September Suicides

When I was twelve years old what little childhood I had up to that point experienced ended very abruptly and very violently when my 19 year old cousin shot himself in the head.  That sentence may be very hard for some people in my family to read, but it is easier for me to discuss when I am as factual as possible.  His death was the most life altering event of my young life, and in many ways his death remains a life altering event. 

His name was Joey.  He was so handsome that I am relatively certain that nearly every girl who ever met him instantly fell halfway in love with him.  But he had no idea he was handsome, or that just about ever female in his presence was falling all over themselves trying to impress him.  He was quiet, stoic, often serious.  He was incredibly sweet and one of the most thoughtful people I have ever known.  I loved him in that way you love all of your families members when you're a child, before life complicates all of your relationships.  He loved me too.  And he was there one day and just gone the next, and my young heart broke and bled for him and for me and for my whole family.  He died at the beginning of September.  I don't remember the exact date, but I'm pretty sure it was around September 4th because I remember missing a math test to go buy the dress I had to wear for his funeral and I think the test was scheduled that first week of September.  It's funny the things you remember from tragic events. 

My grief was compounded by my peers, who not only could not comprehend what it meant to lose someone you loved, but also could not keep their judgmental remarks to themselves.  You see, when someone kills themselves both children and adults seem to think it is somehow acceptable to use that death as some kind of religious teaching tool to proselytize and convert you to their belief system. They think it is okay to tell you that your loved one is being tormented in hell, and they justify this by telling themselves they're saving your soul and telling you "the truth."  I was only 12 years old, but that didn't stop both my peers and even some trusted adults from preaching at me and filling my young mind with images of my cousin being tortured by the devil.

They say time heals all wounds, but that's just not true.  I never really got over Joey's death.  I probably never will  I was certain I could never experience anything worse than his death.

Then on September 26, 2003 at roughly 3 AM my father hanged himself from the boathouse rafters of the house he was renting.  To this day there is absolutely nothing I have ever been through that has come even remotely close to the absolutely soul-rendering pain I experienced when I listened to the voice mail message my stepmother left me on my cellphone.

This time my grief was compounded by my own anger.  You see, I had never, not for even one millisecond, been angry with Joey.  I came to realize that suicidal people are not able to think clearly and acute depression is a very real and very dangerous illness.  But this time that logic did nothing to help me.  I was utterly and completely broken, and I was furious.  My father knew what it felt like to survive a suicide.  He knew what that kind of death does to the family it leaves behind.  He knew how much I hurt the first time, and I felt like that meant he didn't even think of me when he died.

My anger sustained me.  It enabled me to safely drive my vehicle five hours to get home, only stopping three times to sob hysterically on the side of the road, and once in a convenience store where the old man behind the counter came out to hold this young girl he did not know who was crying so hard she couldn't pay for her soda.  It enabled me to drive my mother and my brother to the funeral home and it enabled me to somehow survive the horrible things that happened after my father died that I will not speak of here.  

But my anger did not eliminate my grief.  It did not eliminate the sucking, gaping hole ripped into my already fractured heart.  And my anger, like my grief, has never gone all the way away.  In 5 short days my father will have been dead for 9 years, and I remain angry and broken by it.

September is hard for me.  September is, for me, the Month of Suicides.  It is a month of death.  It is a month of heartache and anger and grief and a sadness so deep and dark that it blots out everything else. 

I am sobbing even as I type this, sobbing as if it just happened....sobbing because there are some things in life that are so horribly painful that the pain never goes all the way away. 

And I am writing this, as I write something similar every single year, because somewhere out there is a person whose loved one just killed themselves and that person is feeling every single emotion I've lived with this past 16 years and maybe that person will find some relief in knowing that a perfect stranger somewhere around the globe has been where they sit and has survived it.