©After His Suicide, Grief Meditations by Karen M. Phillips: 11/29/11

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

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Losing a Father to Suicide

“I just adored him.”

Frances Moore (1998)

Stereotypically, my father was the breadwinner; he was the person my mother used to threaten to tell of my misbehavior when I was a child; he was supposedly the man in control. I felt he was my protector, too, and even though I was an adult now, that child-like feeling was still within my heart. I felt he could handle anything. I loved and adored my father.

Some may not care for their fathers. Some fathers are bastards. Really there’s no easy way to deny that reality. Either way, the loss of someone so instrumental in getting you into this world is a major event.

To lose my father to a death of his own decision created a lot of different questions in my mind. Could suicide be something that I might choose to do because I have his genes? Did I mean this little to him? Did I not love him enough? What the hell was he thinking?

Your father’s decision to die is not the sum total of his life. If you adored him; allow yourself to feel the heartbreak. If you were mixed up by his treatment of you; allow yourself to feel the confusion.

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