Public Speaker Talks

While I have shared many of those days with my brothers and sisters in grief, I find myself facing a set of special days that for the last three years have sent me into a tailspin. I am speaking about December 21st, the day of my son’s birth and December 25th which is a holiday that we know as Christmas. Your special days and holidays may differ from mine, but the experiences that we go through are the same. This year, however, I feel none of the dread or anticipation of sorrow I have felt in the past. I want to try to share with you how this has come to pass for me.

I now write, speak and dedicate all of my personal and professional resources to aiding in an answer to why our children are dying at the rate of every 40 seconds around the world. I am a United States Army Veteran, who has never been in combat. Yet, 22 of my brothers and sisters in arms die each day from the rigors of PTSD, Depression and Traumatic Brain-Stem Injury related mental health issues.

A reliable narrator would say that his family suffered post traumatic stress disorder from the time he was five. He would tell you that he was the reason for that, honestly and without shame. I was trapped in this ever reinforcing cycle of shame, hate and regret. I punished people who loved me. They never understood why. Honestly, neither did I. So, I started to wonder if I was an unreliable narrator.

I am not a writer. I throw commas at a sentence like I am playing darts. My son placed a punctuation mark on my life that set a standard for my writing, so I want to learn. I am just a guy who figuratively climbed into the grave with my kid two years ago. When he died two years prior to that I figuratively stepped over his dead body, as I had literally stepped over bodies before. Two years ago I finally succumbed to my final and most deadly father, Shame.

I have a deep faith, a very strong faith, that is based in miraculous events I have witnessed in my life. I am reticent to name the being, or beings, of my faith simply because they chose to identify themselves as “I am” once long ago. To a great man, well beyond my caliber by the name of Moses, but who also knew something about wandering lost in the wilderness of the desert.

My son killed himself because he fell in love. It is that simple, truly. A love that he never knew because the world was a cold hard place, and I taught him that without reminding him that it was full of love as well. I am responsible for his life because he was given to me. I was to be that stable bow, from which his arrow flew into the future which was beyond my vision. I failed. I failed because of shame. I never failed to love him and he always felt the same.

I was kissing my daughter goodnight last night and I said “Promise not to stay up late and watch television”. Such a sweet little routine that we do each night but last night she peeped up and yelled “Cross My Heart Daddy!”. I found myself in tears but did not wish her to see them so I told my wife and she smiled a sad smile. “I know honey, she is just a kid”.

I watched a comedian perform the other night and I said something to him, via the world wide web. I made a comment on a video and I honestly just didn’t think about it again. Now, late at night I get a message and he says, “Hey, did you post on my timeline?”. Now, amazingly enough I have no idea who this guy is and it turns out he is a pretty famous guy in his own right, and I will not say who he is. Anyone who knows me, knows that my celebrity friends enjoy a great anonymity with me in public.