I'll be honest, the initial gut reaction to envisioning my husband suffering in the afterlife was painful. That said, it lasted only a moment, before I became deeply sad for whoever has enough hate to want to write a comment like this, let alone actually write it. Because the thing is... the last sentence of the comment is addressed to Rick. And let's face it, Rick isn't the one reading it. Or writing this blog. I am. So the person commenting clearly intends to hurt me. To upset me. To affect me. This comment does not affect Rick at all. If someone thinks Rick is a coward, selfish, or burning in hell... there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to take the time to write me a comment to tell me.
Anyone can think those things. Telling a widow...who is grieving...publicly on a blog no less...is just hateful.
And this instance is a prime example of why suicide is so different from other forms of death. If Rick died another way, I wouldn't have to deal with hate like this popping up in my inbox.
Sometimes in life, hate pops up. Or negativity. And you have to hit delete. Or better yet, mark as spam. There's spam everywhere - not just in blog comments or in our inboxes on the internet. It's everywhere. When I walk around in life, especially now in the wake of Rick's death, whatever does not serve me positively, I mark as spam. To eliminate it completely - to delete it - would mean that I didn't recognize or acknowledge that it was toxic in the first place. But when I take all the junk floating out there in life and mark it as spam, I imagine myself taking a little bit of power back.
