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.
I listened to them, they called like you said. I was quiet and they shared their pain. Even the ones that didn’t lose a child, I listened to them to. I tell people now that my brand is grief, that my niche is suicide and my name is parent. I got that right, didn’t I? It’s not about me, it’s about something bigger than me, isn’t it?
My friend called me last night and I won’t use his name but he is the reason I am writing this today because I want the world to understand something. He wept, literally like a child sobbing and I felt such sorrow for him. He was crying “Bobby, I had no idea, what did they do to you”?
People often ask me, “How do you do it”? My answer is simply that “I can’t, not alone”. Now, believe me I honestly gave it my best effort and I was a good soldier. That is something my grandfather, and our family in general because that was how it was in the 1960s, used to say to me when I was a little boy. Being a good soldier was important.
You might wonder what this story has to do with blessings, and I honestly think when someone arrives here that they do not feel blessed at all. I know I did not. Yet, here I am on this beautiful Tuesday morning in a small town in Vermont talking on the phone to my friend Timmy and telling him how I lost a job last Friday night. A job that I publicly declared I would get up and get seven weeks ago simply because my wife and eight year old daughter needed me to get. I probably wasn’t ready for the job, but I lost it through no fault of my own. In fact I solved their problems so quickly and efficiently that they realized they needed to halt everything and make a plan to come back to the table in January of next year.
“I see you, and I love you”. This is a phrase that we sometimes use with each other to identify our shared struggle and our common goal to get through one more minute, hour and day in this journey through grief that we are all on. It took me two years after my son’s death before I realized I needed help and I pray that you come to believe that you need help as well. It is the first step in a long and arduous process and I applaud you for showing up today to hear the message from someone in a way that will allow you to accept it.
Part of my recovery, and that is what I call if for I know no other way to describe this experience other than to equate it with a disease that wants to kill me, has been to learn acceptance and tolerance. If you ever see me putting it into practice I probably look like a toddler taking his first steps.
I guess you do what most of you saw me do yesterday, in a very public way. As you know, I have been sharing some of my posts this week with my public timeline as a way to bring awareness to parents who have lost a child to suicide. It was part of an exercise, now 7 weeks in progress, to get out of bed and fight against overwhelming grief and depression and go back to work.
