I have been wanting to start a blog for several years. Every time I sat down to start it I began to doubt whether I had any thoughts that were worth sharing. However, in May I attended a Mental Health Symposium titled 1 More=2 Many. As I was processing all the information I had heard during the day and what implications it might have for my school or students one message kept coming through loud and clear. From a parent that lost a child to suicide he said, “Just Speak Up.” We have to tell our stories or we will never end the stigma tied to mental health.
You see I teach health and am very open with my students
about the importance of ending the stigma that is tied to mental health. I
share with them that seeking help is a sign of strength not weakness. I even
share with them my story about my nephew. However, this is the important part.
I say the right things but don’t necessarily walk the walk.
Here’s what I mean about that. October 31, 2016 was a beautiful sunny day. I was at work in my office getting ready for the day when my phone rang. That call changed my life forever. The call was from my sister-in-law asking me if I could get to the hospital because my nephew was being life flighted for a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I calmly asked for which hospital and said I was on my way. When I hung up I realized that I must not have heard correctly because Payton would never had tried to take his own life. So I calmly called back and asked again who I was meeting at the hospital. That was when my world was rocked.
Now I immediately headed to the hospital with a thousand questions going through my brain. Was I praying that he would make it or praying that he wasn’t in pain? What led him to do this? What did I miss? What could I have done? All the while sitting in the hospital waiting for life flight to land. The next few hours were a blur of family arriving, meeting with a neurosurgeon to hear options (which really weren’t options) and supporting my brother as he made decisions. What I can tell you is no grandparent, parent, brother, sister, aunt or uncle should hear the words we heard from a surgeon about someone you love. After a long day in the hospital waiting for the inevitable we had some tough decisions to make as parents. We needed to get to our children before they heard something through social media (another post) and make a decision on how to tell our son who was in his first year of college. As my dad said to all of us that day in the hospital, “Tomorrow we pull up our boot straps and do what we have to do.” And that is what we did.
My husband contacted our son’s coach to help us prepare to get him picked up, and I went home and told the girls. I didn’t tell them much other than “Payton made a bad decision.” I’m not even sure if I used the word suicide. I didn’t talk about mental health. My kids at the time were 8, 14 and 18. Old enough for us to do a much better job of talking to them about suicide. That night was the only night we really talked about it. They didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t initiate any conversation about it. I also was very private about it in my professional life. I went to work the next day to get things in place for my bereavement leave and graded my students’ advocacy projects on suicide prevention. All with a stoic face and a broken heart. The next few days we planned a funeral and said our goodbyes. Then we went back to life.
I never really talked about it with anyone but often found myself angry that people weren’t more supportive and understanding. That people thought it hurt less because it was “just” my nephew. Honestly, most people probably didn’t know because I didn’t talk about it. Each year at the anniversary of his death I am deeply saddened but don’t mention it to anyone. I just deal with it myself.
When I lost my mom to cancer 8 years earlier my girls and I became advocates for cancer. We talked about how breast cancer is what grandma had battled and about the treatments that she had to go through to try to beat it. We wear pink every day in October for Breast Cancer Awareness. We have walked the breast cancer walk for many years. We are proud of our advocacy.
I tell you that because we don’t talk about suicide. We don’t do the Out of the Darkness walk held in our town. We don’t do anything to honor Payton and the beautiful young man he was during Suicide Prevention Month. We continue to “get up and pull up our boot straps and do what we have to do.” I realized after the symposium that I am part of the problem. I tell kids that we need to end the stigma of mental health. That getting help is a sign of strength not weakness, but I apparently just think that applies to other people. Because until May I had NEVER publicly mentioned that my nephew died by suicide. I didn’t talk about it with my own children like I should have which in turn has sent them the message that it is wrong to talk about it. I didn’t seek help for any of us to deal with something so tragic. I know it is a little late, but I have promised myself to do better and to be better. I want to walk the walk. I want my students and my own children to know that we should talk about mental health just like we talk about cancer. I want them to know it’s ok to not be ok. That there is support there for them to get through whatever struggles they may be having. I want to help end the stigma by being a part of the solution.
The truth is I loved my nephew with all of my heart. Was he perfect? Absolutely not. Did he make mistakes in his life? You bet he did. But he was a young man with a great heart. He loved his family fiercely. The reality is he made a choice that we will never understand or have answers too. He left a piece of our heart forever with a little hole in it. We can’t go back and change that day or change the struggles he was feeling but we can try to make the world a little bit better for everyone else. We can try to be there for others who may need support. We can do better.
Side note: I wrote this in early May and for whatever reason it has taken me months to actually hit the publish button. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the fear of letting others know, the judgement that may come from it, or still the stigma of mental health and the impact it had on my family. So if you are reading this know that I was finally brave enough to take the first step in walking the walk.
Mrs. Larson PE 