Today is the day that I lost my dad to suicide in 2012.

He made the decision to take his life on June 18th and was resuscitated by my incredible little sister, giving my family the gift to be with him while he died. For that, I am forever grateful to Molly.

We all stood around him in the hospital in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, more machine than man as the 19th of June rolled into the 20th. It was still dark out as the last of my family trickled back to the hospital after the nurse suggested the few of us on hospital shift that night call everyone else back. We played The Rolling Stones on his iPod and surrounded him, the ICU packed with my siblings and their spouses, my mom, uncles and maternal grandmother. So much love around him. Always so much love.

We all held him, his feet, his arms, his legs, his hands, as he rejected the life support breathing for him for the last 36 hours.

The most beautiful sunrise lit up the Fraser Valley with pinks and oranges and filled the window next to the bed with my dad’s body in it. It was just my mom and I left. She did not want to leave him. I understood. I held her while she held him. I cannot imagine what was happening to her just then – her world had just fucking imploded out of nowhere. Watching my mom lose her person was the most heart wrenching experience.

The last 6 years have continued to surprise me with the aftermath of suicide in a family.

I also have recently had an interesting realization that I will share after my top 5 surprises of suicide:

1. Grief is a tricky beast. This year I felt like I was walking through the last 20 days of my dad’s life all over again, only this time I knew how it ended. I could not breathe without pain in my chest. I could not sleep. I was starving then not hungry again for days. I cried every single day. My anger felt unmanageable at times… ok, a lot of the time. I kept thinking, it has been 6 years?! I have done so much work. I am past this. Interestingly, the dates this year lined up making my June daily replay feel fresh and real. There is no straight line for grief. It is a process that dips and doubles back and comes back up again before doing it all over again.
2. I cannot believe how often we colloquially throw around suicidal statements in casual conversation. It was not until my dad died by suicide that I noticed the frequency of careless statements like, ‘fuck my life’ and ‘I am going to kill myself if __(insert not that big of a deal statement here)__’. I also notice how often suicide is depicted (both seriously and in parody) in movies and television shows and it is disappointing and shocking as a survivor.
3. There is SO little support for suicide survivors (the friends and family impacted by death by suicide). Toronto has a volunteer-led centre which was really helpful for me as I attended their support group in the early months after losing my dad. It was hard to find similar resources in the different Canadian cities where my family lives. The US has pretty amazing resources and research being done by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Considering over 100 people a day in Canada are left to flounder and grieve and try to understand their loved one’s choice to end their life (not to mention the other 200+ people who attempt suicide every day in Canada), we should have more resources for survivors and attempt survivors.   
4. There is nothing that anyone can do if someone has made up their mind to die by suicide. That doesn’t mean we cannot reach out if we suspect that people are depressed or suffering with mental illness and addiction. Please still do that. There may be some hesitation for that person you care about. This point has been an important one for me in my healing. By fully integrating this information at a cellular level, I can feel calm in my heart knowing my dad did not choose NOT me. This is something that was painful at first. He chose to not see the rest of my life play out, how could he do that? Now, I understand that suicide is not a rational act – it is a desperate move to stop the unimaginable pain. We can only guess what is happening for those individuals, and in that moment when one chooses to take their of life, there is a belief for them that the world will be better off without them in it. If that was my dad’s thought, he was so, so wrong.
5. Suicide in my family blew it up. There is a multitude of reasons why this happened. Unmanaged grief is up there in the top. Another big one is the lack of tools to stay in relationships with people who suffered trauma together. I know that there are times that I wish I was not going through my grief and loss alone so far from my family. And when I am with everyone, I am grateful for the distance. It feels really hard to be with everyone and their palpable sadness and confusion and loss.

This year, in the wake of Kate Spade’s and Anthony Bourdain’s recent suicide I found myself looking at the classism of mental illness and addiction. My family ticked all the right boxes by pretty much anyone’s standards. From the superficial to the spiritual, my parents had it all. My dad drove his sports car out to the cottage to take his life. As I held his hand while he was dying I played with the red string he had tied around his wrist – a reminder to stay present, a gift from my mom and his meditation guru a few weeks earlier. This was not supposed to happen to my family.

We have a split in accepted groups impacted by suicide. We have celebrities and people who suffer from stressors like poverty and the obvious failing of the social system. We accept when members of those groups die by suicide. The tortured artist. The sex worker. We still feel the loss, and we accept. I have found in my experience that there is less understanding of the doctor or the lawyer or the realtor or the teacher. That punctures the membrane of the taboo of suicide. That makes it real and in our backyard.

I was embarrassed when I told people how my dad died. I felt like I needed to follow it up with, ‘he was handsome, and smart, and athletic, and funny, and had money, and was loved in the community, and a lawyer, and loved my mom, and was a really good dad, and an awesome Gampie to Gray, and this doesn’t fit my family.’  I felt like people thought I came from ‘that kind of family’.

When I was in my suicide support group, the majority of people’s stories made sense to me. I understood why their loved ones had taken their own lives. Side note: forgive me everyone, this is how my mind was working as I was trying to understand an act that is not understandable… The people in my group shared about their daughter who was a sex worker and heroin addict who took her life, or a schizophrenic brother who refused his meds or a son who struggled with depression and alcoholism his whole life and was incarcerated off and on since junior high. Yes, yes, yes. That made sense to me. That was not my dad. That was not my story.

Then my dad’s best friend died by suicide last summer. Another interesting, funny, good dad, good husband, had money, man took his own life. My mom and her best friend lost their husbands the same way. Old wounds opened back up and I was forced to face a fact: mental illness does not discriminate. It does not care about your demographics or psychographics. Like cancer, it is an illness that can impact anyone. Yes, there are some lifestyle changes one can make to try to thwart these illnesses, and in the end, we do not know why people are impacted.

Addiction and suicide go hand in hand.

I do not believe that my dad would have taken his own life if he had not been drinking that night. Active and prolonged use of alcohol leads to depression. That is a fact. The research linking drug and alcohol use and suicide is staggering. My dad was an alcoholic. Again, we live in a culture that softens it by saying ‘high functioning alcoholic’ when someone leads a dynamic life AND drinks daily. It is the ‘ok kind of alcoholism’. It is the alcoholism that led to my dad killing himself and drastically changing the trajectory of so many people’s lives.

I have made the decision to have no alcohol in my life. I have been the butt end of my siblings’ jokes at times over my ‘righteousness’ by not partaking in drinking with my family. I did occasionally binge drink in my college days and a few times (mostly accidentally) in my adult life. Alcohol was never really my thing. Interestingly, I like to think that my body was protecting me as I have struggled with depression in my teens and 20s and with PPD after Gray was born. Alcohol was not going to do anything but hurt me. I knew that.

We are a culture with both alcoholism and suicide on the rise.

We need to look at alcoholism. Like, really look. This is uncomfortable in our society where alcohol is a integral part of social situations and entertainment. We justify and explain and bargain. We do not know who is suffering in silence. We do not know who is being impacted by alcohol in a dark and invisible way.

There has been a 45% rise of suicide in women over the last 15 years and suicide has become one of the top causes of death for new mothers, particularly in Ontario. The mommy wine culture (the nitty gritty about my thoughts on this will be for another post) and the rise of postpartum mood disorders needs to be honestly looked at. We are putting mothers with mood disorders caused by a hormonal imbalance and a lack of social and parenting support in higher risk situations with our cutesy mothering explained alcoholism.

For survivors of suicide, we wrack our brains with ‘why?’ and ‘what could I have done?’ and ‘were there signs?’. It plagued me… those questions on a loop. Yes, reach out to people who you think are having a tough time or who are in crisis. Tell them how loved they are. Tell them how much you love having them in your life. AND as a culture, we need to start looking at some of the causes and lifestyle choices that exacerbate mood disorders and depression. We need to start really looking at drinking. I have intimate relationships in my life and I know how they are perceived by the world (funny, gregarious and the life of the party) and I know what darkness alcohol causes in their minds. This is hurting us.

I lost my dad to suicide. I know in my soul that alcoholism played a significant role in his death. I know that my family is unrecognizable after this tragedy. I know that my heart broke open when he died and the gifts have been unbelievable. I know we can do better. We can take better care of one another. We can challenge social norms, because those norms are hurting us. This is hard and uncomfortable work.

For anyone who is suffering in silence or who is a suicide attempt survivor, I am sending you love. Mountains of it. You are wanted and needed, even if it feels really dark right now, this is fixable. Please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) (USA) or your local distress centre in Canada on suicideprevention.ca.

 

I am sorry for everyone’s loss who is a survivor. The trauma is terrible. The questions are infinite. The loss is staggering. I am sorry.

 

To my dad, you were so loved. I am sorry that your pain was so great and we did not understand what was happening for you. I am sorry that your amazing life and love story ended with you taking your own life. You are loved and missed every. single. day.