Dear Reader,

After my father’s suicide, I searched for books to help me through my grief process, but there weren’t many available, especially not one page meditations. The nature of recovery from a loved one’s suicide, for me, was silent. The people that knew about my loss did not know how to console, and I rarely spoke about my father’s suicide. I was afraid of what others may think of my father or me. Unearned shame kept me quiet. I needed words and feelings from someone who had walked down the same path. I did not need graphic descriptions of a person’s suicide. I couldn’t deal with words that brought home the horrible scene of finding my father. But still, I needed to know that the churning feelings inside me were normal. With the thought that possibly another person could relate to my feelings, writing them has been a catharsis.

For me writing has always been a release. There was an old game I used to play as a child called pick-up-sticks. The object was to remove one stick at a time without moving the others. That’s what writing these meditations has been like for me; I picked up one thread of a thought at a time to look at and express. Singling out just one thought and developing it into concise words was difficult and frustrating. Yet, it left me with a clear heart and the ability to get on with my life. Writing these one-page thoughts were both my own cathartic attempt to make some sense of what happened to me after my father’s death, and my attempt to help others cope with their sorrow.

Writing was just one tool in my efforts to heal from the grief of losing my father. Professional direction from a psychologist helped me to understand, also, that once I was able to see my father as no longer in pain then I could begin my own healing. Joining a support group gave me confidence to stop isolating and helped me to talk about my father’s suicide.

Efforts at good writing ask the writer to always speak their truth. It was the truth that I adhered to in these reflections. I did not whitewash the pain. If you have lost someone to suicide, I hope my truth will not cut sharply into your agony. And painful though they are, I believe these reflections have a healing grace. I hope that you will find something in them that will help.

Sincerely,

Karen Phillips





Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Explaining his death

            I had a catch-up conversation with a childhood friend I hadn’t talked with in years.  We’d lost touch for too long, so the topics covered a lot of ground, divorces, remarriages, children, grandchildren, and even new careers.  The topic changed to how our parents were doing, and I asked plenty of questions to keep her talking.  I didn’t want to say anything about my father.  I hated saying the way Daddy died.  How do you explain? His death carried an undreamt shame.  Years had passed, and I still had trouble. 
I felt double-minded.  She spoke unguarded and defenseless about her life.  One side of me wanted to open up to her, to be vulnerable and share.  The other side wanted to keep my grief a secret and press it tightly against my heart.  It was hard to even listen through my loud and harassing thoughts.
            To leave out such a significant detail of my life in this conversation felt a betrayal to my own person. This woman was a part of my life—a part of my good memories.  Daddy was a part of those memories with her.  I stammered my way through the words and felt the whole time I should have kept them to myself.  She hesitated, listened, gave her sympathy, and asked if his health had been bad.  I said yes, changed the subject, and asked more comfortable questions.
            Keeping my father’s suicide a secret is as monstrous as finding his body.  It walls me off and isolates me.  It’s a part of this hell, at least, that I have some control over and can change.
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