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





Saturday, June 18, 2011

Contagious Depression after the Suicide of a Loved One

            You might have called my father an adventurer.  Certainly his suicide caused me to explore a new whelm of thought.  Before he ended his life, death to me was something that came swift or slow either unwanted or welcomed.  The key idea, though, was that death came; it wasn’t an option.  Something innocent in me had the notion that no one person had that much power as to end their own life.  Death, like birth, came from God.
            The first few years after Daddy died, I went through my own depression.  I suffered through countless child-like angers at family and friends.  Little problems or stresses brought about a thought of how easily death now could be called upon.  Suicide or perhaps more the fear of it carried a heavy weight in my thoughts. 
The fear that I could simply kill myself sat upon my shoulder like a maliciously smiling monkey, chattering extreme suggestions into my ear.  I was scared of my own thoughts.  Dangerous thoughts came from the mile-wide crack in my soul; I wasn’t in full control of myself.  I felt no one in my family would understand, but they, too, were just as shocked by my father’s death.    
            Rather than death, I sought help.  I began talking, first to counselors, then to a priest, and then to friends.  It was important that the people I chose to talk with about my father’s suicide and my fears were not dependent upon my being ok—that I didn’t have to put up a front for them.  I needed to tell the truth; I was horribly afraid that suicide was genetic.  These trustworthy, objective people allowed me to safely expose my fear and be as weak as I felt.  They listened, nodded, and assured me that I wasn’t crazy—and that I had more strength than I realized.  The fears eased up as I shed light upon them.
            The thing about suicide is that its bleak aftermath wants to spread like a bad cold or influenza.  Get help.  Talk to someone immune to your pain.
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