***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
Posttraumatic Stress
Within four months of my summer visit with my aunt, she passed away from breast cancer. She released her life, her child, and all the people and things that she loved to be at peace from her suffering. When I look back upon this time in my life, I often peer upon it with sadness. I wish that things could have been different. I wished that the trauma I had suffered was not so daunting that I could not see my aunt’s suffering.
Although the mention of her illness were within a distant peripheral of my life, I still lived my life totally unaware. Her life had ended, and I felt that I may have missed parts of it because I was wallowing within my own stuff. I do not know if this was a part of depression or the stages of grief, but I fell into some place silent and distant. I was within myself, but I felt as if I was moving through a haze. I fell into a glass pane but like a bubble where the passage of time seemed to move slowly.
It was a type of dissociation. I was present but only in body. I felt as if I were merely watching the passage of time. I could not speak. My movements and actions felt transfixed, but at the same time I felt as if I were outside of myself too … as if to watch this passage of time in slow motion. Even with people surrounding me, I felt so out of place. I felt alone. I heard the murmur of their voices, but I did not hear them. I did not hear the content of their words, and I did not hear them as it related to me.
Travel
I have never understood my grandparents’ reasoning for not bringing the body of my now deceased aunt back to their hometown, but I know that there had been some heated discussions. I imagine that my grandmother was still very angry that my aunt refused my grandmother’s assistance in the last stages of my aunt’s life. My aunt had literally gone no-contact from my grandparents.
So we all made the very long drive to funeralize my aunt in her city. I will never forget how gloomy a drive it was when we actually arrived to the city. I remember how some of the trees stood out to me like dark embers of death. The limbs of some trees were wickedly crooked and gave the area where we drove a dreary look of darkness. It did not help that it was foggy, cold, and raining. I did not want to be there.
Although my brain had not reacted to the location of former trauma, my body had reacted, and I felt an overwhelming anxiety. I wanted to sleep. I had not experienced good sleep much of my young life to start with, but insomnia was far worse sense the sexual assault. The rainy weather made me feel drowsy, but I was so focused on the area we were in because we were drawing nearer to the funeral home, that I did not want to close my eyes. I needed to stay awake.
The Funeral
I remember the funeral. My grandmother was a force to be reckoned with. She complained about the ceremony the entire time. She had not been able to control it. My mother was somber and quiet and so were her other siblings. I actually remember thinking that something was wrong with this family. They were all so quiet and normal acting to have lost a sister, but I did not know how anyone internally felt.
At some points during the service, however, my grandmother did weep and cry out, “My baby, my baby girl.” Yet, I could feel no one’s emotions other than my own. I was outside of it all but still very heartbroken. I cried on the inside of myself until I could no longer hold it. Then I let the tears just flow as I looked towards the front of the parlor where my aunt was lying inside of the casket. Grief was very present.
We were allowed one last goodbye to my aunt before the funeral director closed her casket. I remember reaching out to touch her. She was stiff to the touch – hard even. She looked very different. Her spirit was gone. Only her once inhabited body was left, and that body was later placed in the ground for burial to appear no more. It was a sad and somber outgoing for a life that I believe still wanted to live.
Before I walked away, I felt a soft touch of my hand as if someone was attempting to grasp it. I looked up to the smile of Mother, my aunt’s best friend and the woman who had ridden with me part of the way on my home via Greyhound bus. She was the vision of loveliness, dressed in black and wearing a netting hat veil. She took my hand and walked me towards my aunt’s casket where my aunt’s body appeared to peacefully rest. Mother spoke, “She’s beautiful isn’t she? Although I don’t think she’s like this dress they’ve got her in, and the makeup is just not her. She was a natural beauty.”
Mother took a sigh, squeezed my hand, and let it go. I just stared and remained silent. Someone walked up to her, greeted her, and then she turned around to talk the them. I walked over to a podium and read through the pages from the book of condolences. I looked at how beautifully people wrote their names. I imagined what kind of people these were based on their handwritings and who they were to my aunt. I turned to watch people in conversation. A lot of people knew my aunt, and she seemed to know a lot of people.
Eventually, my dad drove our family to the cemetery. It was quite a distance from the funeral parlor. When we stood around the grounds of the cemetery for the last and final rites of my aunt, I recited my final goodbyes to my aunt in a whisper. I said a prayer and hoped that her soul would rest in peace. Then I followed my dad and siblings to the outskirts of the burial site where we watched men cover another burial site with dirt.
When we left the cemetery, my dad drove the family to my aunt’s apartment. There were already a few people inside. My aunt’s friends and neighbors from the building came to the apartment and expressed their condolences. I received a few hugs, but I remember being somewhat nonresponsive. I did not want to be there. So I walked outside and stood on the stoop. I looked all around the street. Everything felt dark and looked grim.
When I turned in response to hearing my name called, I saw the neighbor from across the hall. She gave me a huge hug, but I was speechless and stiff. I tried to fight back my tears. She smiled at me. “We miss you around here.” Then the two other neighbors that lived on the second and third floors hugged me as well. Yet, I could not talk. I weakly smiled, but inside of myself, I wanted to run.
The last person to extend her condolences to me was the kind woman who rescued me the day of the sexual assault. She reached down and hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. She then turned to the other women and remarked, “She’s really grown … looks so mature.” At some point, I remember my family coming outside and introducing themselves to the women. “Mother” was also present. I watched as the women all talked to my mother and “Mother” about my aunt. I felt a hot prickly heat of anxiety arise.
My body reacted to the conversation and to details about my summer visit. I do not recall anything being mentioned about the assault, but my body surely reacted as if there was something wrong. I wanted to leave. I felt an overwhelming anxiety that I almost could not contain, and then there was panic. “Mother” and the kind woman both turned toward me at the same time. “It’s okay,” said the kind woman. “It’s okay.” My mother was speechless. She had a blank stare on her face. I think she was trying to determine who this kind woman was to me.
The kind woman put her hand around my neck as a way to comfort me. “Take a deep breath. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowly. That’s it. You’re okay,” she said. I breathed in, and I breathed out. In fact, I let out a huge breath and bent forward to touch my knees. My mother looked on with suspicion, but I did not want to look her directly in the eye. Then my dad walked out to see the commotion. “Mother” said, “I think she is just so overwhelmed … it’s finally hit her that [my aunt’s name] is gone.”
My dad stared at me with displeasing eyes that seemed to say “You’re making a fool of yourself.” He turned to my mother and said, “There’s nothing more I think we can do here. Are you ready?” My mother turned to go inside of the apartment to get her things and my siblings. My aunt’s best friend, “Mother”, expressed that she had planned to stick around with my grandparents to close out my aunt’s apartment and then return back to my hometown with them.
While everyone stood around, there was small chatter with details I do not remember. Then goodbyes were said, and I knew that I would never see those women – my aunt’s friends and neighbors – my aunt’s apartment, or my aunt’s street again. I am not sure why I felt so strongly affected by it all, but I fought against the great wail that desired to escape from my throat. I contained myself enough until we were inside the car. I had already received disapproving looks from both my parents. So I knew it was best to keep my emotions muffled inside of me.
As my dad drove away from the area, I turned to look at the area we were leaving, and I cried without sound. I let the tears fall, and they fell profusely. The tears showered my face like the rain was showering down onto the car. I mourned my aunt, and I mourned what was never going to be, but all the while, there was an intense guilt and shame that I could not shake. My internal thoughts as we drove away … “I killed my aunt. She really died because of me.”
Stay tuned for the next post.
My Voice Unchained 