Dear Dad,

Noa asked me today if I felt that I was any closer to making peace with how you died? Ten months later, I answered her as honestly as I could.

I told her that I didn’t think that I will ever make peace with your suicide. How can someone make peace with something that feels so utterly wrong, violent and senseless? No, peace is too much to ask for. But, I do believe that I am learning simply to live with it. My head understands that it was an illness that took you. Depression and anxiety took hold, and caused you unimaginable pain. They distorted and diminished your sense of self, of value and of hope.  And, like a cancer, they ate away at you, coursing through your blood day and night. My head has come, as best as is possible, to understand that. That is the truest answer to the question of why, and yet it is so very unsatisfying. It doesn’t rest comfortably on my tongue, it doesn’t offer me any solace. But it is the only truth that I know for certain.

But my heart has yet to let go of the unanswerable questions. I am haunted by the why of it all. The what if’s find their way in as well, and the wonder at what we missed, and what we might have done, if only we’d known. But in the immediate days, weeks and months after you died, those questions reverberated daily, seemingly set on the highest volume. Daily they intruded upon my world, rocking the shaky foundation beneath my feet. They woke me up at night, they kept me from falling asleep, they played like a broken record of a song I didn’t want to hear, but couldn’t turn off.

Today, those questions still linger, but they are softer, less palpable day in and day out. They whisper to me quietly. Sometimes they come at the most predictable of moments, and other times they sneak up on me, when least expected. But I have learned to answer them with the only other thing I know to be true; I do not know. I will never know; the final catalyst, the last straw, the reason that you turned to death, when so much love still surrounded you. I will never know how it became so dark and why you didn’t ask for help. I do not know. It is the only answer to the unimaginable, unfathomable question of suicide.It is how I answer my heart, when what my head believes simply offers no comfort.

Why was once a question full of wonder. The favorite word of young children learning to understand the world around them. Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do cows moo? Why do dogs bark? They asked, and we answered with what we knew. And when we had no answer, we simply answered with because.  Sometimes that satisfied them, and sometimes it didn’t.

And so here I stand, ten months later. I am the child still trying to comprehend the act of a parent. The truest answer to the question, the because, is that you had an illness. That is the answer my head knows, and it is the answer that leaves my heart and my soul unsoothed, unsatisfied and eternally uncomfortable.  But it is all that I will ever know. The only answer that I will ever have.  And all I can truly ask of myself now is to continue to learn to live with that. What my head knows to be true and the answers my heart still seeks now must find a way to live within me, to coexist. And I must continue finding ways to live with them.

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.  (Tennessee Williams)

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. – Aesop

Dear Strangers,

I remember you. Ten months ago, when my cell phone rang with news of my father’s suicide, you were walking into Whole Foods, prepared to go about your food shop, just as I had done only minutes before.

But I had already abandoned my cart full of groceries and I stood in the entryway of the store. My brother was on the other end of the line. He was telling me my father was dead, that he had taken his own life early that morning and through his own sobs, I remember my brother kept saying, “I’m sorry Deborah,  I’m so sorry.” I can’t imagine how it must have felt for him to make that call.

And as we hung up the phone, I started to cry and scream, as my whole body trembled. This just couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be happening. Only moments before I was filling my cart with groceries, going about my errands on a normal Monday morning. Only moments before my life felt intact. Overwhelmed with emotions, I fell to the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of what I had just learned. And you kind strangers, you were there.

You could have kept on walking, ignoring my cries, but you didn’t. You could have simply stopped and stared at my primal display of pain, but you didn’t. No, instead you surrounded me as I yelled through my sobs, “My father killed himself. He killed himself. He’s dead.” And the question that has plagued me since that moment came to my lips in a scream, “Why?” I must have asked it over and over and over again. I remember in that haze of emotions, one of you asked for my phone and asked who you should call. What was my password? You needed my husband’s name as you searched through my contacts. I remember that I could hear your words as you tried to reach my husband for me, leaving an urgent message for him to call me. I recall hearing you discuss among yourselves who would drive me home in my car and who would follow that person to bring them back to the store. You didn’t even know one another, but it didn’t seem to matter. You encountered me, a stranger, in the worst moment of my life & you coalesced around me with common purpose, to help. I remember one of you asking if you could pray for me and for my father. I must have said yes, and I recall now that Christian prayer being offered up to Jesus for my Jewish father and me, and it still both brings tears to my eyes and makes me smile. In my fog, I told you that I had a friend, Pam, who worked at Whole Foods and one of you went in search of her and thankfully, she was there that morning and you brought her to me. I remember the relief I felt at seeing her face, familiar and warm. She took me to the back, comforting and caring for me so lovingly until my husband could get to me. And I even recall as I sat with her, one of you sent back a gift card to Whole Foods; though you didn’t know me, you wanted to offer a little something to let me know that you would be thinking of me and holding me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. That gift card helped to feed my family, when the idea of cooking was so far beyond my emotional reach.

I never saw you after that. But I know this to be true, if it were not for all of you, I might have simply gotten in the car and tried to drive myself home. I wasn’t thinking straight, if I was thinking at all. If it were not for you, I don’t know what I would’ve done in those first raw moments of overwhelming shock, anguish and grief. But I thank God every day that I didn’t have to find out. Your kindness, your compassion, your willingness to help a stranger in need have stayed with me until this day. And no matter how many times my mind takes me back to that horrible life altering moment, it is not all darkness. Because you reached out to help, you offered a ray of light in the bleakest moment I’ve ever endured. You may not remember it. You may not remember me. But I will never, ever forget you. And though you may never know it, I give thanks for your presence and humanity, each & every day.

Dear Dad,
Today was the kind of day you loved. Almost 70 degrees in the middle of February, the sun shining, a warm breeze blowing and the mountain view so very crisp & clear (oh how you would’ve loved the mountains). I closed my eyes today and took a deep breath, my face turned toward the sun, just as you used to do, like a sunflower always searching for the warmth & the light. And as I inhaled, I thought of you and for a brief moment, I felt your essence wash over me and I smiled. It may seem a very small thing–and perhaps it is. But to think of you in life, and to feel you, even if just for an instant, reminds me that you are still with me. And to think of you with a smile that isn’t accompanied by a tear, allows me to feel, to trust, that healing is happening, ever so slowly but ever so surely.
I love you Dad. And I miss you so very much…
D

I don’t think there’s anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that’s because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that’s such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life. (Helen Mirren)

I’m told it won’t always feel like this. And I do have more good days than bad. But when the bad ones hit, the waves of sorrow, grief, trauma and missing, seem to set me ten steps back. It’s the dance of grief, forward momentum carries you toward healing, hope, and life. Then, a turn, a twist…and suddenly you’re standing in the epicenter of loss once again. It won’t always be like this. It will get easier. The wounds will heal. These are the mantras I say to myself. And some days, like today, I lean into the grief. I let grief lead me. Because I just need to be with my sorrow. There is some peace in acknowledging that. I loved my father and I lost him. And I miss him. I thought of how much he hated the cold and the snow. And I thought of him buried beneath two feet of it. A strange thought I know, but it impacted me. Triggers abound. Some we can two step around, and some just trip us up. One step forward, then two then three.. And then a slide back. It won’t always be like this… It’ll get better. Today I’ll lean into the sadness. Tomorrow the sun will rise and the dance continues.