Called to Trust: In the Wake of Suicide

Tuesday, February 3, 2009.

I had opened the cafe I was managing at the time that morning and had returned home to take a nap after my shift ended. I had several things I needed to get done that day but I was worn out from the week prior so I decided a short nap would be the best course of action.

I ignored two cell phone calls during that time.

I don’t remember who the first one was from but the second was from my aunt. And when she called me back a few minutes later, I thought maybe I should answer it. But, I didn’t get to it in time and ended up having to call her back.

At the time, I was living in the house of a couple that had taken me in after my mom had kicked me out of her house. The wife of that couple had gotten home a few minutes prior and was in the kitchen as I walked in dialing my aunt’s number. She and I chit-chatted for a few minutes during which she ignored a couple of calls that came through her cell phone.

Then the house phone rang.

She turned to answer it as I left the kitchen and pushed “Send” on my cell.

“Hi, darlin’.”
“Hey Aunt Jodi, sorry I missed your call…”

There was silence on the other end.

And I knew.
Something was wrong.
I thought maybe something had happened to my grandfather, but…but Aunt Jodi was calling me. Not Mom.
Mom would call me if it were Grandpa.

“Aunt Jodi, what’s wrong?”
“Honey, your mama….your mama’s in heaven.”

I don’t remember if she had shared the how with me then or if I just instinctively knew it but I do remember dropping the phone and then dropping to the floor.

The world stopped. I couldn’t breathe. And my face was soaked with tears.

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Mom’s Freedom

Ten years ago, today, my mom committed suicide.

She had gone in to work that morning and was found sometime later in the bathroom. She’d taken a pistol in with her.

My childhood often felt chaotic and unstable to me. I regularly found myself wishing to be anywhere but home. It’s not that I felt unloved, quite the contrary, actually. I just never felt safe. Life with Mom was a constant game of “who am I going to meet today?” and walking on eggshells so as not to disrupt her. She could be incredibly loving and encouraging and patient one minute and the very next rip me to shreds because I had done or said or reacted some way that she didn’t like. There was verbal abuse. There was emotional abuse. And there was physical abuse. I was never really sure what would set her off and struggled to understand why. But, there was also love and joy and laughter. I was confident in her love for me.

During my sophomore year of college, Mom was diagnosed with bipolar and borderline personality disorders. And, while these diagnoses explained a lot of my childhood, they will never excuse it. Regardless, Mom courageously fought to win the war over her mind while she raised my two siblings and me.  Daily, hourly, breath-by-breath battles would rage within as her mind would betray her and she would have to fight to see Truth.  For many years, she won.  And then, in 2008, her mom passed away and, really, from that day on Mom had only been existing.  There was no life, no joy, no spirit; just breathing.

Sometimes I wonder what was going through her head as she stood, facing the mirror, in that bathroom. Other times I ask myself why I would ever want to know those thoughts. Most of the time, though, I simply wonder what brought her to that point. She had won many previous battles with suicide for such a long time already (most of my life, really) why did she lose the war now?

I’ve pacified myself by answering that it was most certainly a combination of several things – the death of her mother, financial stress, her struggles with mental illness and her never-ending fear of abandonment, to name a few – which all came together, along with seeing a means to the end of it all and a place to do it, on that Tuesday morning.

In other words, motive(s) met mode and opportunity. And that made for lethal combination.

But, the truth is that I will never really know why she made the choice to leave this world, to leave my siblings, to leave her father and her sister, to leave her grandchildren…and to leave me. At least not on this side of heaven.

So much life has happened since her death. Life that she’s not been here to share in with us and to experience with us. Christianese would say that she’s been here “in spirit” and that she’s always with us. And that’s not untrue. 

But, it also doesn’t change the fact that she isn’t actually here. And she hasn’t been for ten years. She wasn’t here for The World Race, my wedding day, the start of my photography business, the growth in our family (albeit, with granddogs, not grandbabies, for her), the start of our nonprofit, my transitions in jobs or anything else over the last decade. And she’s not here now as I transition out of traditional, full-time employment, into something different.

She never met my husband. She doesn’t know most of my friends. She’s never seen me work in an office. She hasn’t seen any of my photography or read any of my blog posts. She’s missed out on so much. And so have we. Who knows what her life could have looked like over the last decade. I can’t even imagine it.

Part of me wishes we could go back to that day, ten years ago, but live in the unseen “limbo” that time zone changes create. That space of time where “it” hasn’t happened yet. If we could just go back to that day and I could somehow live forever in that magic space, that time vacuum between even Texas and Colorado, I would be able to see her face again. I could hear her voice and watch her quirky mannerisms forever. I could fight with her when she didn’t make sense to me and crawl into her lap when I was fearful. I could hear the wisdom of her life and bring joy to her with the passing of mine. She could exist again.

And, while my heart aches for her and wishes that I could hear her voice, listen to her laugh, rejoice in her singing and be comforted by her love & guidance, I know that she is finally at peace.  Mom found freedom at last.   

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God’s Faithfulness

A few years before Mom’s death, I remember a shift in my prayer life. For most of my life, I prayed that God would change my Mom. That He would help her to be more predictable; less angry and stressed out and more happy and peaceful. That He would help her see my point of view; open her ears up to hear reason and her eyes up to see that I was just trying to help. That He would help her to listen to the words I was saying and not just react to the body language I was portraying. But I began to pray, “Lord, help me see her the way You do. Help me to love her the way You love her. In the midst of everything, show me how to be her daughter.” Once the diagnoses came (and I had accepted them, myself), I also began to pray that the Lord would set her free from the mental illnesses she fought.

Did I have any idea that, over the next several years, the Lord would indeed hear my prayers and begin answering them? Was there any way to know then that, in the year-and-a-half leading up to Mom’s death, she and I would experience the most healing in our relationship than in the prior lifetime before?

Nope. But God did.

That couple I mentioned walked with me in the coming days as I went through the necessary arrangements that come with the death of a loved one. You see, by this time, this couple had been in my life for the better part of seven years. Most of that time, I had been either living in their home or in one of the apartments on their property. The Lord had placed them in my life at a time when the relationship with my mother was at its rockiest. She’d kicked me out of the house and this couple had taken me into theirs. Over those seven years, this couple had done a lot to reparent me and became an integral part in me developing my own identity and self-esteem outside of my mother. They became a second set of parents to me.

That call to the house phone that day was the husband informing the wife about Mom’s death, telling her not to leave me and that he was on his way to us. The two ignored calls to her cell phone were also him trying to reach her. This means that, at the same time I was hearing the news of the death of my biological mother, my “other mother” was hearing of it, as well. And she was the one who comforted me on the floor where I fell after my knees buckled.

Did any of us know that we would develop this kind of relationship the first night they let me stay at their house? Were we aware that the Lord would do so much in my life, through their willingness to be used by Him, that I would, independently of my mother, choose to follow Him? Was there any inclination that my mother would take her own life seven years later and that I would need someone who was willing to stand in her place to help me walk through her death?

Nope. But God did.

In the days, weeks and months following her death, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I had this picture in my mind of what the grieving daughter of a suicide victim should look like and, to be honest, I wasn’t really living up to that vision. I was grieving, make no mistake about that. I was heartbroken and confused and unsure of what life would be like from that point forward. I stayed up late, slept a lot, took some time off work and escaped to Ireland for a few days. But I never felt lost or abandoned or unseen. I never stopped functioning. I didn’t self medicate and I didn’t lose touch with reality. That shoe never dropped.

Is there any reason to believe I was able to keep myself together on my own and not fall into the deepest pits of despair in the wake of her death?

Nope. But God did.

It was through Mom’s death, I began to see the Lord’s faithfulness in my life. He knew seven years prior to what was to come and allowed a relationship with virtual strangers to grow so deeply that I had a mother figure on Earth with me at the time my actual mother left it. He knew four years prior and changed my heart (and my prayer(s)) toward and about my mom so that we could experience some healing before she passed. And then He was the safety net that kept me from hitting the proverbial rock bottom after she died.

Called to Trust

The last ten years have been a journey of pain, healing, and sustenance as I continue to walk with the Father through the grief.  Naively, I thought this walk would be a relatively “quick” journey and I would get over it soon enough.  But, along the way, I realized that I will likely always have a dull ache in the part of my heart where Mom exists.  She was a major part of my life, influencing and establishing the roots of who I am, grooming and directing me into the woman I would become. 

How could I ever get over her?

I will never understand why Mom had to experience some of the things she experienced in her life. I will never understand why she had to struggle with finances and mental illness and irrational fears. I will never understand why her faith wasn’t strong enough to get her through that final battle. I will never understand why God allowed her to make the choice she made. I will never understand why He didn’t allow her freedom to come on this earth.

And I will never understand Mom’s death. Ever.

But.

I was never called to understand. I was only called to trust.

To trust that God is still God and God is still good. Regardless of my circumstances. Regardless of my feelings. Regardless of my understanding. He is still on the Throne and has always had a plan for my life, plans for good and not for evil, plans to give me hope and a future.

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This post is a compilation of various posts I’ve written in various blogs over the years since Mom’s death. Therefore, some parts of this post may be able to be found elsewhere on the internet. However, all of the words (whether in this or previous posts) are 100% mine.