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





Thursday, June 16, 2011

Structure

            Probably the worst thing about losing my father to suicide was that I could never stop thinking about it.  It sat right under the edge of every thought and action.  His death invaded me, waking or asleep.  It was hard to know how to go about my life.
            One woman that I met at a support group who had lost her husband to suicide said she had to structure her life tightly to keep going.  “I did everything I could to limit the impact of the suicide and grief on my life,” she said.  “I kept going.  I kept functioning.  I took enough control that it didn't cause additional problems for me.”  I think her organized methods of structure helped her compartmentalize her emotions. 
            My sister told me that she put her grief and memories of my father into an emotional box and took them out when she had the strength.
I found that I couldn’t handle a tightly structured day or find an emotional box tight enough to hold back the thoughts.  In the beginning, my mind didn’t operate well enough to keep up with details.  Silent screams, memories, and images wormed their way in and out of all details.  I had to leave plenty of time for staring into space.  At work, I eased out of as much stress at possible.  At home, I refinished furniture, sanded the wood in a hypnotic state and thanked God that I didn’t have children.  Each of us did what we needed to get through.
Find what works best and do that.  There are no rules in how to go about a day after you have lost someone to suicide.  Just getting through it is the goal.
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