Despite two suicides in my immediate family, my feelings of loss have been few.
Anderson Cooper on CNN did a recent interview with Stephen Colbert and they spent a lot of time talking about loss. Cooper lost his father from a heart attack at age ten and his brother, two years older than him, to suicide when both were in their early twenties. He also lost his 90+yo mother a few months ago. Colbert lost his father and two brothers closest to him (of 11 children) in a plane crash at the age of ten.
It's startling to me how much they both are affected by losses from decades ago, and how Cooper still feels the loss of his mother. I know that Cooper has said to many people he's interviewed over the years, "I feel an affinity with you because I know you lost a family member to suicide, and I did, too." I always find myself thinking that if he ever had reason to interview me, and said that to me, I'd have to correct him that I didn't feel the loss that he did.
I was very close to my older brother, as we were just a year apart, and it was a gap of three years before the next brother, and then the fourth, came along. One of my fond memories is of us both getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, from our bedrooms at opposite ends of the hall in the basement, and I'd sit on the toilet and scoot to one side, and he'd pee into the gap next to me. We'd both be sleep laden and not say a word to each other.
My mother was very into the idea of people "getting tired" of each other. Actors on a TV series disliked each other because they "got tired" of each other. Relatives "got tired" of each other. And siblings that were close while young always grew apart when they got older, because they "got tired" of each other. I was maybe 8yo when she said the latter, and I recall looking at my older brother, Brad, and thinking, "I'll NEVER get tired of Brad!"
But then when he started working at Dairy Queen at 14yo, and for the next four years, and then also eventually had a girlfriend, things did indeed change, because he had other priorities. I remember one Sunday when he came home from work, I was eager to gush about the recently concluded Denver Broncos football game, and he just started talking to our younger brothers about work, because they sometimes worked at the Dairy Queen, too. My sense of loss -- that I was no longer part of his world -- was strong, and I knew he must be tired of me as his sister.
When that brother killed himself at the age of 18, I didn't feel a sense of loss, because I'd already mourned the loss of our sibling relationship. In fact, I was aware almost immediately that his death was the best thing that could have happened to me. By that time, I was extremely depressed and thought about suicide myself all the time. I didn't belong in the world, and the few people who thought well of me -- mostly teachers -- I knew would be hugely disappointed if they were to find out that the things that were truly important to me -- watching Starsky & Hutch love each other, the excitement of the sport of horse racing, etc. Plus, by that time, I'd decided that our parents were idiots and I wanted nothing to do with them, which seemed fine, because they certainly didn't want anything to do with the awful person that was me.
So, when my brother killed himself, I immediately felt a sense of relief. Not because I wanted him gone, because I didn't, or because it was expected, because it wasn't. But, for me, it was evidence that someone who was as hugely successful as him at a young age (was working at 14yo, got his pilot's license by 18yo, was an A and B student) still felt it necessary to kill himself, then the family environment I was in must be pretty terrible. It was the first time I felt I could start to let myself off the hook. Up to then, I'd always thought the reason I felt so awful all the time is that it was a mistake that I was ever born. I was one of Nature's Big Mistakes. Suddenly, I had hope that I wasn't.
Another reason my brother's death was an instant relief was because tension had been increasing in the family. My father, an M.D., had been a severe drug addict for years, had officially tried to kill himself a few weeks before. Things were spiraling to a climax, and there was a strong sense that something was going to happen, and I wanted it to hurry up and be over with. So, it was a relief that something did, and I could now adapt to the new environment.
As for my father, I alone know that I didn't feel any affection for him. He was never around much, and our mother made it clear that he was an idiot and The Enemy, so he never had a chance with us. From the age of ten, he was on to me about my weight and wanted me to the pageant queen sex symbol daughter. (Such a contrast to my mother's attitude that any woman who desired male attention was a whore.) I wanted nothing to do with any of that "girl" stuff and was very angry that he wanted me to be, to my mind, a whore. I didn't even try and kept wishing that I had a sister who wanted to be a beauty queen. In my father's eyes, I was a Fat Pig, anyway, so all the more reason to not want to be around him. He was a miserable person, and after many attempts, he successfully killed himself when I was in my early twenties and living with a boyfriend. Though I didn't give my father much thought anyway, I was glad he was gone. My boyfriend was far more upset about his death than I was, and was appalled at how the family mostly seemed "ho hum" about it.
I was startled, years later, to find out that my youngest brother, who our father openly hated, was apologetic to me about having negative thoughts about our father. When I questioned him about why he was so apologetic, he said, "Well, I know you and Dad had a special relationship, you being Daddy's Girl and all." Huh????? I was absolutely floored. Couldn't believe he thought that was the relationship I'd had with our father. I can't recall a single kind word that our father had ever said to me. I bluntly told my brother that I was glad when our father died, but I'm not sure it made a dent. I've gotten hints here and there, throughout the years, that a lot of family members assume I had great affection for my father.
The most devastated I have been by a death was when a friend, 13 years older than me, died of leukemia in her early 50s and I hadn't known she was sick. It wasn't like we even saw each other all that much, but she was one of those people you wanted to be around, because it always felt good. As much as she bitched about her job and "getting old sucks" and so forth, she was very positive toward me as a person, and since she'd had the same job for decades, I think she admired and perhaps envied all that I'd accomplished at a young age -- had followed my bliss, so to speak -- whereas she saw herself as one who simply went through the motions of life.
I realized in December of 2001 that we hadn't talked to each other since leaving each other phone messages after she pet sit for me when I went to England the prior summer. So, I called and her husband said she wasn't there, as she was visiting her brother out of state and he wasn't sure when she'd be back, since it was an open-ended thing. It seemed like a weird conversation and after hanging up I wondered if there was problems in their marriage. Then he called me a week later and said, "You know when I told you Karen was visiting her brother? Well, I lied. She was in a hospice and died this morning." That hit like a ton of bricks. There was suddenly a huge hole in my body. I remember wrapping my arms around my shuddering body, desperately trying to keep the hole from widening. Something so, so wonderful suddenly wasn't there anymore.
He told me that Karen had been diagnosed with leukemia a few months before and she hadn't wanted anyone beyond immediate family to know. I'd always known that death for her would be like that, because she was one to always turn attention away from herself. She'd agreed to an experimental treatment, but when there wasn't any improvement after two weeks, she said, "I'm done. Let me die." She'd always indicated that was the attitude she would have toward death.
For a day or two, I went through the roller coaster of smiling when thinking of her, to feeling such great despair that she was gone. Finally, I gave in to the despair and stayed in bed for a whole day, sobbing off and on. I knew I would see her again on some other plane, but the sense of something precious being gone was very real in the here and now.
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