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Author: Christine Dudek

Over a year after my son’s suicide, I no longer hate being alive

by Christine Dudek

There’s something about the light piercing through the clouds at 30,000 feet when I’m lucky enough to get a window seat. It looks like every picture of heaven I’ve ever imagined since I was a little kid and so it makes me feel closer to Tyler.

Flying has gone from the most excruciating stillness to a peaceful experience. It doesn’t matter that it’s all in my head. The illusion or delusion that I’m closer to my boy makes me feel better.

There’s something about a pinstriped uniform with those two interlocking letters (NY) that makes me happy … Read more...

We are surviving the unsurvivable

by Christine Dudek

It is almost one year since my most favorite boy in the entire world left us with a giant hole in our lives.

I am still here and surviving somehow. What I might write?  What will I share about my life? Joe and my girls – Kayleigh and Julia (Jules)– are living though the same emotional brutality as I am; but I won’t speak to their pain or their grief or their hearts. That’s theirs to tell if and when they choose.

Some days I feel a little bit devoid of anything. I think it is self-protection … Read more...

Goodbye normal life

by Christine Dudek

I wish I had the words to describe the deadness that occupies the places in me where other things once lived – -things like humor.

It seems like I have a sense of humor at times but everything is shallow. The depth that I used to experience and feel is gone. Pain is what I feel deeper and more often than any other feeling. I feel that even more than I feel love.

I swear sometimes the miss, and the sorrow, and the regret are so deep that my bones ache.

Bone sad.

I hate being still … Read more...

In memory of Tyler James Dudek who died by suicide

by Christine Dudek

My only son, Tyler James Dudek, died by suicide.

He was born on October 6, 1997. I adored him from that very second and will continue to adore him until I stop breathing. I get up every morning and grieve him over and over again.

When I was 23, scared and insecure, his birth breathed purpose into my life. I would love and protect him from the cradle to the grave. I just figured it would end at my grave many years down the line.

Instead, I have a jar full of ashes

And questions that … Read more...