bothered to take him home, my kids and I have firmly decided that not only did they never deserve him in the first place, they will never get to have him again. In the years to come, we will include the ashes we had formerly set aside for them amongst those we will journey with to the many places his ancestors once called “home”, not the least of which is Wales, where we discovered the origin of his Williamson klan.

So, with that, I will end with my adaptation the most befitting lyrics for this moment …

Zachariah,

Despite your many mistakes and all the ways you hurt us, I knew your heart AND your faith in God. I cannot and will not discount the unconditional forgiveness and grace that He showed in that moment He reached for your hand. I know your faith was rewarded when you came to your end, and no final warning did you miss. Yes, He called for you, and He saw your soul within, and yes, Zachariah, you were worthy. He was with you after all, and although the demon that was living in your head prevented you from hearing His voice or feeling His presence, indeed He was with you through it all as the ashes of Eden did fall. The darkness is no longer falling upon you. The air no longer grows thin. No more voices haunting. You have nothing left to fear. There is nothing left but the shining Light from Heaven above Who has taken your hand to His everlasting will.

ASHES OF EDEN

Will the faithful be rewarded when we come to the end? Will I miss the final warning from the lie that I have lived? Is there anybody calling? I can see the soul within, and I am not worthy. I am not worthy of this. Are you with me after all? Why can’t I hear you? Are you with me through it all? Then why can’t I feel you? Stay with me don’t let me go because there’s nothing left at all. Stay with me don’t let me go until the ashes of Eden fall. Will the darkness fall upon me when the air is growing thin? Will the Light begin to pull me to its everlasting will? I can hear the voices haunting. There is nothing left to fear. And I am still calling. I am still calling to You. Heaven above me, take my hand. Shine until there’s nothing left but You. {Breaking Benjamin}

This was one of THE best nights of our life!

Well I’m gonna sing the only song there is to sing!

… then my son sang our National Anthem! Even despite what the three of us have been through, who was missing, and why we were even on this trip to Ireland in the first place, if only we had known what was to become of this beautiful country not too long after we arrived home.

Oh say can you see … by the dawn’s early light … what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight. O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare … the bombs bursting in … gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave … o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

For the record, I’m a lover of every country on this beautiful Atlas. Of course, I’m a Patriot, but more so than anything, I am a human being who is thankful for human beings … no matter “where” on this globe they call home or the shade of skin they wear. My pride in America is by no means a slight or disregard to any other country’s soil. I’m a blessed American woman, indeed it is true. But I’m for the love of all people – everywhere – because … WE ALL BLEED RED!

… that moment you and your daughter sit holding hands in tears after finding THE perfect theme song at the tail end of THE best movie ever, eleven years to the day you first crossed paths with the one who swooped down and picked you both up for the MOST bittersweet flight of your lives, only to have to leave you behind with not only the ashes he tried so hard not to burden you with, but all the strength and courage you could possibly ever need to rise so far above them that only God Himself knows how high you’ll possibly fly, because if you’ve both learned anything in 64 combined years of pain, sorrow, wisdom, and beauty, it’s that there is NOTHING more powerful than The Truth, which ultimately becomes The Light, which is the ONE thing that can kill the darkness in us all. Our story might not have ended like the fairy tale we always thought it would, but once this book is finally finished it will be the stuff that legends are made of. Goodnight, everyone. (And yes, that was the longest sentence in the history of the world.)

YOU CAN’T STOP THESE GIRLS!

How can this be happening? I’m losing him. WE’RE LOSING HIM! And now it feels like I’m losing myself.

The best part of my life came and past and it’s all downhill from here.

He’s dying. HE’S FUCKING DYING! I can’t do this without him. What will I do if he doesn’t get better? PLEASE, oh God, PLEASE … give us both just enough strength to make it through this.

THIS. On this night I watched my baby girl take the center of the stage as the first boy she ever really had a crush on gave her “the first dance”. To fully appreciate this, you must first travel back with me to “the day of the ball on the playground”. It was 4th grade for her, 5th grade for him, during one of my playground shifts their school. I was sitting on the curb, kinda not paying attention, until I happened to look up at just the right time to see her and her friends playing four square. The ball they were “squaring” got bounced off their court and started rolling towards the basketball court where some boys were playing. So, the ball was just rollin’ and the girls were all panicking, because “OMG it’s headed for ALL THOSE BOYS”! The next thing you know, this very handsome young man stopped the ball with his foot, picked it up and started walking towards the gaggle of panicking girls!  But it didn’t end there, you see, because that handsome boy decided to invite himself to their game. When recess was over, I followed the girls back into the school as they all giggled and snickered amongst themselves, “Can you believe it? HE’S A FIFTH GRADER!” From that point on, “Sawyer and Gia” were a thing, but only on a first real crush level. He liked her. She liked him. It was the sweetest thing ever, and I GOT TO SEE HOW IT STARTED! Fast forward to THIS night, the middle school Fall Dance, and here’s how “the day of the ball on the playground ended” …

Williamson and I were chaperones at the dance this night, which is par for the course with us. It was just about over and a bunch of us parents were just kicking back on the outskirts of the party when one of the dads noticed a commotion wherein every kid in the room was engulfed in “some thing” on the dance floor that had everyone’s attention. So, that dad ran over and stuck his head through “the wall of kids” only to come running back and report that, “Holy shit guys, they’re dancing. THEY’RE DANCING!” “Who’s dancing”, Zack asked. “Umm, YOUR DAUGHTER AND SAWYER SMITH, that’s who!” From thence it’s just history. For the record, how lucky am I  that no matter where this “first love of hers” either does or doesn’t go, I got to watch it from the beginning!

Dear Me,

Ten years ago, you boarded a plane to France with so much more baggage than what you’d actually packed you could barely walk, much less carry the load you’d allowed yourself to be burdened with for too many years to count. Until the moment your feet hit this soil, you’d perpetuated a lifelong farce to everyone you knew and loved, not the least of which was yourself.

Your life back then was an apparition filled with all the shiniest things a person could possess and the appearance of a picture-perfect family completely in sync with each other on every possible level. Little did you know that ten days later when that plane finally landed back in Dallas that “you” weren’t on it and would never be coming home again.

Meanwhile, all in the course of a relatively short jaunt, you met two complete and total strangers. Remember how you believed they were actual angels God had set on your path to help you begin the process of becoming acquainted with the other stranger you’d met on that trip – you? One of these days you should be brave enough to introduce those two strangers from your past and really speak your truths by the way, so consider this your official challenge!

At the end of the day, what I can tell you is that I find it no coincidence that you are back here in France, a decade later, celebrating your birthday with not only this amazing man who has brought you so much sweet joy and fullness that your words since meeting him have failed to find their way to paper, but more importantly – with YOU!

Everything has changed since the last time you were here and your life is unrecognizable! Your feet hit that soil with a steadfast determination to stop living a lie and start living an authentic life you could be proud of with the REAL you, no matter the cost, and cost you it did. How could you ever have known that despite your best efforts to salvage the life and relationships you already had, in order to see your resurrection to fruition you’d end up having to let so many things and people go? So, you became a living bomb that self-destructed during the process of peeling off that venomous black Spidey suit you’d been wearing all the while that had all but suffocated the life from you.

I’d like to think that if you could change these last ten years you wouldn’t have changed a thing, as in my heart I think you’ve always known that all of this had to happen for a reason. You found yourself. You found your voice … and your truths … and your many reasons. You know exactly who you are, how you got here, what things you’ve done right, and the many things you could have done better. You’re a perfectly imperfect beautiful disaster and perhaps a bit much for some people to digest. You are YOU, nothing more, NOTHING LESS, and “what other people think of you isn’t any of your business anyway.” You’re a survivor, and a warrior, and a divinely appointed living QUEEN, and a true and genuine person. As long as your two babies back at home and that superman standing behind you in one of your favorite places on this Earth think that you’re their hero, who could ask for a better birthday present? HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, Catherine Marie Williamson! It’s been so nice getting to know you.

Nineteen years have literally flown by with tears and sorrow, joys and laughter, and an abundance of beautiful moments in between. But I vividly remember waking up about this time that morning, alone in the room that was “ours” less than 12 hours before, yet, where was he? I was literally pinching myself because I couldn’t decide whether I was still asleep in a twisted dream or awake in a living nightmare. Then I remembered where he was – laying on a cold metal table in the ER where I had to leave him. So, I slid out of the bed and put my ear towards the door to see if I could hear what the muffled voices awaiting my rise from a medicated slumber were saying. I walked towards the window and peaked through the blinds to find a beautiful day with a light wind blowing leaves down the sidewalk. A kid on his bike. A car driving by. A lady walking her dog. Everything outside seemed so normal. But then again, not so much. So how did I get here all these years later? Well that will all be revealed in this Diary in good time. In the meantime, however, let me tell you about one of the sweetest moments of my life that would never have happened be it not for “this day”, September 6, 2012.

First, let’s go back to nine years before when Williamson and I first met. This was at the very darkest point of my life, yet he somehow saw through the jacked up, broken apart, just about to come undone “me” that I was, only to find and believe in the “me” that I was yet to become. He refused to give up on me and somehow convinced himself that there was so much more to me than met his eyes. Eventually he even convinced me.

In the early days of our budding relationship, we of course shared all the memories of our pasts. “Take Me There” by Rascal Flatts was the theme of almost all our conversations, as we both truly wanted to know exactly where the other had been. He told me his stories and I told him mine, not the least of which was Mitch, beginning to bittersweet end, May 29, 1998.

There he sat patiently listening one night, not a detail barred or spared, up to and including the intersection where it happened. He had driven out with me to Addison soon thereafter to see the wall and the place and the road. He wanted to know all of it – all of ME.

Fast foward to …

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012:

I had driven to Addison to pick him up for lunch near the place he’d been working. We’d taken a wrong turn going back to his office which somehow spit us out a block away from “the wall”. When I looked up and saw the Midway Road sign I quickly realized where we were. Queue the live video all over again: There goes Mitch on that devil black bike speeding off to his final blaze of glory! But before I knew it Zack had taken my hand with a tender squeeze, “Damn, this is the place”. He remembered. After all this time, HE STILL REMEMBERED.

Just then, the video stopped just short of the less than grand finale, and the knot in my stomach unraveled. I looked at my beautiful husband and thanked God yet again that he chose to make me his wife. It was also in that moment that I was reminded of something else: I am no longer alone to carry all these memories and moving pictures that are locked inside my mind. How many men could live with and accept the ghost of someone before him? The memories of my past are precious to my husband, and he carefully protects and embraces all of them. Even the memories of “him”! There is a sacred piece of my heart and life that will ALWAYS belong to Mitch Boone and Zack has never once held that against me.

What a sharp contrast this pivotal point in our story was to another day in a former life with my ex: It was the two-year anniversary of Mitch’s death when Peter and I were fighting about God knows what. It bothered him immensely to see me grieving for someone else, and although I really did try to shield him from my pain, sometimes I just couldn’t contain it. So, on that day? He had had it! “Your MY wife! He’s GONE! Yet you’re still crying about it?” So, he took two pot lids from the kitchen and smashed them together as loud as he could standing two feet away from my body and said,

I’ll give you something to cry about. Remember THIS sound? BAM! Metal hitting a wall! How’s that? Now go ahead, just keep crying!

Yes, he really did that, and yes, he really said those words. I remember that moment as though it just happened now. He took my raw and bruised heart and accompanying pain and sorrow and mocked me with them in one of the cruelest moments of my life.

I’m such a blessed woman and thank you GOD for reminding me of how much You love me through the gift of Zack’s unconditional love and strength. I love you, Zachariah … more than I’ll ever be able to put in words. Thank you for loving me. No, wait! Thank you for loving us. You are my hero and I will spend the rest of my days on this Earth honoring and treasuring everything you are. I promise!