The Painful But Important Lessons I Learned After My Father's Suicide

Anthony Bourdain; Kate Spade; friends, teenagers, neighbors, veterans; my father. Every suicide is distinct and differently devastating, for those who leave and for those who are left.

Suicide is what philosophers and mathematicians refer to as a surd—nonsensical, unexpected, a cavernous impossibility that is nonetheless real.

How often do we presume that other people's lives are on positive trajectories, if not always totally predictable ones?

Perhaps life looked fine, even good, on the outside (as was the case with Bourdain). Or perhaps friends and family members knew the person was struggling but had sought help, and they seemed to be OK (Spade).

After a suicide, many people will say it "doesn't make sense." In many cases, yes, there's a stunned inability to process that the person is gone. But I think there's a deeper fear at work here, too: the terror of realizing, "Oh my god, if it could happen to them—could this happen to anyone, even people I love, even me?"

There may be generally explicable features in many suicides, but there are no ultimate answers. Hold space for the uncertainty, for the dimensionality of who this person was.

My father was a Navy fighter pilot before he left the military to become a commercial airline pilot. Like many vets, his experiences in Vietnam were traumatizing; he talked about them only rarely, but when he did, the moral and personal agony was palpable. Did he have PTSD? Probably, and society needs to do a better job of destigmatizing veterans and people who have been through trauma. But PTSD isn't the full story.

The most common response people have when I say that my father killed himself is, "Oh, that's terrible. Was he depressed?" We don't know. As a pilot, he resisted seeking psychological diagnoses that would prevent him from flying.

Check yourself: Avoid explaining what this death means to someone who is grieving a suicide. (This is especially important if you think you have insights or are convinced you are being helpful.) Be present. People in grief need to lean on you, not be lectured by you. And what is true in grief more generally is excruciatingly so when mourning a person who has died by suicide. Frankly, unless we have explicitly said, "What do you think?" it is not at all helpful to hear your speculations or interpretations of what this event means. What we need is the space to grieve and heal in our own complicated realities.

Some people feel that suicide is a selfish act because it fails to account for the difficulty and devastation wrought on the people who remain. But I agree with the many experts who suggest that suicide is often the result of a total loss of hope and self amid a tsunami of despair.

My father expressed to a few people that he was thinking of ending his life. Those people, who I know loved him deeply, took him at his word that he would seek help. But I know now that such statements are the high-functioning person's attempt to seek help—it takes massive effort and will to reach across a divide of loneliness and despair, to entrust someone with such honesty about such heavy burdens. It is another way of saying, "I am alone. I don't know how to proceed; please help me."

Take these statements seriously. Accompany the person to get help, right then if possible.

It is not your job to make your grief legible or to make it conform to other people's expectations. As a survivor, you will have major triggers that are unrecognizable to most people, and your reactions will vary. I can be totally leveled by the image of my dad's back in his blue blazer as he strode tiredly away from me at my sister's graduation, or by how I imagined him leaving the house for the last time, or the first 100-plus times I drove by the fire station outside of which he shot himself. Even the feeling of exhilaration on white water, a delight that he and I shared—these are all particularly potent emotional, geographic, and physical triggers for me, even 11 years later. Most people have no idea.

If you are a survivor, let the emotions surface, and let them pass (not easy: It's like getting thrashed by a huge wave of rage, sadness, and ugly crying). Let me repeat: You don't have to hide your emotions, and you don't have to apologize for them. You don't even have to explain them. Grief is a shape-shifting, surprising, and (in the case of suicide) often terrifying entity. Lean into people who are trustworthy, nonjudgmental, and who let you be you. And when you meet people who have also experienced the suicide of a loved one or family member, you might find yourself weeping together on top of a mountain during spring ski season (true story). It's OK.

People say weird and even hurtful things out of their own profound discomfort after a suicide. Others will disappear entirely from your life. This sucks, but it's true. Suicide (along with what I call the 3Ds—other forms of sudden death, divorce, and disability) can make people really nervous, and as a result they may react to your presence in all kinds of intense and often unhelpful ways.

One person with whom I was close didn't call, text, or write me for nearly a year after. Only when I ran into her at a party by chance later did she laugh awkwardly and say, "Yeah, sorry about that. I mean, what could I even have said?" My answer now: "Just call and say you don't know what to say, and you love me and are thinking of me."

Just as everyone grieves differently, everyone memorializes differently. In the aftermath of a suicide, ritual and burial are important, though they can take many forms. For some people, traditional religious funeral services may provide important closure. For others, those same services might feel like emotional handcuffs.

As time goes on, trust your creativity and the legacy of the person's memory. What are the moments that make you think of them with a grin? Consider memorializing a place or an activity that feels like a positive legacy—a meditation bench in a treasured spot or an annual walk with organizations that raise awareness about suicide or mental illness, for example. I have found it meaningful to memorialize my father by consciously giving him a shout out during water sports that we both loved.

Suicide is an extreme event that, for survivors, puts much into excruciating texture. For me, my father's death began a decade-long journey of self-reflection—about myself, my family, my partnership, me as a parent, and society more generally. It has involved devastating anxiety that, with time and therapy and life changes, has given way to profound, gentle, exhilarating clarities. Many relationships, including my marriage, were sundered as a result of this journey.

It has not been easy. Grief doesn't end, but it does change, and with time it becomes less debilitating, more gently poignant. I wish beyond words that my daughter could have met her grandfather. I also have found ways that my father's positive legacy lives on in me—and in her.

There are no neat closures to the surd of suicide. But healing can be real. Small or large changes in your life may emerge over time. Sometimes they will surprise you. But I'm here to tell you: There is healing, and believe me—you are not alone. With the life you have, you can narrate the story that you are always unfurling.