WE continue this week with our stories in observance of World Suicide Prevention Day which was observed earlier this month.

This is the story of Andrea, who lost her father.

“It was August 10, 2017, when I decided to write my story.
That Thursday was a very difficult one for me. That day completed one year since my father killed himself. After that decision, many thoughts stirred up in my mind. Things I`ve lived and also the many alternative scenarios I often imagine for that night.

My father had been continuously suffering from depression for the past 10 years, which was already a reoccurrence. I realised from my father`s patterns that depression comes in waves. There were years of great happiness, months of terrible sadness and days alternating both. He had suffered from deep depression in the late 90s and had to be taken urgently to Canada for treatment. After he was treated, he spent an entire decade, without medication and depression free.

In the beginning, it was more of an “I don’t want to see anyone” situation than anything else. He still felt safe around friends and family. My father and I were way closer than I’ve ever been to my mom. He would make an effort to come to my house as long as only a few known people were there. Soon it turned into “I don’t want to be seen by anyone.” When I called he would put on the best voice he had. No one could ever know what was going on inside that house unless those who were there 24/7.

There were so many rushes to the hospital; many interventions. I always knew that depression is the outcome of something deeper within. In the case of my father, there was this internal battle where the proud man he was couldn’t live with the decisions that he made.

My sister and I offered so many solutions. We played so many scenarios. He could live with me, I could come and work with him, all so that he knew that as long as we love and support each other, we can make adaptations. No. He refused. It was like knowing that darkness is killing you, yet, you decide to live in a cave – and whoever wanted to meet him, had to go right in there.

It was a Wednesday night when I got a call saying dad shot his wife. I heard that and I couldn’t believe it. I think I flew from LBI to Lacytown and reached in about 10 minutes. I remember driving and trying to get my husband who was in town to go there and save the day, like he always does, so that I could just arrive and collect my father and deal with police and hospital.

When I arrived, my husband was behind the thick green-heart door, talking through a little strip. I later learned that the gun was loaded and ready, that is why he didn’t enter. I pushed my husband and he pulled me and I told him: “Let me go!” and I entered that living room and stood up looking at my father from a distance of around 15 feet while he held the gun beside his leg.

I told him so many things. First, I told him he didn’t have to worry about his wife being shot. We would just say it was an accident or something. I reassured him he wouldn’t be implicated with police. He did not even blink.

That look on my father’s face I cannot describe to anyone. It was like he didn’t know who I was and he showed no fear, no anger, no nervousness. He just stood there like a wax figure. When I told him how much I loved him and how much he meant to me, he didn’t give me any kind of acknowledgment. Not a frown, not a nod, nothing.

At some point, I did realise somehow that he was done with everything. At that point, I started talking about everything and everyone that could’ve mattered, like my sisters and how they had already lost their mother. I talked to him in English. I talked to him in Portuguese. He just stood there for about 40 minutes just looking at my face. That’s when I told him: “Okay, you don’t want to talk? No problem. It’s going to be me and you here then. I am NOT leaving you. We’re both staying here not talking anything.”

The same place I was, bracing the wall, I just slid down and sat on the floor. This is when he made his first move, and that move was lifting the gun to his head. I begged him please not to do that: “Please don’t do this to me…are you really going to do this in front of me?”. That’s when he entered the kitchen, which was just behind him, closed the door and turned off the light.

(You see, when I arrived there, I went with full confidence that I was going to solve that mess and get my father to a safe place. In my mind, if there was someone in this world that could do this, it was me. In my mind, I was the apple of his eye and in my heart, he was mine. As I pushed my husband and uncle who were standing behind the door and entered and closed myself just with him in that living room, my dad would never shoot me. Not me! I would calm him, reassure him of his safety and of my love and I would make him put that gun down and go home with me. It didn’t work. Instead, I associate the fact that he went into the kitchen, closed the door and turned off the lights as a response to my plea for him not to do that in front of me)

I ran downstairs and told my uncle who was downstairs that dad put his gun to his head. Then we heard a BOOM. I flew up the stairs and the kitchen door was still closed. I didn’t know if dad was okay, wounded or dead. I was scared to see the truth. My uncle opened the door and I saw his feet and I was already on the floor, crawled to my father’s feet.
There is no such thing as killing yourself so that you won’t be a burden. Not in this case, at least. In the case of my father, I can’t say it was so that he wouldn’t be a burden because he shot his wife before.

Ever since that happened I changed a lot. I consciously make an effort to observe who can be suffering from depression around me. I try to occupy myself with work and children because I know that if it wasn’t for having to wake up every day, get dressed, to drop children at school, I wouldn’t get up for anything. For months I lay in bed. My husband was an angel throughout this episode. So supportive, patient and kind. I felt I lost my identity.

I was born and lived in Brazil and visited Guyana sporadically because I was “Totty Adams’ daughter”. Not anymore. I still feel forsakened. I often think about what I could have done to avoid what happened during and before that tragic night. I pray and talk to God or the Universe asking to at least dream of my dad so I could talk to him, ask him stuff…
This worries me now, to observe and detect who might be in a hard situation… maybe for my own good. Maybe to think that I can help somebody will make me feel better about not being successful in helping my dad and also it puts me in the position where I can forget to be depressed myself.

– Andrea Adams

Below is an anonymous story of someone who has lost a best friend.
“The song Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp was our favourite song and we blared it every chance we got. Shout-singing it and playing air drums and pretend guitars until we ended up laugh-singing it, every time. Over and over, our young voices blended in a joyful warble about two kids doing the best they can. We were best friends rather than lovers, but the song was ours, every syllable and note; the song is ours, even 35 years in the future. It will always be ours. Only now I sing it by myself, without the will to conjure make-believe cymbals or imaginary fretboards. I whisper-sing it until I end up choke-singing it, every time.

You left me a letter, an affectionate letter that you thought was kind. You said you loved me for being the best friend you’d ever had. You thanked me and wished me a wonderful life as if those words would be a salve for my soul. What you didn’t write; what hangs thick and dark and stifling and shaming is the ‘but’. The unwritten but, the but that permanently changed our lives. I was a loving friend to you, but…not enough. Not enough to lift you from desperation. Not enough to give you hope. Not enough to save you.

So, you stopped your own breath and turned me into powder. Not a satiny powder that dances downward onto eager skin, but a crude and grainy powder that blisters soles and souls, like miniscule rocks in a shoe. The pain of loss and pangs of shame grind and grate without compassion, each chafe whispering, “You weren’t enough. You’re not enough.” After a while, those whispers were all I heard, and I thought they were coming from everyone around me. I had let my friend die and deserved nothing good. I should just dissipate and float away like ash and smoke.

But as Mellencamp said, usually life goes on, and so it did for me. Decades and measureless mercies later, I am whole, intact, and content. With age and hindsight, I have learned to be grateful for the handful of blows life has dealt me; every blow but one. No good thing came from your death. It forever scarred and altered everyone who cared about you and slowly slaughtered those who loved you most, your family. For me, the acute pain of missing you has dissipated with time, but the shame and grief have never scarred or callused. The slightest graze still causes blood and angst to surge from those wounds, threatening to crush me again into a useless powder of disgrace.

That’s my side of our story or at least a part of it, but what about yours? Where have you been since that blood-chilling February morning when you stopped the music for good? Do you waft in powdery peace or do you exist only in our memories? Did you watch me discover your body? Do you ever wish you had stayed here to do good deeds and improve the world for others? I still think about and love you. I still think about and hate you.
To me, you are forever a teenager, joyously shout-singing while destructively silent-screaming. You are younger than my own children and no longer my peer.

Instead of playing pretend guitars, I make believe that I was enough; enough to recognise your smoke signals of distress and help you love yourself and persevere through your despondence into a place of self-value and hopefulness. Those problems that squashed you then should be little more than dim memories now in your healthy, wise middle-aged mind. And when Jack and Diane plays on an 80’s radio station, you and I should be smiling and remembering one another fondly, and maybe drumming a bit on a table top. That’s how it might have been, but….”

– Anonymous