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, June 11, 2013

Closet Ghosts


 
I found the poem below in some old documents the other night while looking for something to read at my writers group.  I wrote it in 2004 and revised it a little more this week.  Daddy's shoe was the first thing I saw when I found him.  Reading this poem in the group gave me some trouble.  No one said much in the way of helping me make it better except one person.  She told me to put the word "alone" in a line by itself.  

I've found it is good to talk about things that trouble me and not hide myself from them.  As I read the poem, I could feel that old shitty fear rising up in my throat, scared of something that had already happened.  Scared of how the people in my group might think. I read it as fast as my heart was beating. Someone said it was "dark," and I said yes, I wrote it while I was in a dark place.

The same person who offered constructive thoughts on the poems I read that night wrote a note just for me to see.  These are real life experiences, don't apologize for how you felt or express them.

When I hide away from the things that scare or trouble me, when I don't speak what I believe or feel, then I make it easy, too easy, for me to fall back into invisibility.  Being invisible is just as terrifying as finding that one left shoe.
 

Closet Ghosts


Peering

into the closet

I found a shoe,

Alone,

resting sideways

containing my father’s foot bones.

Wanting to just close the door,

I stood focused on the one

left behind

shoe. 

 

Memories

shivered up my spine as

I watched him lace up

his one-day-in-my-life

Sunday best. 

Shoe morphed into a boot

fragile now and

cracked from years

walking construction sites.

A hard hat ghosted in,

completing the wardrobe.

 

If I could, like God,

raise up from the essence

of those shoe bones

the image of my father,

I’d ask

“why did you leave

only a shoe?

Why not a note?”

 

Karen Phillips, 2004, revised 2013
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