Easter and Suicide (13 things to say/not say)

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:

1. 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.

2. 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. 

3. 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. 

4. 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. 

5. “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.”

6. 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. 

7. 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.

8. 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. 

9. “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. 

10. “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.

11. “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.

12. “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. 

13. “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. 

Picture of me shamelessly trampling Dan’s boundaries. This was his face when literally anyone tried expressing affection, adoration, etc. This is how I picture him reacting when I talk about him to people. Sucks to suck, MF. </3

3 years since our last Christmas

“So, so you think you can tell

Heaven from hell?” –”Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd

At your funeral, I’d said that you were at peace. Well, a lot has changed for me in the last three years. Time has removed all certainty with the certainty that it passes. 

Maybe this could be called a “faith crisis”. It’s more that I’ve accepted that nothing in life is guaranteed. Fools look for guarantees here for while they’re here. Any promises that religion makes are only applicable to whatever happens after we die. And I don’t live in hopes of a hereafter anymore, Dan. I live for today because it’s all that I have. Religion is for the benefit of my life today; not some shining, hopeful forever away. I looked at the calendar on my phone and for granted that every day this month will be opened.

There’s an expression that’s shared by people who don’t seem to understand that they’re either A. Misquoting scripture. Or B. Don’t seem to understand the implications.

“God won’t give you more than you can handle” is what they say.

Tell that to the orphan in a war-torn country. Tell that to the widow of four small children. Tell that to the prisoner of war or Holocaust survivor. Tell that to those born in a body condemned to either perpetual abstinence and loneliness or fear of damnation. If God really only gave you as much as you could “handle” in this life, then people wouldn’t die by any other means than old age. And even then…is cell death not too much for a mortal to bear? I’d call torture or other methods of death a lot more than what your body can handle. So what’s intended by this misquoted expression? Is it meant to refer to your soul or spirit or whatever dwells inside of you? 

The actual scripture being misreferenced is “watch and pray continually” to avoid being tempted “above that which ye can bear”

I don’t know about you, but that’s not much comfort for me. Anything can still happen to me. Life is only fair because it’s unfair for everyone; some probably more so than others. I hadn’t believed the misquote to begin with, but you took away my safety net, Dan. I used to believe that there was a certain floor on how low a person could fall, or a ceiling on how much a person could hurt. No such thing exists. Tomorrow, all of my loved ones could die in a car accident. It happens. Likely? No. The “unlikely” is what keeps me from laying paralyzed for fear of living. 

People have commented “I can’t imagine how depressing it would be to think that there’s nothing after this life”.

Well, speaking from personal experience…it’s not that much different from belief. 

Why? If I live to be 80, that’s 18,598 more days of being without you. When I die, you’re either there or you’re not. If there’s nothing, then I can stop missing you. It’s still 18,598 days regardless of whatever may await me after death. 

“But what if you live like you’re going to see him again? Won’t that make your life better?”

Having to accept that I’ll live the rest of my life without Dan is a big enough pill to swallow without the burden of faith. If you’re questioning the term “burden” here, please revisit my point above. Even with hope of seeing him again, it’s 18,598 days without him. Time, not faith or hope, decreases that number. 

There’s been so much, Dan. You were supposed to split the burden with me. You were supposed to help with Mom and Dad. I was supposed to call you about them, our siblings, my kids, your kids (you coulda had them too), etc. But you’re not. You dipped early, and I get to shoulder this alone. 

I love bringing you up with people, especially the wonderfully stupid things that you did. Like when you forgot a lunch at your fencing job, so you killed a rabbit and cooked it with a blowtorch. I love bringing you up. Because you can’t stop me. Because I know how much you loathed any kind of attention. Because you wanted to remain anonymous.

Well, you don’t get to stay anonymous anymore. Somehow, by dying early, you made everything about you. We all haul our butts to your gravesite in the biting cold to visit your headstone on holidays.  Instead of going straight home after church to start making December birthday dinners, we stopped by your spot to drop off a small tree. We trudge through the snow or across the cold, dead grass on the day that you left. I bring you up when people claim that there’s a straight-forward method to feeling happy. I use you as a trump card against those who would say that God is a transactional God.

January was a pretty scummy time, ya know…You couldn’t have picked June or July?! I can see you dipping on the Fourth of July just for the “Independence Day” joke. “Freedom at last! Har har har”.  But no. You had to go just three days after Jared’s birthday. He’s turning twenty-two, and you’re not here. He learned to play the guitar, and you can’t accompany him on the bass because you’re. not. here. 

Happy things are still happening, as you knew they would. My life was not destroyed without you. It’s just the little things that really turn the knife. And it doesn’t go away. It just gets consolidated into small packages that jump out of nowhere. 

It’s when I can see you standing in Grandma’s kitchen on Christmas, waving your hands around. I see the big university tower and remember you telling me about your first week of college. It’s standing in the grocery store and overhearing a local student talking to someone on the phone about his finals. It’s seeing a picture of a muskrat or a goose. It’s listening to the Australian Christmas song “Six White Boomers”. It’s knowing that the face that I see in my mind will never age.

The hardest part of putting you in the ground wasn’t kissing your forehead goodbye or watching the casket close on my best friend. It was when my four kids at the time brought forward pictures that they’d colored for you to put in your casket. Took the cake right there. It was tearing at memories that would never happen. I can accept that you left me behind, Dan. I talked with you almost every day for years. I knew that living in your head was torment.  I can accept that I wasn’t enough to stay for. I can forgive you for leaving me. But you left them, Dan. You left my kids behind. 

People like to make statements such as “I’m sure he’s met all of them!” or “I’m sure he’s held them”. Look, if your stance stands, then we’ve all met each other. It is not a source of comfort for me. He will not get to hold my three babies (that will have been born since he died) when they are soft little babies. He won’t take them camping or fishing. He won’t give them nicknames or make them laugh. He won’t tickle or protect them. He wasn’t here for Haven’s first orchestra concert. He won’t be here for graduations. He won’t be a loved one to talk to as they grow. He won’t be at their weddings. Our kids won’t play together. He gets to be a rock in the ground that we visit a few times a year and talk about in passing. 

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be there!”

I can’t even find a picture of him holding Adrik (my 4th). Should I just photoshop the same photo of Dan over-and-over into family photos? Should I put out a plate for him at family gatherings and pretend to wave? Or am I allowed to state how much it hurts that he won’t be part of the experience of family celebrations and heartaches for the remainder of this mortal coil? I’ve learned to live with ambiguity. I’ve learned to cope with uncertainty. I’ve accepted the absence. I’ve accepted that the hereafter is wherever you are after, and I don’t need it anymore. 

So, can you please keep your religious speculations to yourself? They hold no place in my heart as someone who gets to walk this world without my first half. This isn’t a bitterness to “move past” as I come to accept the joy of something that might happen after I die. This is simply life. 

And he did give me hope. It’s the kind of hope from having known so beautifully fractured a mortal; a quiet knowing that wherever he went, even if only into the ground, that he’s better. Despite having been so hurting a human, he’s no longer hurting. I’m not as hard on myself as I once was. I’m no longer skeptical of everyone sharing in that rest; whether with the worms or with the stars.

“So you think you can tell heaven from hell?” 

Hell is not fire or ice. It’s 18,598 days of small things. But so is heaven. 

And I wish you were here.

-Marian

Last picture that I had of him in my phone. So wonderfully unflattering, and he can’t call and yell to make me take it down.