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 18th
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.
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.
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