Safety in Numbers

I joined a grief support group for survivors of suicide that I found through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention web site.  In order to preserve the confidentiality of the group, I cannot write about what we discussed.  What I can tell you is that the group was intense, and that I feel a strong connection to these people, these fellow survivors.  Even as I took the elevator up to our first meeting, I remember thinking:  “This can’t really be happening.  My brother isn’t really dead, is he?”  Twelve weeks into this grief, it still doesn’t feel real much of the time.  Which means the truth can still knock the wind out of me on a regular basis.

I like talking to my parents about Mike, even if it’s often the same conversation.  We talk about what was going on in Mike’s life right before he died, and how the irrationality of his decision to end his life is evidence of his mental illness.  “It was the depression that killed him.”  I can’t imagine the grief of losing a child.  What they are going through is at a completely different level than my grief.  If anything happened to my daughter, I don’t think I could survive it.  I am in awe at their strength. 

It seems like I hear about suicide everywhere now.  I have met several people who, like me, are grieving recent suicides of loved ones.  I have heard about a couple of acquaintances that have committed suicide recently.  And I’ve heard about it on the news. (Just today:  Michael Blosil, Andrew Koenig.)  We don’t think about depression as an epidemic, as life or death, but now I see it all around me.

I don’t have the solution for all this depression, anxiety, loneliness, and grief.  If you have a mind that tells you to cure for loneliness is isolation, there is safety in numbers.  Grief is a lonely process, but you don’t need to be alone. 

Time and the Illusion of Control

I have been experiencing a profound shift in how I think about time. Now more than ever I am aware that time is limited and will run out. I am also hyper-aware of the fragility of life, and that time could end at any moment. This awareness has manifested itself in both rational and irrational ways.

Semi-rational: Before this year, whenever I finished reading a book, I would pick up the next book that seemed interesting to me. I have a long list of books I would like to read eventually. Recently I calculated the average number of books I will read per year multiplied by my life expectancy, and realized with great sadness that I will only read a small fraction of the books on my list. So now, instead of reading books at random, I am methodically working my way through the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels. Plan for controlling my reading list: Check.

Irrational: I have to fly to L.A. this week. When I found out about the meeting, my first thought was to try to reschedule to sometime in March. I needed to reschedule so I could get caught up on my life insurance premiums with my next paycheck. I needed to be current with my life insurance before I set foot on an airplane. Because if I fly, I might die. Fortunately I realized how crazy this sounded, so I didn’t ask to reschedule. My fear of flying has intensified since Mike died. I play out in my head what my family would have to go through, similar to what we are still going through with Mike. I pray that my parents will not lose both of their children. I pray that my daughter will not lose her mother. I pray, please, just let me get caught up on my life insurance and pay back the people who have lent me money before something bad happens, so my family and friends won’t think I’m an ass-hole after I'm gone. These are the thoughts that go through my head until the captain turns off the seat belt sign.

Are there people who are at peace with the fact that life will end? I am terrified of death. I do not understand how Mike or anyone else would willingly choose it. I want to live as long as possible. But then, if I am living in fear, how richly am I living?

I have these fears about time partly because I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, partly because I am insane with grief, and partly because I am turning 40 this year. My brain has locked on to the idea that time is running out, and asks: What books do I need to read? What do I need to do to protect my family if something happens? What movies do I need to see? What places do I need to visit? What friends do I need to bring closer into my life? Have I loved enough? Have I done enough? Have I given enough?

Fear of flying is really the fear of having no control. Statistically, rationally, I should be more afraid to drive than to fly. When I drive my car, however, I have the illusion of control. I can plan my reading list for the next ten years, draft a will, or make yet another to do list, and it would only give me the illusion of control. No one controls time, or when it ends. Even Mike did not control that. Letting go of the illusion of control is counterintuitive and antithetical to my impulses. It is frightening and difficult. But even as I scheme new ways to control my dwindling time, I know that letting go is the lesson, the way through the fear. Letting go of the illusion of control is the only way to master time.

Anxiety Interlude

I need to keep my post short this week. My anxiety has been through the roof for the past few days, so I don’t want to feed it any more than necessary. My problems with anxiety are difficult to explain.

My body must be having a delayed reaction to the stress of two months ago. I wondered why am I panicking all of a sudden. But of course I know why. It’s been arriving in bits and pieces since Mike died, and I’m scared that there is more to come.

Remembering Mike

Mike has been gone for two months as of Friday. I thought it would get easier with time, but the grief just shifts around and changes focus. It’s always there, pulsing in the background.

Shortly after Mike died, my friend Stacy, who also lost her brother, gave me some advice. She said, “In the end, you get to choose what someone's life means to you. You get to choose what you keep of them.” Mike asked us in his suicide note not to mourn him. He asked us to celebrate his life.

Right now, it’s hard to think about Mike’s life without thinking about his horrific death. Thinking about him, in the days leading up to his suicide, and thinking about him alone in a vacant lot on that rainy morning in Virginia Beach, is the dark cloud hanging over the beauty of his short life and the joy that he brought to the people around him. I hope that with time I will celebrate more and mourn less.

Here’s how I remember Mike:

Mike was incredibly smart—like crazy genius smart. At some point when we were kids, my parents got our I.Q. test results. They wouldn’t tell us our scores—just that one was higher than the other. I never had any doubt in my mind that Mike was the brilliant one. He didn’t always have the drive that I did, but he was certainly gifted. When he finally found the career that made him happy, as a radiologic technologist, he was a straight-A honor student and helped tutor his classmates.

Mike was an amazing artist and photographer. Before he became a rad tech, he worked as a photojournalist in Iowa, Ohio, and West Virginia. His specialty, however, was as a nature photographer. The waterfall photos in this post and at the top of the page are his.

Mike was a wonderful cook. He worked as a cook while putting himself through school. Some of his specialties were deep-fried turkey, beef and deer jerky, barbecue ribs, and peanut brittle. When he would cook, he would make enough to share with his neighbors and co-workers. I’ll miss his cooking over the holidays.

Mike custom built computers as a hobby. He built a beautiful computer that he left for his best friend Chas. Mike also loved to fish. He used to fish almost every day at the pier in Virginia Beach.

Mike was very sensitive and generous. He would help out a friend in need. He volunteered as a cook at a homeless shelter. He would donate time and money to causes he believed in, even though he lived very modestly himself.

Mike was also clearly very much loved and respected by the people in his life.

Celebrate more. Mourn less.

In A Better Place

At least he is no longer suffering. At least he is at peace now. These are the things we tell ourselves, desperately searching for a silver lining to the dark cloud of Mike’s death. We want to make some sense of it, and find some way to think about it that doesn’t feel like our hearts being ripped out of our chests. So, Mike is at peace now.

I believe that when you die, your spirit is set free. But where it goes, I do not know. As hard as I try, I can’t picture where Mike is now. I can’t picture what Mike is now, or if he is anything at all. It’s not that I’m agnostic, because I’m not. I believe in God with all my heart, and with every fiber of my being. But what happens after death, because I’m still alive, I couldn’t possibly know. And that’s why death terrifies me.

According to the laws of physics, Mike’s energy had to go somewhere. Did it go up into the heavens, or back into the earth? Is he now just a part of the wind, the ocean, the trees, and the dirt? This thought is comforting to some people—death as relief from the bondage of ego, and surrender to the cosmos. When the ego/self ends, what part remains, and where does it go?

I want to believe there is more. I want to believe that life on Earth has purpose, and life after Earth has…something, anything. It seems that Mike’s spirit, the part that was uniquely him, must be somewhere. Is he hanging around here? Is he in a new body? Is he with God? Or does he only live on through the people who knew and loved him?

A few times since he left I have felt his presence. Each time it felt like he was tickling my cheek. I told him I missed him. I told him I loved him. I told him that I would take care of Mom and Dad. I told him I hoped he was at peace.

I asked Dolly where she thought Uncle Mike was now. She answered: “Here.”

She said she sometimes feels him on top of her head. She said, “He tries to talk to me in whatever way he can.” When I asked her what she meant, she said he talks to her through other people. Someone else will be talking, but she’ll hear his voice in her head. “What does he say?” I asked. “He said, ‘I’m sorry I did this.’”

Yesterday my parents had a Mass said for Mike at their church in West Virginia. Because I couldn’t be there with them, I went to Mass with my family here—Dolly, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law and her fiancé, and my nephew—at as close to the same time as possible. At the church I prayed for God to watch over Mike, and truly felt that Mike was somewhere he could be watched.

As for Dolly, she believes that Mike is her guardian angel. She believes he is watching over her.

Twist In My Sobriety

Mike suffered from the disease of alcoholism, though it would be difficult to distinguish it from the disease of depression in his life. He drank to find relief from his depression, and his drinking made him more depressed. In his suicide note to my parents he said drinking was the only thing that brought him relief. I understand this idea. Just as Mike drank to seek refuge from his overwhelming and consuming depression, I used to self-medicate to find relief from OCD. The problem with this kind of thinking is where it ultimately leads. The same thinking that told him that he needed to drink to find relief from his pain also convinced him that it was a good idea to put a bullet through his head.

I got sober 11 years ago today. A few years later, Mike voluntarily admitted himself into an alcohol treatment program. In the weeks leading up to his decision to go to rehab, he and I talked every day. Our relationship was like that—we had sporadic episodes of closeness, followed by long stretches of distance and silence. When he was 19, he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital after a failed suicide attempt. He refused to talk to my parents. Suddenly I became the only person he would talk to. I was reminded of this period when we spent hours on the phone before he went to rehab, talking about recovery. We now had something in common. He spoke in a language I could understand.

I used to think Mike and I were polar opposites. While we tended to agree on music, films, and politics, we had nothing in common in the way we lived our lives. I left home at 16, and he lived with our parents till he was 31. Much of my young adult life I was reckless to a fault, whereas he was risk-averse to a fault. But alcoholic thinking I understood.

When I visited my parents in West Virginia last month, I stumbled across Mike’s journal from rehab. It was in his file cabinet, where he kept the files I needed to settle his financial affairs. I never would have opened it if he were still alive, but since he is gone I wanted to hold on to whatever piece of him that I could. He wrote about powerlessness, and about surrender. He described a universal journey, one that transcends our individual circumstances. We weren’t as different as I’d thought.

I don’t know how long Mike stayed sober. I thought we would continue to share this common bond, celebrate milestones with each other, and keep talking. It did not work out that way. Mike would only let me in when he wanted to, and then he would disappear. And I did the same thing, getting wrapped up with my busy life, too busy to check up on him. I suspect he relapsed a couple of times over the years, based on what my parents have told me. He and I rarely talked about it again. My family thinks he was sober when he went back to school and started his new career over the past few years. We know he relapsed again at some point last year. We suspect he was not sober when he died, although only the toxicology report will tell us for sure.

Tonight I say a prayer for all those who are still suffering. May they find relief without a bottle or a gun.

The Only Solution Is To Move Forward

My eight-year-old daughter Dolly knows her uncle killed himself, but she doesn’t like to talk about it, at least not with me. She was with me when I got the phone call the morning that he died, so there was no time to break the news softly. How could I sugarcoat a suicide even if I’d wanted to? She understands that her uncle died of a disease of the mind, just as another could die of a disease of the body. In the days and weeks that followed, she talked to some of her friends about it, so she wasn’t in denial about what was happening. But whenever I try to talk to her about it, she says that the images it puts in her mind are too scary, so could we please talk about it later, like after Christmas, like after New Years, like in the spring?

Dolly writes songs for her rock band, The Silver Tigers, of which she is the lead singer. Here’s her latest song:

Dying isn’t a solution

The only solution is to move forward

Dying isn’t a solution

The only solution is to move forward

It’s my new earworm—a catchy tune with sage wisdom and after-school special simplicity.

But here’s the sticky part. For some period of time prior to the morning of December 5, 2009, Mike convinced himself, without anyone knowing, that dying was the only solution . Was there something I could have done that could have convinced him otherwise?

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are entering the era of guilt and regret.

Two nights before he died, Thursday, December 3, 2009, Mike called to talk to Dolly. He left two messages on my voicemail while Dolly was at her dance class. In the first message he said that he was having a hard time, and that talking to Dolly might help cheer him up. The second message said that he had hoped to talk to Dolly, but now he was going to bed, so we shouldn’t bother to call back. Virginia is three hours ahead of California. I remember thinking, “poor baby, he sounds so stressed. We’ll have to give him a call this weekend.”

The next day, Friday, December 4, 2009, I planned to send him a text message. As I headed into the office, I was composing something in my head (“hang in there, kid”), but work that day was an insane, adrenaline rush type of day with no break for lunch. I settled two of my cases that day, but never sent the text.

On Saturday, December 5, 2009, Dolly ran her first 5k in Golden Gate Park. As we walked to the park, I said to her, “We have to call your Uncle Mike when we get home because he called for you a couple of days ago.” She wanted to call and tell him about the race. Instead, we received the call from my parents. I was waiting at the finish line of the Lollipop Run (with some ass-hole yelling at me and threatening to sue me because Duncan’s dog was barking too loudly) when I learned that Mike was dead.

If we had called him back on Thursday, would it have made a difference? If I had sent that text or given him a call on Friday, would it have made a difference? I know he had already bought the gun when he called on Thursday. I had no way of knowing that he was calling to say good-bye. Even if I had talked to him, would I have known?

My regret goes beyond that phone call, of course. My brother was depressed and/or suicidal for at least 20 years. I wish I had been a better sister. I could have called him more often. I could have bought him a plane ticket to visit me. I could have invited him to come live with me. I thought there would be time.

Look, I realize these thoughts are self-indulgent. (Hello, it's a blog.) I do understand that his suicide was not about me at all. But I'm writing about suicide survival, and dealing with regret is part of it. I never said grief was rational.

Still, I won't wallow in regret for too long. The only solution is to move forward.

West Virginia, Mountain Mama

I flew to West Virginia to stay with my parents for a while after it happened. I couldn’t wait to see Mom and Dad. There were many people here for me in California, but they weren’t experiencing the grief with me like my family is. In West Virginia, I could immerse myself in the memories and the mourning. I wanted to hold on and never let go.

The first night in West Virginia, I read the letter Mike had left for my parents, which was much longer than the one he left for Dolly and me. It didn’t help make any more sense of what happened. It just made me feel sad. He left notes for his neighbors in shaky handwriting, asking them to help my parents, but in those notes he got my parents’ cell phone number wrong. He was either very upset or very intoxicated. As much as I disagree with his decision to end his life, I hope he was at peace with it at the moment—if being at peace is something someone with suicidal depression could experience. I hope he wasn’t scared at the end.

I learned that Mike had planned his suicide for a while. He bought the gun two days before he died, and had gone to the shooting range several times in the prior two weeks to learn how to shoot a gun. He researched suicide and printed out information for my parents. He typed up several letters and a list of people who could help.

My family assigned me the task of settling Mike’s legal and financial affairs. I was grateful for this job because it gave me something to do for my family when I otherwise felt helpless. Each day I went through Mike’s files, made phone calls, sent off copies of his death certificate to creditors, and determined the next steps in winding up his estate. I found myself awake in the middle of the night studying Virginia probate law to determine whether Mike’s suicide note was a legally valid holographic will, how to get someone appointed as administrator if he died intestate, etc., while having flashbacks to my law school Wills and Trusts course.

Most of the time I was all right, explaining to anonymous voices on the other end of the phone why I was calling to close an account. Other times it would get to me. Before I shut off Mike’s cell phone, for example, I looked through his text messages. There was an unsent message in the drafts folder:

“I am so sorry. I love you all.”

I like to think that he knew better than to send it, and that he left it there for us to find.

My family decided to wait until spring to have a memorial for Mike. It was too overwhelming to pull it together before Christmas, and there was no rush since we had his body cremated. We met with a priest and arranged to have a mass said for Mike on January 30, but the funeral mass won’t be until March or April. We went to the funeral home and picked out an urn—a shiny black metal box with gold specks, which he would have liked. We had an obituary put in the local newspaper. We drove to the cemetery to see if there were spaces in the columbarium. All of these events were surreal. Intellectually I know that we did all of these things. But it doesn’t seem like we did, or that should have had to do these things for another 50 years.

My Heart

Mike bought everyone Christmas presents, which arrived a few days after he died. My present was a silver heart on a black leather cord. I’ve been wearing the necklace each day to remind me of my love for him. It has become a symbol of my mourning. I miss him.

The first day I didn’t wear it was New Year’s Day, a day full of new possibilities, and a day I felt my heart start to open. These are the challenges of the new year: learning when to grieve and when to let go, learning how to honor Mike’s life and what it meant to me, and learning how to resist the impulse to be overprotective and allow myself to be vulnerable to the people around me.

I feel raw and exposed. But grieving openly is better than shutting down.

When I was leaving West Virginia to fly back home, I asked Mom if she and Dad were going to be OK. She said yes, because what choice do we have? “We can’t help him now. We need to keep living. We won’t help him by falling apart, or by drifting apart.”

There is more to say about the journey of these past weeks, but for now I need my strength to venture back into the world, and to continue to live my life.

I have decided to put the necklace in a special box, and to take it out when I want to feel close to Mike. The necklace is too intense to wear every day, but a piece of Mike will always be in my heart. My biggest fear is that he died without knowing how much I loved him. A friend told me that I should talk to him now and tell him all of the things I wish I could say, all of the things I wish I would have said. I hope he can hear me.

"My Brother Killed Himself In Virginia Beach And All I Got Was This Lousy Sweatshirt"

“NO! NO! NO!” That’s what I remember yelling into the phone as my parents told me that Mike was dead. The ground began to open under my feet. I reached for the park bench where I was sitting, afraid of falling in.

The hours that followed were a blur. Duncan and Dolly helped me get out of the park and drove me home. My mind was racing with plans of how to get to my parents’ house in West Virginia, who would watch Dolly while I was gone, who would take care of my caseload at work, etc. I called my close friends. I talked to my parents every hour or two. I listened as a detective read Mike’s suicide note to me over the phone.

My parents decided to wait until Sunday, the next day, to make the drive through the mountains from West Virginia to Virginia due to the blizzard that hit on Saturday. “There’s no hurry. We’re no help to him now,” they said. My aunts drove down from Wisconsin to make the drive with them, and to help them in Virginia Beach. I wanted desperately to fly out to meet them, but they kept telling me to stay home in California and meet them when they got back to West Virginia. I felt confused and isolated that first week, despite the outpouring of love from my friends and family here. I tried to comfort my daughter Dolly, but she did more to comfort me. I clung to each report from Virginia like it held some clue that would eventually unlock the mystery of why this terrible thing happened.

The night they arrived in Virginia, my parents went straight to the police station to pick up my brother’s possessions, including copies of the suicide notes he’d left for us. He had left one note on his body, directing the police to the other letters back at his apartment: one for my parents, one for Dolly and me, and one for my aunts. He also left short notes on the doors of several neighbors asking them to please help my parents. Each letter says that he is sorry, and that he loves us. He told us that he was in pain and that he did not have a choice.

On Monday I went in to the office. I didn’t know why I was there, but it seemed important to my parents that I was functioning. I made arrangements to take a leave of absence. I love my job so it was comforting to be there, even though I was still completely in shock and unaware of what I was doing. Meanwhile my parents made arrangements to have my brother’s body cremated and cleaned out his apartment.

On Tuesday I slept all day. My parents picked up my brother’s car from the impound lot, met with the detective, finished packing up his apartment, and had a private viewing at the funeral home before my brother was cremated. My mom said it looked just like him, except for the incision where the autopsy doctor had taken the bullet out of his head. She said she couldn’t believe how cold his body felt. I don’t mind that I didn’t get to see his body, because that wasn’t him anymore.

On Wednesday I went back to the office for the last time, barely able to hold it together long enough to get my work reassigned so I could go home and curl up in a ball on my bed. My parents turned off the utilities for my brother’s apartment and turned in the keys to his landlord. There was nothing left for them to do but wait for his ashes, so they spent the rest of the day on the boardwalk. They bought Dolly and me each a sweatshirt from Virginia Beach, the city that Mike loved and where he had spent his happiest days. We never got to visit him there.

On Thursday I stayed in bed again. My parents made the long drive home through the mountains, holding a black box filled with the ashes that were once the body that was once my brother.

The Hole That Remains

It's been just over two weeks since my brother Mike committed suicide. On December 5, 2009, I was in Golden Gate Park with my daughter Dolly and her father Duncan when my parents called to tell me that Mike was dead. The Virginia Beach Police Department had told them he died of a "self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

I keep expecting, or at least hoping, to wake up from this nightmare. And then I am hit once again with the knowledge that it is real. My brother is dead. His suicide is a permanent fact in our lives. There is nothing good that can be said about it. I tell myself that at least he is no longer suffering. I tell myself that he is in a better place now. But I still feel like shit.

What do we do with the hole that remains now that he is gone?