Surviving Suicide - Part 1

When I read, “Have you ever known anyone who has committed suicide?” on GG’s blog Wednesday, it stirred a lot of mixed emotions. And when I read some of the comments she got, it stirred some more.

Yes I have known some people who committed suicide. One of them was my father.

How do I start this post? By explaining how he was? By trying to fight those judgemental comments people make? How? By telling the “back story” as Whinger wrote? I don’t really know. I am not even truly aware of what I want to say or explain here…

My father made all the decisions in our lives. He knew what he did and did not want and never really left anything to chance. He wasn’t really lucky anyway! He planned things ahead of time, always foresaw the worst and was always expecting the other shoe to drop. He even decided how and when he would die. That was just the type of man he was. I never thought my father was crazy. Nor did I ever think he was a coward. He wasn’t a big man, but he had balls! And I always admired him for that.

No subject were taboo in our house, none! We could talk about anything and we did. We would talk openly about his desire to put an end to his life. It wasn’t even morbid. It was a conversation, where we negotiated, argued, cried at times, but we talked it through.
I know it may sound weird to many of you, but we talked about his different options. What he wanted us to do after his death. Thinking about it gives me goose bumps. The kind you get when you feel a bug crawling up your arm or leg… It’s light and you barely feel it, but it’s there, and you know it!

A few weeks prior to his death, we went to my folks for Easter dinner (April 4th, 1999). Anybody present could see that my father wasn’t doing too well. He was sad and it showed. He would sit in his rocker, looked at me and cried. He was so depressed. We didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t been there since Christmas. It was too hard for me to see him that way, so I kept away. At one point my mother told me to ask him anything I wanted to know he would answer. Earlier in the year, he had been out doing a “closed therapy” that had shook him up badly. He had some repressed memories that he had to deal with, and he was having a real hard time doing it. He was also on medication, but he wasn’t being followed properly. So some days he would be totally stoned out of his tree, and other days he would just sit there or sleep. It was so sad to see him disintegrate that way. He wasn’t eating much. He was slowly dying.

That night we talked. I did ask him questions I never thought I would ever ask him. My father was abusive, verbally and physically. His words were his most hurtful weapons. He could destroy you with them. I wanted to know why he had hit me. It is not like I had my daily or weekly “whoop-ass”, no, I would get hit when I “deserved” it, and to this day I have no issue with that. What I had a harder time understanding was the way he would hit me. He would lose control. So I asked him why? He sat there for a while, crying, and I could see in his eyes that he didn’t know the reason why, other than he was reproducing what he had learned from his parents. He knew it was wrong and was remorseful. Somehow, for some strange reason, I understood him. I knew deep down in my soul that my father really did love me. He wanted the best for me and would have done anything to give it to me. …And he did. Despite his anger, I knew that he loved me. I know it is strange; it’s even stranger to write it. But I always felt love and that was and still is so valuable to me.

I talked about the scars he had left on my soul. Those scars that made me afraid to have children. Those blemishes that made me feel insecure at times, and so afraid. We talked openly. At least I did. I wanted him to know how I felt, the effects it had on me, and how I was marked for life. How his threats had managed and controlled so many of my actions. I wanted his reign of terror to be over. He did too. He wanted the pain, all of our pains to stop. He couldn’t bare it any longer.

I understood that despite being successful in business; he owned stores and restaurants; despite being in a good marriage and despite having me, the daughter he always wanted and was proud of, he was hurting so deeply that nothing we could do or say would make him feel better. I realised it wasn’t about my mother, or me, it was all about him. He couldn’t fathom hurting us more than he already had. He could see how he was affecting us and out of devotion for both of us he wanted out. I had to respect that. That night I told him I was ready to let him go. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer. If I could have brought him to the vet to have him put under, I would have done it. I would not let any pet of mine suffer a quarter of what my father seemed to be suffering. His pain was visible. And yet I could not do a single thing about it…

When came time for us to leave, I got up, walked up to him, held his face between my hands and told him that despite everything I loved him and I wanted him to be alright. I wasn’t resentful in any way. I forgave him. He was my father and would respect whatever decision he would make. He could count on me. I would respect his wishes.

That was the last time I saw him alive.

The following Sunday my mother called me, late at night, in tears. He had taken his riffle out. She wasn’t scared for herself, but she was livid at the idea that he might do something. The next morning I called my therapist and told him what was happening. He strongly suggested that I stayed home and not to make my way to my parents. My therapist bluntly told me he was afraid I would do something I might regret … He was afraid I would help my father commit suicide. When he said that I became aware that he was completely right. I had reached my limit.

I called my father and had a long conversation with him. I made him promise that he wouldn’t do anything in the house; I knew my mother would want to stay there and finding him in the house would make it impossible for her to live there. I didn’t want him to shoot himself in the head; I would be the one cleaning up after him, and I wanted to see him in his coffin. He said he wouldn’t do anything in the house and whatever he would do, would be clean. He was down but calm. He was fully aware of what he was about to do. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. It was a well planned operation.

The Wednesday afternoon he went to see a fortune teller who told him that if he was to choose to live he would have a long life. But he had to decide that he wanted to live. As he was leaving she also told him that whatever he would decide, it had to be clean.

When I spoke with him that night he told me about the fortune teller. I simply told him that he had a choice. He didn’t have to do anything. He could choose to live and be happy if he wanted. He laughed and said that he knew all that. He told me that he loved me.

That was the last time I spoke with my dad.

On Thursday I made a last plea to my mother. I offered to go pick her up and to leave him alone for a few hours. We needed to give him time to do what he had to do. She categorically refused. She wasn’t letting him go. She didn’t want him to go. She loved him and wanted him around. I had tried but couldn’t insist. I made her promise that if she was to come home and he was not in the house, she wouldn’t go and look for him. She argued with me and I told her that the shock of finding him dead somewhere, who knew in what condition might be enough to destroy her emotionally. I would have to cope with my father’s death, and very selfishly wanted my mother by my side. She had agreed not to look for him.

Saturday morning, April 17th, 1999, my father got up as usual. He made his way down to the kitchen and started to cry. My mother tried to console him and reassured him that they could make it through this. He didn’t have to do this... He was only crying and repeating “You have no idea how hard it is for me. What I’m about to do is so hard… I know I’m hurting you, and that’s not what I want.” At some point my mother recalls telling him that she was letting him go if that’s really what he wanted.

At around 11:30 he told my mother that he felt like a toasted tomato sandwich, but on store bought bread. My mom bakes her bread weekly. Since he wasn’t eating much anymore, she offered to go to the grocery store and get him some bread. He got up and gave her a two-dollar bill. She got dressed and left without giving him a kiss. My parents always kissed each other when one of them would go somewhere. Dad would take out the garbage and before going out he would kiss her. They always did that. That morning she didn’t.

She left him alone for about 13 minutes. Just long enough for him to take care of business.

When she came back home and didn’t see him downstairs she immediately knew. She went upstairs looked in the closet where they kept their riffles and his wasn’t there. She went to their bedroom; saw that he had emptied his pockets, fast. Everything had been thrown on the night table. He had removes his wedding band and his other ring as well as his chain and his watch. He didn’t trust the people who might find him. His jacket, his hat and his boots were not in the entrance’s closet. She knew. She called a neighbour and asked him if he had seen my father. He had not. Did he hear a loud sound? He had. She asked him to come over; her husband might have shot himself. Then she called a friend and told him the same thing. She kept her promise. She waited for those two poor men to show up and she told them to go see in the shed next to the house. That is where they found my dad. He was already dead. Then she called me and only said when I answered the phone “Come over, it’s done. He did it.”

My father died at approximately 11:50 that morning. One shot through the heart. He also kept his promise. He did it in a really clean fashion. He had put a tarp over the floor, and sat on it. There was no mess as such… only a tarp to pick up.

When I saw him at the morgue that afternoon, the look on his face… was heartrending. I could tell he was crying when he pulled that trigger. He seemed so inconsolable. You could see, almost feel his pain and his desolation…

To this day, I see his face, that look he had at the morgue, and it still hurts…