I've posted before but I'm going to see her again in a couple of weeks and I need some help with what to say/do to help her.
A brief background, my mum has been badly depressed before, about 15 years ago. I can still remember her in floods of tears everyday. She blamed various things for the depression, the catalyst this time was pulling out of a house they were buying and an incident in work where a patient came to harm (under her watch but not by her actions). Also she largely blamed the depression on a abortion she had had before I was born.
The last year has been very tough for my mum. My DS was badly burnt in her kitchen and although he has healed wonderfully and is completely unaffected by the trauma, mum still blames herself, for us being there and for the toxic shock DS went on to develop as she sponged him down with a not too good smelling dishcloth. That she did cause this is unlikely and irrelevent.
Also, and you would think most crucially she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She has coped brilliantly with the whole physical and of this at least physchological affects of the operation and still is happy with her decision not to have reconstruction. DS's burn happened a week or so before her op and she was very traumatised by the whole thing, to the extent that she asked GP to be put on tranquilisers. She still regularly brings up how she believes she harmed him and is still reticent around him.
A few weeks ago, my step father informed me that something I had said to mum had sunk her into depression. I had no idea what this was, but decided to wait until mum came to see me to try and talk things through with her. I tried but made little progress, something I had said had upset her but she knew that I wouldn't know what it was or what it was about and didn't want me to know. She didn't want to go into it.
She did talk about how low she has been feeling and told me 'I'd like to kill myself, really only I'm not brave enough to do it'. This was a few weeks ago and the words have been reverberrating around in my head ever since. She needs some kind of help I am sure but I don't know what she would ever agree to. She found counselling, hypnotherapy and spiritual healing all ineffective last time around.
I don't feel that she can go on feeling like this, she isn't herself at all at the moment, has little to say on the phone. Last night I dreamt she went through with it and what if she did? This really wasn't so brief after all was it?