Mend

When my husband died by suicide on 7 April 2025, my world did not just break. It split open like the temple curtain torn in two. It was not just grief that arrived. It was silence that roared.

It was shame that crept in where comfort should have stood. It was confusion and heartache at the things people assumed, some were strangers, others we knew. It was the sting of gossip spoken with certainty by those who never sat at our table, who never walked through our front door.

It was the voices of the very tenured PHD’s in Speculation, armed with their assumptions, theories, and textbook diagnoses earned in their coveted institutions of sewage plants, who spoke the loudest, yet knew the least… As if our loss gave them permission to unleash every unspoken suspicion, every salacious theory, every warped and sordid possibility their minds could manufacture.

They spoke behind closed doors while pretending to honour what we’d lost. But they weren’t grieving.
They were feeding something else — darker. They whispered clichés to justify their psychotic fascination with tearing down what they never understood.. They turned our family into a case study. Our love into a pathology. Our sorrow into a scandal. But the only thing exposed was them: Their obsession with control. Their need to explain the unexplainable, even if it meant inventing pain that never existed. It wasn’t curiosity, it was cruelty. It wasn’t concern., it was voyeurism, dressed in false compassion. And while they spiralled into their twisted stories, we were on the floor — broken, bleeding, still trying to breathe.

They never sat at our table. They never heard the laughter that echoed through our home, nor saw the way we loved , wildly, sincerely, daily. They could not have imagined the joy we lived in, nor the devastation we were plunged into….And yet, they named our story without knowing our hearts.

As salacious as some may have been…. WE LOVE THEM…. We love them because, despite all of our flaws as human beings, GOD LOVES THEM. We love them….because it’s easy to love when you come from a family filled with LOVE.. We forgive them, because of the blood spilt sacrifice on the Cross on Calvary. “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” — Exodus 14:14

They could never understand the trauma of hearing  or finding the unthinkable, or the disbelief that wrapped itself around us in the days that followed…it made no sense to us…it made no sense to all who knew and loved him…

It was confusion that wrapped itself around my theology like a thick fog. My faith was shaken at its core. It was tested over the hot coals of grief like I have never experienced before. It was the aching weight of what could have been. Birthdays were missed. The “I love you’s” were unsaid. The empty chair sat at the head of the table.

He was not just my husband. After God, he was my everything and I was his. He was my joy. My safe place. The father of our children. The one I laughed with in the light and leaned on in the dark. The one who empowered me, endured my goofiness and called me his ‘adorable darling’ for 30 years. He was my friend. The one who knew my heart. He was the reflection of God’s gentleness in my life. The protector of our peace. He was known to many as Healing Hands, because that is what he carried into every room. Healing. Warmth. Restoration.

And because I loved him then, and love him still, fully, fiercely, and without pause. I feel led to speak.
Not to explain, because I owe it to no one, but to carry his legacy forward. To offer the same healing he gave so freely, now through words and witness.

To help someone hold on. To keep a family together. To stop another soul from stepping into the silence of no return. To honour the beauty of who he was, and to speak life where death has tried to leave its mark.

Healing Hands did not end with him. I will carry it now, in faith, in truth, and in love.

Suicide is not the answer. But neither is silence.

This is not a message of condemnation. It is not a weapon dressed in Scripture..

It is a cry for clarity, for those who are grieving, for those who are questioning, and for those who are silently suffering. To stay silent would be to betray both my pain and my love. So I will speak…not just for him, but for every soul who stands at the edge and wonders if the fall will be softer than the fight.There is a story to be told. A full one. I did not write these words because I have clarity.

I wrote them :

Because I needed to breathe. Because I needed to speak. Because sometimes, when pain splits a life wide open, the only way through is to pour it out, one honest sentence at a time.

As a close knit family, my kids and I were in shock. Confused. Undone. None of us saw it coming. There were no signs. No warnings. No goodbye. It made no sense. It still makes no sense.

This is not the end of anything. It is the beginning. The beginning of my healing. The beginning of carrying love forward, not with certainty, but with reverence. A quiet offering from the wreckage, spoken in faith that something good can still rise. I will speak, not because I have answers, but because I do not, and because silence felt like another loss that I could not bear.  I will write, not to explain, but to make space for the truth. I will write because there are so many beautiful human beings like my Ken, gentle souls with golden hearts, who laugh loudly, love deeply, and carry the weight of the world with grace. They are the best husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, sons and daughters. They show up. They give. They serve.

And yet, even they can slip , not because they are weak, but because their pain was hidden, their burden silent, their struggle sacred and unseen. I will write because someone reading the words of the posts on this blog may be holding on to a thread…and maybe…just maybe, these words will catch them before its too late.

I will share, not to be seen, but to let the light in. And because deep in my spirit, I believe this:

If this journey can help someone else hold on, if these words can stop one soul from stepping into the silence of no return, if  this love can reach into the ache of another family, and pull someone back from the edge…..then this pain has not been wasted.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

I do not write to fix, but to feel, to honour the man I love, the love we shared, and the God who holds me when I can no longer hold myself. This blog is not about being strong. It is about being honest. It is about choosing life in the middle of death. Choosing light, when darkness presses in. Choosing love, still.
This is the beginning of how I will carry him with me, his gentleness, his faith, his healing hands. And perhaps, as I write, those same hands will reach through these words
and touch someone who needs it most.

“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story…” — Psalm 107:2

Because love still speaks.
And as long as I have breath, I will keep speaking too.
For healing.
For truth.
For life.
Even here.
Even now.
Even for us.

It is a story for every weary heart, every wondering soul, every family shattered by something they never saw coming. It is a story that begins in heartbreak, but it will not end there .
This is not about finding the right words. It’s about letting love rise through the ache, so that something sacred can still grow where everything was torn. Sometimes, healing begins not with answers, but with honesty

So lean in gently.
There will be truth. There will be tenderness. There will be hope