Mourning a Suicide Is Different
One year ago today, I was in the middle of the workout floor at Lifetime Fitness when my phone rang.
“It’s Chad, he took his own life last night.”
I remember the instant reaction was “NO”, and pushing it away as if untrue, then panic. My eyes raced back and forth as if my mind was ransacking itself for answers, destroying the orderly state it was just in. The busy room around me came back into focus and I saw that a few pairs of eyes were on me, paused very still, waiting to help if I needed. More, “NO” and denial blanketed it from landing. I didn’t need help, this wasn’t true. And then my searching gaze set upon my partner, and reality came crashing in. He saw, he started toward me, I crumbled.
Chad is gone. There’s nothing I can do. It’s real. It’s forever. This is the world I live in now. One without him.
And I never replied to his last text.
And I never can.
There are so many people in our lives that we aren’t as close as we’d like to be. Life gets rushed, we get tunnel vision, we think we have time. As if there’s this point where some clear open space in time comes into view and we have the ability to breathe, connect, do the things we said we’re going to do and get to the real heart of life.
It doesn’t exist. Someday is a word. A word that costs us the life we want because we charge it like credit, a poker chip we never cash. Burning holes in all of our pockets, it’s worthless.
The hollowing thing about death is that it’s really the only thing we all understand as permanent. And so none of us really know how to process it, hold it, speak to it, or dignify it with appropriate emotions or words.
It leaves us stripped, raw, like an open wound. We go about life, taking everything for granted in agreement that it’s just how “life is.” We go months without coming up for air, sometimes years, sometimes the whole damn thing. And then someone we love dies and we stand there, indignant at the injustice, the suddenness. As if there was ever a way to prepare that we weren’t provided with.
Only then, in the tear, do we feel more close to the pulse of what it all means. The tender humility of how deeply everything matters, how much everyone means to us, do we become more human.
So, from my proximity to that life wound, I challenge you. When was the last time you woke up and came up to breathe with those around you who matter more than anything? How many relationships are stagnant because you have bypassed the heart to tell yourself you “have time?” How many feuds are steeped in pride because you haven’t allowed time to face them? How many things are you placing above the ones you don’t know how you’d live without? How many loved ones have fallen through the cracks because your schedule is uncontrollably expanding like rising dough and you are no longer its master but its slave?
How many people cross your mind that you won’t let cross your heart because it’s too far rerouted to keep the machine running.
How’s your grandma? How’s your neighbor? How’s your brother? How’s your son? How’s your boss? Do they know they’ve impacted you? Do they know how often you think of them? Do they know about the memory you replay to yourself and laugh?
Call them. Knock on their door. Send them a letter. Invite them over for dinner. Memories are the antidote to loss. Create as many as you can. The ‘inconvenience’ of keeping a pulse on your loved ones weighs in ounces, burying the potential memories you never shared with them weighs in tons.
YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO LATER.
If it matters, let it matter.
Chad B. Sappenfield, 10.28.82–10.25.21
We both loved plants, the outdoors and baking and we neither planted, traveled nor baked a single thing together.
