Yesterday was Easter.
After January, it gets easier not to think about Dan for awhile. February rolls around. Sunshine slowly starts lasting longer. Buying the kids overpriced Valentines for their class. Distractions. It’d been a few weeks since he’d really come to mind. My siblings and I made the usual salty remarks about him at our mom’s birthday dinner. We usually turn to his photo hanging in the living room and say something like “Thanks for not being here, loser.”
Grief can very much be out-of-sight out-of-mind. It doesn’t hit until it does. Then it does.
My youngest sister looks and acts so much like him. She’s still very much her own person, yet the resemblance is uncanny. She hunches slightly. The hair texture. The cadence of voice. My mom shared some photos of me on her band trip, where Dan had gone about a decade ago posing with their band teacher.
I see his face in the photo. “Oh, Dan!….oh…oh yeah.”
And I remember that my best friend is dead.
I remembered Sonic Shuffle yesterday morning while our family was getting ready for church. Dan and I would play together on Saturday mornings with our dad on the family Sega. I’d usually play Amy or Knuckles. Dan was pretty ambivalent on character-choice but always kicked my trash in the mini games. I wanted to text him about nostalgia and our favorite levels.
But Dan is dead, and he won’t get my text. Damon didn’t even need to ask when I brought up the game and promptly burst into tears on his shoulder. I quit crying within ten minutes, and we went to church.
You know the expression “It gets easier, but it never gets better”? That.
I bought my oldest boy a book titled You Wouldn’t Want To Sail on the Titanic! It was one that we had growing up. Dan and I shared a love for sharks and rays, the Titanic, and a bunch of other random subjects. I would have texted him to relay that I bought Ty the book from our childhood. It could have sparked a conversation between Dan and my boy.
But Dan is dead, and that conversation will never happen.
People mean so well.
Losing Dan didn’t equip me with an arsenal of comforting words. I’m really not any nicer of a person, and I’m especially not any better or stronger. I just learned how to sit with people in their pain instead of trying to fix it.
Here’s a semi-decent guide to how to respond or talk with someone who has lost a loved one to suicide:
- If you feel the need to rescue the person from their feelings because you are feeling uncomfortable…..Resist the urge. Don’t talk. Be silent. You can’t fix this. You can’t fix the pain. If you have to talk, offer a memory of the person. Sit with us. If it’s via digital communication, offer sympathy or say “I know that this won’t help anything, but I’m so sorry.” Send food or flowers instead. Donate to the foundation of their request. Physical gestures make a world of difference when words fail.
- If you feel like some word or phrase or scripture that you heard or saw will magically lift the person out of the shadows of pain and sorrow….don’t talk. Keep it to yourself. This pain is not the kind that runs out one day. This isn’t something that you “get over”. Be silent. Hug them. Say “I’m so sorry. I miss them too.” Offer a memory. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe some people like quotes or inspiration. Maybe it helps them. It doesn’t help me. I too can look up inspirational quotes if I wanted to hear them. I don’t. I want Dan.
- Don’t try to overcompensate or correct what you think the person has heard before from other people.
I had a neighbor who meant really well tell me “Well, I don’t believe that people who commit suicide will go to hell!” Yeah, same. Thanks for sharing. Literally nobody has told me that they think my brother is in hell. With the exception of an insensitive relative who felt the need to share that they researched for hours to ensure that Dan didn’t go to hell, people have been nothing but kind. By the way, if you have heard differently about your loved one, I’m so sorry that people can’t keep their mouths shut.
- Don’t ask me how I’m “really feeling”. If you know, you know. I had someone who meant really well at the funeral ask me over and over again “But how are you really feeling right now?” It felt like they were expecting me to suddenly start bawling and rush into their arms for comfort so they could soothe me. Don’t pry. If I want for you to know, I’ll tell you. If I trust you, you’ll know. And in the moment that they asked, I felt fine. No, really. I was at my brother’s funeral and wanted to get it over with. But I genuinely felt fine. Until my kids had to go put their pictures in the casket. Then I wasn’t okay until I was again. Again, if you know you know.
- “I know how you feel.”
The key issue with the above sentence is the word “you”. No, you don’t know how it feels to be them or to go through what they are going through. Nobody knows but that person (someone in the back is yelling “And Jesus!”) Fine, we’ll include him too. I don’t know what it’s like to be my siblings even though we all lost the same brother. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a son, like my parents did. I am a different person who had different experiences with Dan. So no. I don’t know how they feel. I don’t pretend to.
If you have lost someone close to you, try something like “I remember losing my _____. It sucked. Everyone’s experience is different, but I’m so sorry for your loss.”
- If you didn’t lose someone close to you, there’s seriously no need to bring up the death of a random relative, classmate, neighbor who died in the same or similar way. Don’t bring up the gory details of how they died either. It’s gross and irrelevant. Like, your second cousin or random colleague hanging themselves in a closet isn’t relevant to another person’s overdosing or gunshot. It makes it sound like you’re just sharing some story that you heard to try and not be left out of the club. We know that suicide is common. It doesn’t mean that you lost someone whom you loved very dearly in a terrible way or can relate to how we are feeling. The details of the death really don’t matter to us that much, especially if we didn’t volunteer ours in advance.
People’s lives are not a true crime episode for you to dissect or speculate about. Personally, I hate true crime, CSI crap, and horror movies for this reason. As someone whose loved one exited their residence in a body bag, I would be pissed if someone were to sprinkle that across a news story or show images or dig for details just to tittle someone’s “this is so interesting” fancy. Are you a terrible person for watching or listening to that stuff? Meh, probably not. I just don’t understand the interest in wanting to know the horrible details about the worst day of a family’s life.
I’ve never met anyone who has lost a close loved one to suicide who is interested in prying about the details of how someone died. As far as I know, most of us don’t care. The fact that our loved one was in the headspace that hurt enough to kill themselves is bad enough. The person died. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, you don’t need to ask.
- Please please pleeeease don’t compare or bring up losing grandparents to old-age or illness. Maybe if they died of suicide, I can see it being relevant. It doesn’t mean that losing them didn’t hurt; it is just not in the same camp as losing an immediate family member. I get that you’re trying to volunteer something in the conversation…but just don’t. Losing your elderly grandparent to pneumonia or cancer is not really comparable to losing a loved one to suicide.
- Don’t tell the person what was going through their loved one’s minds when they died. Don’t try and explain what happened. You have no idea. I had a friend who tried to lecture me on what goes through the mind of a suicidal person before they die after I haphazardly said “It sucks that he didn’t hang on longer.”
He felt the need to “enlighten me” on what Dan was thinking and why he left. Like really? Really? You’re telling me?! You’re sitting here in front of me, alive, trying to tell me this? Did you talk to him every day for five years? Do you know how he spent his last day? Do you even realize that I regularly engage in the same dance with death several times a month if I’m not properly medicated? Maybe I shouldn’t get offended so easily. Maybe I should let that roll off my shoulder and realize that he meant really well.
- “Don’t be sad! Remember the happy times!”
Do you have any idea how lonely it is to lose your childhood? I’ll remember something dumb that we did or funny and want to reach out, but the person on the other end of that line is dead and never picking up again. Sharing the memory is what sweetens the memory. They were something to share with each other as we got older. I’ll never know what he looks like as an old man.
Dan would remember “On this day 8 years ago, I jammed my thumb closing a bathroom door” or “10 years ago is when Mom and Dad had to drive me to the ER cuz I stepped on a toothpick. Lolz” Weird stuff like that. Sometimes the memories were more bitter. “It’s been four years since I called to say I was coming home from my mission.”
The person who I struggled through childhood and my teen years is gone. There is no one to link memories with. There’s no one to share the “older kid” burden with. There’s no one to bounce ideas off of. No one to react like he would. He’s gone.
- “He wouldn’t want you to be sad!”
Yeah, well he lost the option of having any say on January 22, 2021. I reread his obituary recently and chuckled upon realizing that he would have hated about 85% of it. He royally despised hearing himself described as “talented”, “gifted”, or anything that would have drawn attention to his abilities which were pretty cool! That’s what you get when your mom has to write your obituary, dumbass. I love saying such wonderful, glowing things about him because I know it’s making him roll in his grave. I love using him as an example of “People who tried their hardest and still could not feel the love of God” in Sunday School. It brings me joy knowing that I get to embarrass him while he allegedly gets to watch and cringe.
- “He’s still there! He’s there in spirit! You just can’t see him!”
Look, you know it’s not the same thing. You’re not making me feel any better by telling me that I shouldn’t be sad because he’s obviously there even though I can’t see, hear, or even feel him there. He’s not in the photos. I can’t hear him laugh or react. For all intents and purposes of the event, he’s not there anymore.
- “He’s still watching out for you all of the time!”
I’m glad that you think so. I’ll talk to the air (at him) in the car every few months (usually while blasting Iron Maiden).
“Hey Dan. There will be two new nieces born this summer. Oh, and another was born last week. You’re going to miss both. Thanks a lot for not sticking around.”
Last one….cuz Easter.
- “You’ll see him again someday!”
You don’t tell this to military wives or husbands when their spouse leaves on deployment because it’s obviously dismissive. Telling me that I’ll see my brother at some unspecified point in time that you can’t actually even prove other than with your “personal experiences” or “feelings” doesn’t make me feel better at all. Jesus didn’t tell Mary and Martha “Lolz. Chill…I’ll get Lazarus out in like an hour. Now where’s he at?” He wept with them.
Send food or flowers. Donate to the cause. Listen to what they’re saying. Be humble.
Happy Easter, Dan.
None Given. None Taken. 