My experience with Suicide

Dear Readers,

Today my subject isn’t about food allergies, or books, but about suicide and it repercussions on family. If this is topic is too sensitive for you, please don’t force yourself to read this post.

Today I heard about another child taking his own life. He did so because he had been bullied in school. I know how is family feels because twenty-three years ago, my older brother committed suicide.

I won’t go into the reasons why he did it, but I will share with you something I’ve only shared with my husband and a few close friends.

I was ten years old when it happened. My brother was the light of my life. Despite being separated by foster care, I adored him. I practically worshiped him. He could do no wrong in my eyes.

The last time I spoke to him was just five days before his death. His twelfth birthday was the next day and I had convinced my foster parents to let me call him that night. During that conversation he told me what he was going to do.

I didn’t believe him. That is something that I still feel guilt over to this day.

You see, six months earlier, at a Christmas party, I had found him in the chapel of a church. He told me how scared he was. How worried he was. Than he made me promise that I would never kill myself.

It might seem like an odd subject for an eleven-year-old and nine-year-old to be having, but in our family it wasn’t uncommon. All of our older siblings had tried to end their lives, though none had been successful. I knew what suicide was by the time I was six. And so, at only nine and eleven, the two of us were well versed in what it meant.

We had both been through horrific abuse, but we were sure we were stronger than anything life could throw at us. I gave him my promise, and he promised me the same. I spent the next six months knowing that even if my older siblings managed to kill themselves, at least I would always have him. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

That changed on a cool June day. I’d already been going through a personal hell. My best friend believed a lie that I had talked badly about her mother and said she would never speak to me again, and I was being bullied mercilessly at school. I remember staring at the clock, silently counting down the minutes until I could leave.

Then the school principal walked inside. He whispered something to my teacher, then asked me to go with him to the office.

It started with a lie. My foster parents, hoping to shield me from the truth, told me my brother had been in an accident, he had broken his leg, but he would be fine. There was nothing to worry about, they promised.

I suppose I was a bit naïve to believe them. Despite everything I had gone through in my life at that point, I truly believed that most people were good and truthful. I still believe that, though I am a bit more cynical now.

I asked to see him, but they said I needed to wait. I spent the next couple days oblivious to the truth.

On June 10, 1993, the truth hit me in the face like a hammer.

Once again I was in class. It was just after a particularly brutal recess where several girls had taken turned twisting my wrist behind my back. I knew it was sprained, but I was determined to say nothing. I wouldn’t give them the pleasure of knowing they got to me. I was staring at the clock when the door opened and the principal once again walked into the class.

A sixth sense told me he was there for me again. The look on his face was one of heartbreak. When he called my name, I felt sick to my stomach.

I was taken home and was met there by a woman that was the former foster mother of my brother (eventually she would be mine as well). They had remained close and he considered her to be his ‘real’ mother.

We sat on the floor together and she handed me a picture. It was taken five days earlier. She told me that a few days before, just after his birthday, he had walked into his bedroom and hung himself in the closet. His foster father found him and tried to revive him. He had spent the last few days on life support but his heart kept stopping. He was brain dead. The doctors said the next time his heart stopped, they wouldn’t revive him.

I don’t remember if I cried when she told me. I remember thinking it had to be a bad dream. My foster parents took me to the store after she left to buy a toy for his coffin. I picked out a teenage mutant ninja turtle. We always loved that show.

I watched the clock all day. At 7:10, exactly 32 second after the minute, the phone rang. I watched my foster mother’s face, but I waited for her to tell me. When she hung up the phone, she couldn’t even look at me.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

When she said yes, my entire world fell apart. I don’t remember much about that night, but my foster sisters told me that I began screaming until I collapsed. They all took turns holding me until I eventually passed out.

The months and years that passed since then have all been of a direct result of losing my brother. Months after his death I was so close to a mental breakdown my social worker considered putting me in a facility that was basically a mental hospital for children. My brother’s former foster parents refused to let her place me there, feeling it would lead me to the same place as him, and took me in. I was in their care until I was moved into a fost-adopt home two years later. As a teenager, I would often think about suicide. I didn’t have any friends because I was odd. People thought I was too obsessed with death and serial killers, history and people watching. Would I have been that way if I hadn’t lost my brother? Probably not, none of those things interested me before I lost him. Yes, there were many times I thought about ending it all. Once, I even was holding a bottle of pills in my hand.

But I knew the devastation that someone felt when a loved one died in that manner. I couldn’t do that to my brothers and sisters, to my adoptive mother.

At twenty, I found my path and began making friends with similar interests.

At twenty-four, I met and married my husband, and less than a year later we welcomed our first child, a son we named after my brother. Since then we’ve welcomed three more children into our family.

Eventually, I began writing. It was a way for me to release my grief. I put a bit of my soul into each of my characters. I like to think that if my brother had lived, he would have been proud of me.

About ten years after his death, I spoke to my old foster parents. You see, those who I had told of my secret insisted that no one would have believed me if I had gone to them with his plans. So I asked them, if I had told them what he had said, would they have believed me. They admitted that they wouldn’t have, because they had met my brother and never thought he would do such a thing.

To many people, those who kill themselves are cowards, but I don’t think so. I think they’re lost. They’re so lost, and they don’t realize the grief that come if they leave. They don’t realize that there are people who love them, who want to see them live. They can’t see the light on the other end of the storm. We have to show them there is light. That there are people who love them. They’re not alone. There are so many people who have been in their shoes, who have lived through whatever hell they are going through. It’s possible to be happy.

For those children, teens, anyone who is thinking about ending their life, please don’t. I beg you, please don’t. There are people who love you. I love you. Just hang on. Hold on and know that it will get better. Just because we’re weird, or different, doesn’t mean that we’re not as loved as everyone else. It doesn’t mean that our life is meaningless. If you end everything, you won’t get to see the joy that will come, and I promise it will come.

Lola Grace Stevens