Fire And Rain

This has always been one of my favorite James Taylor songs, and I love them all. But, being that my name is Suzanne and, as a teen I went through some pretty hard times I always felt like it BELONGED to me, it fit so well, bouts with depression, attempted suicides. How narcissistic! Well, my life got better, I grew up, and this song made me smile to know that the fates hadn't taken me nor my strength. This past August 29th, 2014, however, my youngest daughter took her own life at the young age of 29. I had recently moved away from Washington State, where my entire family lives to be with a man that I almost married in 1982...we met during a Summer vacation I was taking in 1979 while I was visiting my grandparents in a small town, Niagara, Wisconsin. We kept in touch but, in 1982 I went to visit him in the Marine Corps in San Diego where he was stationed and we realized we were in love and wanted to be together. Well, I headed back home, to Washington, and, at the age of 18 got 'cold feet', called him and broke up over the phone. Didn't speak to him again until early 2011 when my sister found him on Facebook and I contacted him, and, here I am, four years later living not too far from that little town where we met. And, we are happily married. I share my story because, in a way, my daughter thought I had 'abandoned' her by moving so far away and, even though I visited at least every 6 months and she and I talked on the phone almost daily she was bitter, and I had to listen to her almost constant expressions of wanting to take her own life. How she just never felt right. How she felt like a bad mother to her two beautiful kids. How she wanted so much to just FEEL 'normal'. She had made several attempts to take her life and, after the third one I told her it was FATE that she was never successful with those attempts, and that God still had a plan for her. She was on a lot of meds, she suffered from Bi-polar disorder and was horribly plagued by sadness. In October of 2010 her children were taken from her and were awarded to her father and his wife until she could show that she was at least TRYING to 'get it together'. She couldn't seem to be able to keep appointments or do the things that were asked of her, to get the children back, and she missed them, she wasn't whole, in her heart, without them. Her own ex-husband was in jail for not having a green card from India, so he could not help. Needless-to-say the kids were awarded to her dad and his wife (and, I want to add that they are both WONDERFUL people, we always worked together on everything) and that was in July of 2014. On August 29th of that year she took a lethal dose of her sleep medication, Ambien, after she had a taxi take her to the bay of the Puget Sound, to a beach, and there she went for a swim and fell asleep and never woke back up. They found her the next morning, washed-up on the beach, on someone's private beach. She had no ID on her, they had to identify her by the manufacturing code on a metal plate in her ankle from a surgery that she had. Her dad and stepmom were notified by a visit from the Medical examiner at their doorstep later that day, and her stepmom called and asked me in a panicked voice where my husband was? And, I told her at work, and she said to call him and then, right then, I knew that my baby was gone. Forever. She left several letters and notes on the table in her apartment. Her sister, my eldest daughter, was (and still is) beside herself. My two beautiful grandchildren do not have their beloved mother anymore. I flew to Washington State the morning after I got the phone call and was in pieces at the airport, a blithering, blubbering, bawling mess. It took everything in me to just get through that flight.
Prior to her funeral, after all of the family sat gathered in a room the day prior making arrangements and finalizing everything my sister and I got my daughter ready for all of the people that loved her to say their "Good-byes". I combed her hair, put on her makeup like she always wore it, painted her nails. I did what I could to