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SKYDIVING
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- EDITORIAL 3/12/99
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Remember, a beautiful life is merely prayer in motion, and a world without
prayer has no center to it. God bless us all.
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This page, today, is
not an editorial. Rather, it's a copy of an article I was asked to write for
a publication regarding the survival of suicide as a parent. I didn't
realize the scope of my emotions until I'd actually sat down to write the
requested material. I hope that this essay might help anyone struggling with
thoughts of taking their own life. The aftermath is so much worse than
anything anyone could imagine. No wonder they call us "Suicide
Survivors"
- It is a beautiful day, with the warm air just breezing past my
cheek like the breath of an infant. The horses are playing together in the
pasture, the dogs running in the yard, thrilled to see the end of the cold
wind and weather. The snow has receded to the tops of the mountains and
canyon walls, and the flowers have begun to creep out of the earth. Truly,
there was never a more beautiful day. The kind of day my son will never
again see.
He was my life, my very purpose for existing. We traveled
the world together, enjoying a relationship seen rarely between a father and
son, and more often seen between best friends. There wasn’t a day gone by,
when we were in the same house, that one of us didn’t express our love for
the other. Each day when he’d come home from school, he’d come into my
office and kiss the back of my head, usually trying to sneak in without me
hearing him.
He traveled with our band, as a stage manager, and in
recent months, as a musician. I would revel in the sight of him behind me,
playing his drums in front of thousands of people. In Europe, he’d played
for nearly 10,000 people in 2 shows. The drug of applause had definitely
bitten him.
Many times, he’d be on the other side of the glass,
engineering my music, twirling his finger in his own unique way to let me
know that tape was rolling. Better than being on the other side of the
glass, was when he’d sit with a drum between his legs and we’d jam
together while discussing issues of adolescence, world politics, and girls
never coming to a resolution on anything, but both of us better people for
the discussions. His views were beyond that of most 14 year odds, his wisdom
amazed nearly everyone he came into contact with. The affect he had in his
world was a powerful one, always having a kind word for anyone in need of
it, always trying to be there for the underdog. He made friends at all ends
of the social spectrum. He fit in to every group of kids, but belonged to
none of them. Each morning, as he rode the bus to school, he’d play his
bongos for the other kids, and they would all make up silly songs to pass
the time on the long bus ride into town. Sometimes he’d write the words to
these songs in his notebook and share them with me after school. Those were
the best hours. Just he and I. We’d often ride the 4 wheeler up into the
hills above the house, or ride our horses into those same places. He could
drive the large hay truck, and often did. It was hilarious to see his small
body behind the wheel of such a large vehicle, but he handled it well. One
time he drove all the way to southern Utah, scared half the time, but
overjoyed at the experience.
My son is the product of a divorced union. During the
divorce and subsequent remarriages, moves in the middle of the night to
other states, and bad behavior by both sets of parents, he became a pawn in
a very deadly game. After living with his mother for 5 years, he chose to
leave, and wanted to live with his father. And so he did.
His mother never forgave him for that decision, punishing
him regularly, by canceling visitations, promising packages and letters that
either never came, or didn’t come for many weeks after they were promised.
She’d ask him questions in the form of interrogations as to my travels,
performances, and business. All of which made him feel extreme discomfort.
I’ll never forget the pain and tears he held back at
Christmas when he was told by his mother that he could not visit her, nor
could he see his little step brother with whom he shared a special love. The
visitation of the summer before had also been canceled by his mother, making
a full year since he’d seen any of his other family. Vindication seemed to
become the one-sided theme of their relationship, because he had events at
home he needed attend to, such as team rodeo events, and a party for his
schoolmates. He’d asked if he could fly East one day later than she’d
scheduled, so he could participate in these events and not let his team down
in the regional competitions. Her wrath precluded any means of compromise.
That particular Christmas, he was keeping a journal for an assignment at
school. In it he wrote, “I wish my mom would quit being mad at me for
living with my dad”.
In the Christmas visit, he’d asked me to intercede for
him; I did. Following the failed negotiation for his changed visit schedule,
I wrote a letter to his mother, telling her of dire consequences if she didn’t
repair this damaged relationship. How I only wish I’d understood less than
a year before his death, how dire the consequences might be.
With yet another Christmas looming around the corner, and
once again having been threatened with a canceled visit, my son dug in his
heels. He decided that if his mother didn’t want to see him, then he did
not want to see her either. We now know that he had made a resolve more out
of bravado that emotion. All sons need their mothers, especially at the
adolescent unsurety of being 14. This time, intervention succeeded in
arranging visitation after tremendous difficulty, argument, and discussion.
My travel agent called me one afternoon, telling me of
super cheap tickets to Atlanta, where my son’s mother, and my daughter
were living. I bought two tickets in excited anticipation of spending
Valentine’s Day with my daughter and son in Atlanta. Offering to buy my
son a ticket, for which my ex-spouse would reimburse me later, her response
was that “she had just spent a lot of money for a plane ticket for
Christmas, and was not going to buy a ticket for Valentine’s Day. Our son
will just have to stay home”. As she continued to berate and complain
about the cost of tickets, our son walked in from school, hearing her voice
on the speaker phone. He was extremely upset, although he’d tried to hide
it. In speaking with him later that day, I offered a ticket at my expense;
he didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see his mother. His hurt was very
apparent, but yet it seemed no different than the hurt and pain he’d
exhibited in many other disagreements or difficulties with his mother.
The following night, he wrote one of two suicide notes.
It was a personal note, addressed to me, in which he told me of his love for
me, and how he thought I’d been a great dad, and he knew I loved him
deeply.He apologized for his action. He also told me I should never have
tried to do anything nice for his mother, because in doing so, too many
people just would be hurt.
The following morning, he showed the second note to two
friends at his school. They chose to say nothing to anyone. “He was
always so funny, and kidding around”, they said, “Why should we
have taken this joke seriously”. Why? Because suicide is never a
joke.
Saturday morning, while I was overseas, my son put a gun
to his head and ended his life. That bullet ended much of my life as well,
but it’s more like the pain of losing your sight while being an artist, or
losing the ability to hear while creating music. Or losing one’s legs
while running the Boston marathon. Breathing is a major effort, getting up
in the morning even more so. Life loses it’s color, and becomes black and
white.
Aside from the memories and reminders of our time
together, small pieces of his life continue to give rise to renewed pain.
Like detritus from the bottom of a pond, small objects related to him float
up to the surface from time to time. Like the school newspaper doing an
article on suicide, and assigning hypothetical behaviors to him, things that
never happened, but the author of the article was certain that ‘any one
person could have prevented his death’. The article was not supposed be
about him, but for some reason, the three quarter inch headline using his
name belied that fact. The principal of the school declined an apology,
citing journalistic freedom. The school printed a retraction.
Then there was the time when I’d sent his computer in for an upgrade, only
to find that the files I thought I’d deleted nearly a year previously were
still buried in the trash explorer. A couple of letters to his girlfriend,
one of which made several loving comments towards me, along with language
about one of his teachers that surprised even me. A dedication to his father
was found in the computer journal as well. The tears flowed heavily that
week.
His smells, his personality, his love are still in this
house, but he is gone. I’m told God needed him more than me, and to that I
say, “BULL$#@”. God could have had any person. He did not need
to choose my son. I choose to believe that my son was faced with a level of
pain that he saw no other remedy for. Rejected so many times by his mother,
a father who was too close to see the level of pain he felt, no one to even
comprehend his thoughts, to intervene in his action. His phone calls on the
morning of his death, the letter he showed to the kids at school, were
nothing short of cries for help. All unheeded.
I find myself constantly thinking of ‘what ifs’, and
‘whys’, although I already know the answer, and no matter what, he won’t
be coming back. Except in my dreams. I wonder, “Will you make it without
me?” “Can I do this without you?” The answer remains to be
experienced.
The anger does not seem to be abating. The flowers are
gone, the songs have been sung, and everyone has gone home. Anger at his
decision, anger at his mother for not being there, for not staying for his
viewing or funeral, for making the grieving process more painful by denying
me access to our daughter. Anger at myself for not recognizing his hurt, for
not being there in his final moments. Jealousy at his friends for seeing him
last. I wanted to be there for everything in his life, foolishly thinking I
could have made a difference on that fateful morning.
- We'll never play ball in the park, never share quiet moments on
horseback, never laugh about the times we had traveling the world. I never
wanted you to be a memory. I only wanted you.
- "Friends" say, "It's time to get on with your
life......." My life was Josh. My life, or at least the colors in it,
ended when his decision robbed me of his presence, of the presence of my
daughter, and the presence of my self respect.
Crying seems to be the behavior du jour around here. The
hole in our lives is too large to step around, to wide to jump over, and too
deep to walk through. So one is left standing at the edge, looking into the
darkness, praying that one day, there will be a light in it. I’ve read
that in youth suicide, 60 percent of the parents, one or the other, will
attempt to follow their child, and over 90 percent of those are successful.
I think I understand why.
Because there never again will be a beautiful day. Not
for me, anyway.
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