This week we welcome guest blogger, Cheryl Lynn, who writes about what she wishes someone would have told her before losing her father to suicide. We want to thank Cheryl for sharing her words on how a death following a suicide is so much different than that of a natural death.
“Daddy, these are the things I wish you would have told me before you took your life…”
“Even when I am not alone, I am alone. I wonder why I am relevant. What makes me relevant? Is it the people that I surround myself with? When I look in the mirror, I see his face. I see his deep, dark eyes. I see his straight teeth, high cheekbones, and nose. I see the worry and discomfort of his troubled mind. The uneasiness of his smile pierces my heart. The constant disturbance in my mind and thoughts unleash so many waves of emotion and uncertainty. I do not know which voice, which echo to listen too. I am my Dad’s daughter in more ways than one. Will my fate end tragically as his did? Will I follow in his footsteps? Did he open a door for me? Do I want to die? Not today, but some days I do. When the pain is too much and the noise in my head is too loud, I just want to end it all. I look around at my life and pretend that I will not be missed. That is what my troubled brain strives to convince me. My kids hold my heart so tightly, and I would never want to hurt them in the way that I have been hurt and tormented, but the persuasion of the kiss of death is ever so close around my corner. I feel it watching me, haunting me, taunting me. Suicide is like a blanket; when your heart is hot and full of love, you don’t need it; but, when your heart is cold and full of disgust, pain and anger…you want to wrap it around you and hide within its depths.”
Excerpt from Pretty Painted Picture…Little Girl Lost; Cheryl Lynn
Daddy, I wish you would have told me the undeviating calamity that would plague my existence when you decided to take your life. I yearned for you to elucidate all the immoral, unscrupulous choices that I would make in my life due to your unexpected, unforgivable and catastrophic loss as a child of eight-years-old. I wish you would have warned me to NOT look for you in every male that I met. I needed you to tell me that I would never find what I was so desperately searching for all these years; unconditional love, people that wouldn’t abandon me. I wish you would have told me that I was special and entitled to love and happiness. I wish you would have told me that because I, myself, am broken that I would attract those that were also broken; you needed to advise me that I do not have the power to fix those that are broken…only the power to fix and repair myself. I wish you would have made clear that no matter how relentlessly I searched that no substance, chemical or addictive process would cease the never-ending pain, suffering, guilt and feelings of worthlessness that still plague me today after thirty-one years.
I wish you would have told me that no matter what successes I had/have in life I would never feel that they were/are adequate. There is never a day that I don’t feel sadness, loss and intense pain. I find myself putting on the same façade that my Dad did: the smile but the eyes glistening with tears, the laughter but the broken soul. I feel utterly alone most days. Just like the day you decided to leave and abandon me; like a deep, dark entity is pushing down on me.
“Put on a Happy Face”
“Can you see the tears behind this smile?
Can you see the real me?
What a façade I am talented enough to demonstrate.
You will never know the damage that impairs this soul.
A tiny smile, a slight tear, laughter, a burning in my being…it is all the same to me.
All my emotions are engulfed in one another.
I cannot tell one from the other.
Let me be me.
Let my tears pour down.
Can I show you?
Can you accept my sadness?
Will you understand it?
Do my eyes tell the story of how my heart and soul really feels?”
What I really need people to take away from this is that suicide is not like grieving a normal death. There is no closure. Every morning when you open your eyes, you relive the death all over again. It never gets better. It is almost like a part of your soul dies every day. You can’t breathe. You can’t think. In my experience, I never got to hold my Dad’s hand and say good-bye. I never got to hug him and tell him how much he meant to me. Most importantly, I never heard those much-needed words from him. I feel so broken at times; so lost. In some ways I feel like he manifested his twisted, tortured soul into mine; I am him…he is me.
Please take this true story and implement it into your life. Know that there is help available and suicide is never an option. Suicide doesn’t end the pain…it transfers it to someone else. I urge all of you to reach out to those that are suffering. Be supportive, be understanding…JUST BE THERE! Please know that you are loved. You do matter and help is always available.
“Your story isn’t over yet…”
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Phone Number
1 800 273 8255
Cheryl Lynn Villao; author of Pretty Painted Picture…Little Girl Los
I lost my granddaughter to suicide many years ago. Nearly eighty now, I have learned over the years to live with this devastating loss. She was close to your age when she, beautiful and talented yet plagued with the same type pain you describe haunts you, ended her life. Her father, like yours, had also committed suicide when she was very young. You have a way with words. Keep writing to express the pain suicide passes on to loved ones. Please realize you have much to offer and to live for. What could be more satisfying than to know your words have resonated with at the very least, one soul consumed by his or her pain, thereby preventing another tragic loss from happening. Most of all thank you for giving much needed hope to many by sharing your story.
Thanks for this entry.
I often feel the same that I am so much like my father, I worry my future is not too different from him and you have beautiful words. Their pain is our pain.
I lost my husband of forty years to suicide, September 30, 2018
He was my whole life, we had never been apart, I spent over 3/4 of my life with this man and I don’t know how to put a life that is so broken back together, it will take a long time to deal with the pain.
I always thought we had more time. We were both raised in a very hard working family and this is all we knew, we spent our whole life building a career, and family. He left behind a wife and 2 children, wife 63, son 34, daughter 38. He decided after returning from our vacation on August 27, 2018 to retire a 50 year business we had worked in together. This business was his whole life, he had spent 60 hours a week working at it for over 50 years. Very shortly after, something happened, he woke up one day and it was like the body snatchers had visited us, he wasn’t my husband, my daughter couldn’t understand either she said what has happened to dad. He was the strongest most level headed strong stable person anyone would ever meet. Never unhappy, never unsure where he was going in life, then like a rock hitting you in the face woke up different, I meant totally different. I took him to the doctor the next day which was a Monday, and the doctor said sounds to me like bipolar, here take this zoloft, and adivan. He never even ran a single test to see if there was any medical reason for the sudden change. I felt this was very weird but you want to trust your medical doctor, otherwise why even have one. My daughter was shocked that this doctor had given him these drugs without any test or examination. That night he woke me up at 9:30pm and said honey I need to go to the hospital, I having feelings that I might hurt myself. My daughter came over and we took him to the emergency room. They admitted him for a 72 hour hold, we attended the family meeting where they told us he had been diagnosed with MDD no explanation as to how they came to that diagnosis. I asked if they had run any test or scans and they told me no. I made a demand that they run a CT scan, which they said they did, but it was ran without contrast, what the heck, how can you tell if someone has a problem in their brain without a contrast. I took him home 4 days later and he was suppose to go to group meetings for 14 days. After the third day he came home and said honey don’t be mad but i cannot go to those meetings they are so terrible and the stories these people tell are horrific, they have a lot greater problems than me. I need to find an individual psychologist he said, so I told him we would go to the one the family doctor had recommended. We went the next day, and the guy told us he didn’t think that Kenny had depression, that he just needed to refocus to a different part- time career to fill in some of his free time and start new hobbies. He told us that he was going out of town and would not be back for two weeks and he would see us then. But in the meantime don’t stop taking the drugs. Zoloft, Ativan, Abien. The next day my husband accidently took his abien too soon and the next day was acting very strange, I went into the office to contact our family doctor by computer, since it was Sunday, to ask him what to do. My husband came in and ask me not to take him back to the hospital, it would be the worst thing I could do to him. I told him I was trying to reach the doctor for help. He took the dog for a walk came back and put her inside the door. I continued to try and reach the doctor. I did not hear him so I went to look for him and could not find him anywhere. I thought he had wondered off because he was acting very strange. I found him in the garage in his work van he had shot himself. That devastating moment changed my world forever. I walk thru my days in a haze, the world is a bubble where everyone is going about their lives, laughing, playing, enjoying life, and I’m outside the bubble and cannot get in. The pain is worse than anything I have ever experienced, I cannot get the picture of his body as it lay lifeless in my arms. Everything that happened that day just replays over and over in my head. I look to family and friends for comfort, my answers will never come, but I will hopefully learn to accept that God has a plan for me. I tell my story so others who might wind up in this position will question their doctors a little more than I did and not just leave with a hand full of drugs. I am convinced that those drugs took my husband from me. Forever longing for answers.