The Other Side of Suicide: Those Left Behind

September is National Suicide Prevention Month, but I want to talk about the other side of suicide: those that are left behind. This is also the first time I’ve written since, ironically, the passing of Robin Williams in August 2014. And also the first time I’ve posted publicly that my father took his own life.

Nick Mason was the most important man in my life. I’ve written many times of how strongly connected we were, considering I am an only child and a chronic daddy’s girl. Naively, I believed I knew everything about him – we were open with each other about most everything. My parents and I had a very strong relationship comprised of trust, respect and compassion, even following their divorce. We laughed a lot – My father was insanely funny; never missed a beat. His smile flashes in my mind regularly, imprinted there forever. It really was contagious.

A month after my 18^th birthday, I got the call. I remember exactly where I was standing, the time of day and the sting in my heart.

I answered the phone.

“I’m trying to reach Leah Mason.” A strong, very masculine voice, asked.

“This is she.” I replied.

“This is Detective Castillo. Your father was found deceased in his apartment…”

That’s as far as my memory of the phone conversation goes. I’m sure there were further words exchanged, but to this day, my last recollection of that night was the coldness of the tile floor as my body collapsed to meet it.

At the time of his passing, he was living just outside of Miami in Sunny Isles – led there by his work as a contractor. His body was found by a good friend of the family, following a series of calls I’d received from him over the course of a few days, prior to his suicide. That particular day I hadn’t heard from him. I asked the friend to go to his apartment to check on him, as I was at home  3 hours away from Miami. Something told me to get someone out there to make sure he was fine; it was unlike him not to answer my call.

The days that followed are still blurry, 9 years later. I can’t recall much of my past, unless I really sit down and focus on a memory – watching it take off, as my mind pulls and clings to details, breathing life into my experiences buried deep in my subconscious. I realize now that it was my way of coping  which I admit, was very unhealthy. I wanted to pretend that it didn’t happen. Not that way, anyway.

I didn’t talk about my father’s death. I didn’t want people to know that he’d taken his own life. A part of me wanted to preserve that friendly, always smiling, jokester of a man that everyone knew.  He used to have my friends curled over in laughter. No one would’ve believed, including me, that he no longer wanted to live. No one would’ve believed someone so “happy” wanted to die. I didn’t want people to know that I wasn’t enough for him to stay. I feared that I’d be looked at differently. Suicide is one of those very abstract words that most of us try to avoid due to the discomfort that it brings.

Why wasn’t I enough for him to stay? My life had just begun.

The series of calls I referred to leading up to his death, were conversations – more pleading, on my part – for him to stay. I told him all that he would miss out on if he left. I’d just turned 18, how could he do this to me? How could he want to die when he had so much to live for? I begged him. For hours, I begged him to stay. He said to me, “I love you. And everything will be okay.” My interpretation of “okay” was ultimately much different than his. The day following that 4 letter word is the day he was found in my bedroom in his apartment in Sunny Isles.

Even writing this and rereading it, I see how much I make it about me. This story isn’t about me at all – though the selfish part of me, the one that asks, “How could you do this to me,” wants to make everyone aware of the pain losing a loved one to suicide brings – the emotional destruction it creates. But, can you imagine the pain he felt? To smile through clenched teeth, desperate to mask his struggle.. Can you imagine how tough it must’ve been to put on that happy mask for so long? The weight of it grew to be too much; too much to stay, even for his only child.

Busting Through the Old Paradigm of Prevention

In this Huff Post article, the writer recalls the end of her rope. She thought only in death would her emotional pain finally come to an end. And after much contemplation, she discovered that she did in fact want to live, but she was too consumed with solely surviving.

Sit on that for a minute….In reference to National Suicide Prevention Month:

“The pain came from living a lie. I hadn’t been true to myself, and I was even blind to that. I was too busy surviving; trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be, trying to fit it. I was living an inauthentic life. I wanted to end it.               

                                                                                                           

This is not something that can be prevented. It is something to be illuminated.

‘Authentic-Self Awareness’

Now, that has a more expansive ring to it. Can you feel it?”

What if we all took the masks off, do you think the weight would lessen? I can’t say if we would be happier, but I can, with all of the confidence in the world, say that we would feel free. Free to be who we truly are, never questioning the way we choose to live. We wouldn’t just be surviving, cracking jokes to hide the pain, marching to the beat of someone else’s drum.  We would light a match and set our world on file, illuminating the path to self-awareness.

You don’t have to suffer in silence, as my father did. You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to. You can feel sadness and feel angry – please, I encourage you, just as I encourage my daughter. IT IS OKAY – WE ARE HUMAN. So I’m here to talk about the other side of suicide; the one’s left behind. If you would have removed the mask, I would have told you how I loved you more for who you are underneath. I would have told you that it really is going to be okay. I would have told you that your true self is more beautiful than any culturally-made dogma.

And I would have taken your hand and then taken off my own mask.

*See below "O-o-h Child, Things Are Gonna Get Easier" the link to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and  more on struggling with depression.