Friday's Random Thoughts - A Letter to the Universe

“It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for that long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.” ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Dear Universe,

Things have been tough for me the past several years. I'm sure you know this since you have been so busy dropping steaming piles of dog poop on my front porch, setting them on fire, and running away. Hardy har har. You're hilarious. 

I thank you for those piles. I have learned a lot putting out flames and cleaning up messes. 

Unfortunately, I have gotten into a habit of waiting for you to deliver something great to me to make up for all the crap. 

I suspect a lot of people do this. It's a pretty common tactic to deal with daily life. We like to believe in balance. Something horribly bad happens. We want to believe that something amazing will happen to make the bad thing seem like it happened for a reason. 

SHOW ME THE REASON. 

Yes, I'm yelling at you. Don't get all offended. I know you can take it. You are notoriously indifferent. You're like that hot guy with whom we keep sleeping and from whom we accept phone calls and texts even though we know he is the absolute worst, most selfish jerk on the planet. 

Universe, is it that you're just not that into me? 

The other day I was telling Tina about a scene in The Pursuit of Happyness, the Will Smith movie about a real man who went from homelessness to huge success. She said she hadn't seen it, because she knew it might be too much to take. 

"Oh yeah, it's definitely 'misfortune porn,'" I said. 

Misfortune porn is a movie in which the main character just keeps getting screwed nonstop until the very end. Then the main character gets his or her reward. 

The scene I was talking about was when Will Smith goes to his friend to ask that he repay the money Will loaned him. The friend doesn't have it and Will yells at him. It's a small amount, maybe $8. I can't remember. It is an amount so small that there are thousands of people in this world who would say, "What's the big deal?" 

Tina works for a company that often sends out checks to folks. She sometimes gets frantic phone calls from people wondering where their checks are. Some of those checks are for $42. 

Yesterday, on Facebook, a friend posted an update about how a new set of tires for some ridiculous car would cost $17,000, but if you can afford this car, a $1.2 million vehicle, then it would barely be worth your time to bend over and pick up $20,000 if you dropped it. 

That's hard to imagine. 

It's interesting how perspective changes as income does. 

I once watched an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show during which Oprah expressed shock that a guest on the show didn't change her bedsheets every day. EVERY DAY. That is the shock of someone who obviously employs household staff and does not change or launder her own sheets. That is the shock of someone whose perspective has changed. 

I don't know what my point is other than that $20,000 is a lot of money. $42 is a lot of money. $8 can be the difference between eating a meal that night or going to bed hungry. And changing your bedsheets every day is ridiculous. 

There are a lot of people who think they have more money than other people because they deserve it, that the universe is rewarding them for how good they are. 

Incidentally, I believe this fallacy is the fire that fuels much of America's hatred for its poor. I believe this is why Donald Trump has a platform for his disgusting point of view while so many others are silenced. I believe this is why there is a such a snide attitude toward people who struggle financially. It makes me sad, not for the poverty-stricken, but for the people who are so full of hate for their fellow man. I bet all that hate gives them heartburn. They should try chewing on some perspective. 

This belief that the universe rewards and punishes based on goodness is what fuels the mistaken opinion that a victim was "asking for it," that a person has "gotten what was coming to him." 

This widespread belief that the universe rewards and punishes us justly is proof that most of us haven't learned much in our short time on this planet. 

It's interesting how perspective changes as circumstances do. 

The problem with looking to the universe for a reason is that, if you aren't being rewarded in some manner, you start to wonder what you are doing wrong, what you are failing to learn. 

This can lead a person to believe she is being punished. Then she must question why. She will do this at night when her defenses are down. 

Looking for a reason, waiting for it to be revealed in some dramatic flourish, might work for some people, but it is not healthy for me. I have learned this much at least. 

I have also realized that I am unnecessarily cruel to myself. 

Yesterday evening, I worked out for the first time in two months. That two-month span is the longest I have gone without working out in more than four years. I couldn't tell you why I stopped. One day, I didn't want to do it and then I kept not wanting to do it. I didn't even make excuses. I only said to myself, "No, I don't want to." 

So, when I worked out last night, I should have been happy with myself for doing so. I should have given myself a pat on the back. Instead, I kept thinking how much I hated myself for getting out of shape, for gasping during the workout, for having to chug water every few minutes. 

I am constantly stunned by the awful things I will say to myself, things I would never say to or believe about another person. 

Tomorrow is the 14th Annual International Survivors of Suicide Day. This is not about people who have survived suicide attempts. It is for those who have survived a loss by suicide. They call it "a day of healing for bereavement after suicide." 

Sometimes I wonder if I should stop writing about this, as if my time should be up on trying to figure out what the fuck just happened here. 

That's how it feels. There is no better way to express it. It happened. Days and years can go by, and there is still part of me that is standing in my garage thinking, "What the fuck just happened here?" 

Sometimes I have to physically shake my head, to attempt to shake off these memories that haunt me. 

God, I hate that kind of talk. Memories that haunt me. Blech. Shut the fuck up, Amy. 

The term "suicide survivor" seems odd and not quite right for those left behind. When someone dies in a car crash, his family is not referred to as car crash survivors. But I guess there is no other way to say it really. 

And it is, no doubt, a work of survival. On a daily basis, you must find a way to breath when the question of why, when the searching for a reason, threatens to drown you in its salty depths. 

The reason why will never be enough, no matter what it is. That is the problem. I have read enough from other survivors to know that some of them are in pain because the person left a note and some of them are in pain because there was no note. Some of them are in pain because the reason is obvious. Some of them are in pain because they cannot figure out the reason. 

(Maybe the reason is lack of reason.) 

Charles left a suicide note. Not many people know that, actually. The police didn't find it. It was on the kitchen counter. Even when the cleaning crew came in, even when a friend of mine followed behind to clean again, it was not discovered. They might have seen it, but they simply did not recognize it for what it was. 

When I came back to my house after more than a week away, I went through a stack of papers someone had cleaned off the kitchen counter. One of them was the receipt from Kate's school registration. 

It was no wonder no one noticed the note on it. 

It was only two short lines at the bottom of the print-out. It was written in what I always called Charles's "rock-star handwriting" because his signature was an illegible autograph scrawled in haste.

Maybe it was only right that a mustached man in a uniform didn't find it. Charles meant for me to see it, much like everything else that happened that night. 

I called the detective who'd come the night Charles died and told him about the note. He came by the house to pick it up. He asked how I was, if everyone had been kind to me at the funeral. Yes, of course, I told him. 

"It's not always that way," he said. 

He took the note back to the station to make a copy. He kept the original. He said this was in case anyone ever questioned the circumstances of Charles's death. 

Can you imagine this, that your life might unfold (unravel?) in such a way that someone could conjure up this  maybe, this possibly, this what if? 

What the fuck just happened here?

What am I to do with this note? Look to it for answers? Memorize it? Tuck it away in a box? 

The reason is lack of perspective. 

I seek perspective. I crave it. I fight daily for it. 

After I worked out and berated myself for my oh-so-many failings, I texted Tina and told her that it is clear to me that I got lost somewhere along the way since 2009. I can handle this, I said to myself and to those who love me. But then I fell in a sinkhole of my own disappointment.

I catch myself wishing to be the person I was before, working it over in my mind how I can get there again. I find myself listing silly things about the me of before: I ate oatmeal for breakfast every day. I drank Diet Coke. I ate a half a turkey sandwich for lunch almost every day. I worked out every afternoon at 4:30. I did yoga. What if I did all those things again? Could I go back to being the person who, let's face it, I have romanticized into some "golden days" version of who I really was.

Now I tell myself this: I cannot keep sitting around waiting for the universe to bring me some great thing that will make it all seem OK. I cannot keep wallowing in my disappointment. 

"We're going to have to take matters into our own hands," I told Tina.

Do you hear me?

I am determined to start moving again.

I am determined to be kinder to myself.

I am determined to stop focusing on my self-perceived failures. 

I am determined to have perspective. 

I am determined to see the greatness and beauty that surrounds me every day. 

I am determined to be grateful every day for all I have that money could never buy. 

What I believe I must do in the process is release my tight grip on the book I have written and what I see as its failure to matter. I have attached too much significance to it, as if it will be the way I redeem myself for failing to save someone from his own destruction. 

I know enough to know that I could not save him. I don't seem to know enough yet to feel that I could not save him. 

I must attempt to, as the wonderful Todd Childs likes to say, "Give that shit to Jesus." 

There is a balance between feeling like someone who is giving up and someone who is letting go, and I am determined to find it.

I am not giving up on my book. I must only give up the idea that the monetary value of something I have written is indicative of the value of my life, of my worth as a person, or that it is the trick to earning forgiveness for myself.

This is how one survives, I think.

On days of bereavement.

On days of healing.

On days when the sun is shining and the fall color outside my window is so stunning that it makes me want to cry. 

"I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

That is what he wrote. 

That is all. 

It is an answer. It is a truth. 

It is why I write and write and write and never come to the end, to the grand and glorious reckoning I so foolishly desire. 

I have written thousands upon thousands of words, and it occurs to me again and again that all I have written is only another way of saying, "I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

As the leaves fall from the trees, I can see above and beyond the houses across the street from me. I can see the wide expanse of peaks and valleys that is invisible to me when everything is in bloom. 

I can see so clearly the gorgeousness that happens when things end, when the ending is really only something beginning again. 

I cry and rant and lock myself in the prison of asking why. 

But then I shake it off. I look outside. I fight for my own freedom. I keep moving. I attempt to accept with gratitude what the universe brings me. 

I begin again. 

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” ― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler

Survivors

International Survivors of Suicide Day
On Saturday, November 17, survivors of suicide loss gather together in locations around the world to feel a sense of community, to promote healing, and to connect with others like them.

For more information or to find a gathering near you, click here to visit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention website.

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). 

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Friday's Random Thoughts - Pathetic Confessions Edition

Confession: This morning I dreamt that Nathan Fillion was my boyfriend. And I kept thinking, "I cannot believe this nice, good looking, tall man is my boyfriend!"

Then the clock radio came on and woke me up and the folks at NPR were making a bad pun about putting on boots and wading into the pledge pool.

I have never been so disappointed at 6 in the morning in my entire life.


Confession: I did not watch the entire presidential debate the other night because my mother called halfway through and I burst into tears. Sometimes your mom calls just when you need to act like a big baby.

I think the gist of my refrain to her was, "I'm just so disappointed."


The following day, in the course of my work for one of my three jobs, I ended up on the phone with a woman who told me about some major health issues she has. I'm going to be vague on the details here, but she is my age and most of us can only imagine what it has been like for her to go through three major life-threatening events. She told me about how she was trying to do something positive for herself, her husband by her side to help her, but it just hadn't worked out.

Then she burst into tears. (As I told a friend yesterday, sometimes a girl just needs a good cry.)

After a few minutes, she started apologizing to me. I said, "Do not apologize. I do not want you to apologize to me. You're disappointed! It's completely understandable. You wanted something good to come out of this and you're disappointed. So you can cry to me all day if it helps."


In the past, I might have called this a God moment. I might have bought into a somewhat narcissistic notion that God was trying to send me a message about being grateful for my health and for all the wonderful things I have.

I don't know that I believe in that sort of thing anymore. It's something I may write about someday, this journey of faith or lack thereof, when I figure out what I want to say about it.

For now, I know that I do believe in our human ability to open our eyes and see what is around us. I believe in listening. More than ever I believe that we could improve our lives and the world if we simply listened to others. Listen. Learn. Love one another.


I don't really have the answers, though. The truth is that when I consider all the people in the world who are disappointed, who need to cry, I can become very disheartened and cynical. I wonder what the point is.

One day, Tina sent me an email about how she'd just seen a woman sitting in a car in the grocery store parking lot and the woman was sobbing.

"There's just so much pain in the world," Tina wrote.


Tina and I email each other almost every day about whatever is going on. We bitch. We make jokes. We send crock pot recipes. Tina sends me songs. I send her names of books. In fact, I'm taking a stack of books to her this weekend. Taking books to Tina is one of my favorite things.

Most importantly, Tina and I listen to one another.


Lately, I've been thinking about the trick to accepting disappointment without allowing it to steal your hope. (In my ongoing inner dialogue, this is where I consider hope's connection to faith. This is where I consider my God questions.)

Hope is a beautiful and powerful thing. It is a joyful thing. It is light against the darkness.

Sometimes it slips away and you're left wondering how the hell you're supposed to find your way in a world that is so full of pain.


Confession: I have not written a letter to a literary agent in six months.

I keep saying that I am only taking a break from the cycle of hope and disappointment. I have to say this so it won't feel like I'm giving up.


Confession: Having Nathan Fillion as my boyfriend is the closest I've come to considering the idea of having a boyfriend in more than three years.

I keep saying that I am only taking a break from the cycle of hope and disappointment. I have to say this so it won't feel like I'm giving up.


Confession: My job at the Phone Call Factory™ makes me feel like a loser. This is unfair to the numerous, amazing coworkers I have. But they are all 15 years or more younger than me so I hope they understand. They're just starting out. I am nearly 40 and have fallen behind. That's what it feels like anyway. A coworker came in the other day and said she saw a photo of me in the magazine I used to work for, in a story where I spent a week at a well-known fitness retreat. She said, "I showed everyone around and said, 'I know her! I know her!'" I wanted to cry a little.

Tina and my mother both have promised to slap me this weekend, Ouiser Boudreaux-style, to snap me out of my little cry-baby ego-fest. Because that's what it is: me and my ego having a little disappointment party up in here. I have cognitive dissonance in that I believe I am worthwhile and talented and kind, while I also believe I am a loser and untalented and a bitch. Actually, all these things could be true at the same time, couldn't they?

Confession: Sometimes I blame Charles.

Confession: Sometimes I wish he was alive so I could yell at him.

Confession: Sometimes I think about how dark it must have been for him at the end and it makes me more determined to shine some fucking light on all the things that threaten my hope or the hope of those I love.

Confession: I curse too much. But you already knew that.


Tomorrow, we're going to walk to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I am in complete love with everyone who has donated and everyone who is participating and everyone who has supported me and Kate and Jacob through kind words and encouragement. This matters. This world is full of pain but it's full of all of us, too. And we all listen and love and learn.

And we laugh a lot.

Confession: That's my favorite part.


My mom ordered T-shirts for us to wear during the walk. She called a few weeks ago and said, "I have an idea that we should put on it the words to the song Charles used to sing to wake everyone up."

So in the morning we'll get up, put on our shirts and we'll walk.

Confession: I think that's a pretty damn good thing.

It's the sort of thing that gives me hope.





Do Your Part
If you'd like to join the Shreveport Out of the Darkness walk or make a donation, visit this Web site. 

If you'd like to participate in the Birmingham walk on November 4, go here.

To find events across the country, go here.

Whatever you do, get up. Get up. The sun is up.

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T.Hanks to Everyone Who Donated

This weekend, we'll be walking to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

I am so grateful to everyone who has donated to the cause this year. Thank you for your support. I can't truly express my gratitude without hugs and kisses and a dance routine, so here is some dancing by T.Hanks just for you.




Related links:
Out of the Darkness

A Life Well-Laughed

Friday's Random Thoughts

Zombies Come With Trigger Warnings

An Enormous Green Rage Monster

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Advice in a Time of Loss

Two days ago a friend reached out to me for advice on talking to her child about suicide. A friend, the mother of one of her son's classmates, died this week.

My friend was in shock and reeling. It's the kind of death that leaves too many unanswered questions, regrets, anger.

It will leave so many people in nearly unbearable pain. My heart aches for them, because I know that this is only the beginning. In fact, the beginning is almost easy compared to the rest, because your body and mind go into shock. It is a protection that doesn't last long, but while it does you can do what must be done. You can follow the steps that we, as a society, have chosen to follow when confronted with death. Visitations and funerals and easy dinners in casserole dishes.

Sometimes I feel as if I am someone waking up from a long coma. And maybe that's something I would say to people: Stay still for a bit. Breathe in and out.

My heart hurts for everyone who has to go through this.

My heart hurts when people say, "How could she do this to her children?" or "I would never do this to my children."

I need people to stop saying that. I don't just mean that I want it or it would be nice. I need it. I need it like a heart needs to beat and lungs need air.

So this is always my first piece of advice: Don't say those things.

I know you want to and I understand it. Of course, I do. But here is what I know for a fact: This statement only tells those children and the world that their parent didn't love them enough. And that is simply not true. It tells the child that if his father had only loved him enough, he would have stayed alive. This statement makes the child believe that he was not enough. Imagine how children blame themselves for their parents' divorces and how much that hurts them. Now imagine what they might do when you say, "I would never..." and they take on the weight of blame for their own parent's death.

My ex-husband loved his children with all his heart. He once posted a photo album online titled "My Life" and it was all photos of our two children. When he wasn't with them, he called them every single day to say, "I love you." He never once forgot.

So you can think it. Of course, you will think it. In private, in the dark, at night when the lights are out and you are wondering how this could happen. You will need a way to reassure yourself that this could never happen to you. And that statement - I would never - does the job. Hang onto it.

But it isn't really true.

In the years since Charles's death, I have been to the depths of my spirit. I have struggled with depression. During a really bad patch, I thought these words every single day: "I could kill myself." I would push it away, but it was there, this knowledge of something that might end my pain. I'm not really sure how I got through it. I think the line between those of us who make it and those who don't is much thinner than any of us want to believe.

That's how depression works. It lies to you. It whispers in your ear. It tells you that the world and everyone you love and know would be better off without you. It tells you that this pain will never go away. It tells you that life could go on for everyone else and that you could just rest. Because you are exhausted. You are emotionally bereft. You are lost in a darkness so black and unending that there is no "light at the end of the tunnel."

You can't just snap out of it. (More advice: Don't say that to someone who is struggling.) There is no perspective. (More advice: Don't say, "It could be worse." When you tell someone that their problem isn't that bad, that person will only feel worse for being so unbearably upset over something that's "not that bad.")

There is no thinking straight.

And so this is the other thing I share with people. When you talk to your children about someone's death by suicide, you must tell them that the person was ill. Because they were.

No one seems to want to talk about mental illness but it is no less important an issue and no less dangerous to the body than cancer.

When I told my children that their father had died - and please have no doubt that this was the hardest thing I have ever had to do - I told them that Daddy wasn't thinking straight. He was sick in his head and he was in pain. I said to them that he never would have done this if he had been in his right mind.

If you stop for a moment and think about it, you will know this is true. And you can find a way to explain it to children in this way. Your friend's mommy was in pain. She was lost. She was sick. Sometimes people make a decision that they never would have made otherwise.

I definitely understand the anger that comes when something like this happens. I spent so many nights wanting to scream at Charles. I would drive alone and, at the top of my lungs, I would yell, "Fuck you." Sometimes I would whisper it. Sometimes it still comes back at me, like a charging bull.

Speak about happy times to the children of those who die by suicide. Share your good memories. One of my favorite things is to suddenly be reminded of a funny story about Charles and to share it with my kids. It can be as small as Ice Ice Baby coming on the iPod and us laughing about how their dad used to dance to it, poorly and without rhythm.

It is with these stories that, while you cannot keep your lost friend alive, you can keep the LOVE of that friend alive. You can show that child that his or her parent was important and cherished.

Even when he was lost in a forest so dark it swallowed all hope, your parent never stopped loving you.

And if your child wants to talk about the sadness, let them. Take them to counseling and let them know that they can go back whenever they want to talk about things. Go to counseling yourself and say all the things out loud that you have been whispering to yourself at night. Let your counselor tell you that the night is full of lies. Believe her.

Christopher Hitchens once wrote of Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos, a series of etchings that included one "where a man in defenseless slumber is hag-ridden by bats, owls, and other haunters of the darkness." El sueno de la razon produce monstrous. "The sleep of reason brings forth monsters."

You must shine a light on the dark things that will attack you at night when your defenses are down.

Seek out friends who will listen. Do your own fair share of listening, too.

I try not to focus too much on all the things Charles is missing and will miss, but that doesn't mean the truth of it, the charging bull, doesn't knock me off my feet sometimes. That doesn't mean I don't wish every day that I could change the past. 

But mostly I think of Charles with love and forgiveness and understanding. And part of why I must do that is because I need kind of desperately to offer myself those same things. 

So that's my other piece of advice I give people when they ask. Don't look for ways to blame each other for what has happened. 

Forgive the person you have lost because you must do this in order to forgive yourself.

Love one another.

If you are in Shreveport October 20, please join us for the Out of the Darkness Walk to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. You don't need money or to train for a 5k. Click here to join our team. 

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Out of the Darkness

2009

This fall, cities across America will host Out of the Darkness Community Walks to raise funds and awareness for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s research and education programs, increasing national awareness about depression and suicide, and assisting survivors of suicide loss.

I hope you'll think about joining us, wherever you live, to walk in memory of those we have lost and in an effort to help other families avoid this type of devastating loss.

Last year, we walked in Birmingham (read about our experience here: A Life Well-Laughed), but this year we'll travel to Shreveport to walk in the city where Charles was born and raised and where so many of his beloved friends and family still live.

I hope you'll join our team. Register here for the walk, to be held at 9 am October 20 at LSU-Shreveport. Visit our team page, For Charles, to join or donate.

Last year, I wrote an essay about why we were walking. I thought I'd share it again here. Thanks so much to all our family and friends for their support and love.

For Charles

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
- W.S. Merwin

When I was a newspaper reporter ten years ago, I interviewed an elderly gentleman whose wife had passed away from Alzheimer’s. We met at a community center and he invited me to sit down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, in gray metal folding chairs at a long table. He opened a thick photo album and slid it along the table so that it rested between us, one page in front of him, the other in front of me.

The album held a series of photographs slid into place behind protective plastic. He’d put it together after his wife’s death and he’d placed the pictures in order, beginning with snapshots from the time when they first met.

His wife was lovely in that way that all people are in photos from their youth. She had light hair that lay in soft waves around her face. She had a generous and wide smile. There is something magical about the passage of time that makes us forget to criticize and point out imperfections. I challenge you to pull out old photos of your grandparents or your parents. Just look at them. They were the most beautiful people on earth, weren’t they? You can see it, can’t you? The way we twist ourselves up into knots over our flaws, our fat thighs and our big noses and our frizzy hair. Yet, these things are magically invisible when you look at the past. Is it perhaps because they were never real to begin with?

For several pages, the images of the man’s wife were full of life and spirit, her eyes bright. Next to a Christmas tree. Beside a brand new car. Surrounded by children. She grew older. Wrinkles appeared around her eyes. But you could still see them, the eyes of the happy girl from the early pages of the album.

Eventually, her smile disappeared. Her eyes were not joyful but merely confused as though she was asking a question that no one could answer. She became lost, somewhere in the maze of her mind, and her eyes were empty.

The last photo was of her sitting in an armchair and the image itself was fuzzy as though the camera could not focus anymore either.

“Can you see?” he asked me. “Do you see how she faded away?”

He needed to tell his story so that someone else could see what he saw. Lately, I have begun to wonder if this is what we humans, so screwed up and breathtakingly beautiful, need most of all. To be heard. Certainly we need love but love is more than a noun. Love is a verb. It is an action word. That act is, in large part, listening.

2008

When Charles, my ex-husband and the father of my two children, committed suicide two years ago, maybe he was only trying to get someone (me) to listen. We look for answers, we who are left behind, and we compile albums full of images from the past. The albums reside on shelves in our minds and they are thick and heavy and water-logged (it rains a lot in here). The shelves are built along twisting pathways in the brains’ labyrinth of cells and neurons. The shelves sag beneath the weight of messages that have yet to be decoded.

It’s so fitting that a labyrinth, that structure from Greek mythology, looks like something you might draw if someone handed you a sharpened pencil and a piece of paper and asked you to draw a brain. Daedalus built the maze for King Minos to house the Minotaur, a creature that was half-man and half-bull and to whom seven young men and seven young women were sacrificed every nine years. Even Daedalus couldn’t find his way out of the structure he’d designed without a clue, a long length of thread provided by Ariadne that would lead him out again.

When you go wandering through the labyrinth of your memories, you need something to tether you to the world beyond yourself. You need something to pull you out again before the Minotaur finds you. He’s in there waiting, pacing the curving paths, his breath so hot and heavy that you can feel it on your bare skin as you run. His name is Regret. His name is Guilt. His name is Anger. He’ll trap you inside if you let him.

After Charles died, I thought of the elderly man and his photo album. He’d lost his wife long before she died. “Do you see her here in this picture? See how she wandered away?” So I looked at photos of Charles to see if he had started to fade away, too. When had it happened? I couldn’t see it. His smile was wide and bright in the photos from the summer of 2009 before his death on August 3. He had shaved his head and it was smooth and he had grown out his red beard and it was scruffy. His shoulders were broad, his arms muscular.

My memories, though, are like that old man’s photo album. I flipped through them identifying the places where Charles became less and less himself, when the Minotaur had him in its grasp.
See, I lost him long before he died, too. I lost him to drugs. I lost him to divorce. When he had no place else to go, I let him stay in my house and yet I can see now that he was no longer really there.

Afterward, I lost myself for a time. I felt the Minotaur’s hot breath on my neck.

“It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.” Sally Kempton, a former journalist who now teaches meditation, said this. It is one of those things that is TRUE in all capital letters. I keep it written on a list of things that I do not have to question. These things are on a piece of paper in an album on a shelf in my head. Above this Truth Shelf is a sign that reminds me of the truest thing: This too shall pass.

I am like that old man. I want to take my album off the shelf and show it to you.

Here we are when our son is born. He is 9 lbs, 10 ozs. He is the whole world cradled in our arms. Can you see him? It is 13 years before Charles’s death. Here we are when our daughter is born. She is petite and soft. She is the whole world cradled in our arms. See how full of life she is? It is 9 years before Charles’s death.

Here’s an image of me and Charles in my kitchen watching the crotchety old lady next door throw leaves and sticks from her yard into mine. Here’s us waiting for her to disappear into her house and then we’re running outside in the dark, picking up huge armloads of dried leaves and dumping them over the fence back into her yard. Here’s us running inside and laughing so hard we are clutching our sides and gasping for breath. Do you see us? It is 10 months before Charles’s death.

I strive each day to give these happy images as much weight as the others, the ones that are at the end of the album. When Charles lost his battle with a monster. When he said he wanted to die and then he did.

I talk about him to our children. Remember how Dad sang this goofy song to wake us up? Remember how Dad always fell asleep in movies? Remember how he called every day and said I love you? You have his nose. You have his eyes. You are beautiful. You have his heart.

I’ve been told more than once that suicide is a taboo subject in this country. The people who have told me this may be right, but they are wrong in assuming that this will stop me from telling my story or looking for others who need to tell theirs. Something is only taboo if we allow it to be. We are silenced only if we agree to be silent.

I need to speak aloud the name of someone I will always love. I need to raise my children in the light of truth, in a place where they have permission to cry and laugh and remember. Where they know that they are heard.

Each day I forgive myself anew for not listening and loving as well as I wish I had. By listening now, I can keep the Minotaur at bay. None of us has to be alone in the maze.

My children and I will walk for someone we love but we also will walk for others. You really don’t have to look too hard for the meaning of life. It is simple and it is this: We are here to love one another. We are here to listen.

We would love for you to walk with us. If you are beside us, we will match our pace to yours. If you have a story you need to tell, we will listen. Here, reach out your hand. Take the end of this thread. Hold fast to it. We can show each other the way out.

Related links:
A Life Well-Laughed
For Charles - Fundraising and Team Page
Why I Gave Up Football
The American - In Which George Clooney Mortifies My Son
Making Peace With Hemingway

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Kate's Thoughts on YouTube

Last night, Kate took my laptop to her room so she could watch YouTube videos and sing along. From the family room, I could hear her singing Kelly Clarkson's  "Mr. Know It All." I could also hear Jacob stomping out of his room and pounding on Kate's door to tell her to turn it down. Some yelling and door slamming ensued.

After that, Kate turned it down, but I know now that she switched to watching people perform covers of Adele's Rolling in the Deep. I know because she came out to talk to me about the comments posted beneath one of the videos.

"Why do they even put a 'Dislike' button on here? People hit it just to be mean," she said. "Why are people so mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't even read those comments. They're awful. You shouldn't read them."

"This girl is overweight and people are saying ugly things."

Frankly, YouTube comments make me wish someone would nuke humanity.

Kate said, "But some people say nice things. See, here's a nice one." Kate read a couple of comments out loud.

Kate is discovering what most of us already know: anonymous Internet comments bring out the worst in people.

I took the opportunity to talk to her about being kind, about how important it is not to make fun of people for being different. Of course, she already knows these things.

While she sat on the sofa talking to me about the comments, I thought about how beautiful she is, how she's growing into this gorgeous young woman. I thought about how grateful I am that she doesn't have to deal with a disability or obesity or some other physical trait that might invite hateful comments from anonymous trolls online or middle-school jerks at her school.

I'm grateful that she recognizes cruelty and that it prompts her to speak out with righteous indignation.

This morning, Kate was searching through the laundry basket looking for a shirt to wear. She pulled out a long-sleeved top she'd gotten for Christmas. "That's cute. Wear that," I said.

"It's not unique, Mom! Today is Wear Something Uniquely You Day. I have to wear something unique to me!"

She stormed off and I yelled at her not to unfold all the damn clothes when she's going through the basket. (We could put our clothes away, but, lately, I seem incapable of completing this chore.)

A few minutes later, Kate came back in my bedroom, dressed for the day, hair brushed, shoes on. She was wearing a gray T-shirt that reads "Out of the Darkness." It's one of the shirts we received last fall from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention after we raised money and walked in memory of her father.

She said what she says every morning: "Bye, Mom! I gotta go. Love you!" Then I said the thing I say every morning: "I love you, too. Have a good day!"

Then Kate left for the bus stop.

Kate's kindness, her great capacity for empathy, her abhorrence of human cruelty and anonymous online bullying make me so proud. Her courage and willingness to be honest about her life and about the loss of her father to suicide inspire me. She is unashamed of the things that make her different, the things that make her "unique" in a sea of sixth-graders wandering the halls of the middle school.

Kate's heart has been broken, that is true, but, in the places where it is healing, it grows stronger every day.



"As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope." -- Ursula K. LeGuin 

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