I woke up on Aug. 2, 1999, to the sounds of birds singing triumphantly and loud sunshine beating through my cotton curtains, ushering me awake.
I rolled over smiling from a delicious dream, but as I gained consciousness, I could feel a snake sneaking through my stomach. It was weaving through my intestines, shouting, “You shouldn’t be happy today.” And suddenly, I could feel waves of nausea starting to turn into a typhoon of sick.
“How the %#$& can the birds still be singing?” I screamed internally. “Don’t they know what happened yesterday?”
Two days prior, I knew something was wildly wrong. My gut never lies, and he and I had had a connection, that even as kids, I’d known wasn’t the norm. We had dated on and off through our early teen years, and then he moved one town over. It may as well have been another state to a 15-year-old. And yet, we’d bump into each other from time to time, and his scorching blue eyes would burn into mine, and I’d feel like I’d been stung again.
That night, I’d felt my gut grimace with that familiar pang of something’s-not-right and reached for the phone. I left a voicemail. “I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I feel like something’s wrong, and I can’t shake it. Please call me and tell me you’re OK. That’s all I want.”
He never called me back.
We hadn’t spoken since April, when he called the house I grew up in at midnight to tell me he loved me. That he needed me to know. And even then it felt like foreshadowing. “What’s wrong?” I begged in a whisper. My parents would kill me if they knew a boy was calling at that hour. “Nothing,” he promised. “I just need you to know that I’ll always care about you.”
By that time, he had a new teen love in another town, but we were always friendly and happy to see each other. And we’d recall our past, as though we were old and gray and our love was ancient history. “Remember that time we danced in the run? Remember the necklace I mailed you, taped to a postcard? Remember …”
I remembered how I’d burned with embarrassment when my mother told him I ate a green crayon as kid. I remembered my mom sighing exhaustingly and shouting up the stairs, “He’s here to see you … again.”
The next morning after I’d left that message, I hopped into my friend’s car, and at the steering wheel, her mother was crying. “He killed himself,” was all she could get out between gasps for air and eyes exploding with tears.
“Who?” I demanded. “WHO!” I screamed louder. I was in the back seat, about to jump out of my skin, my blood boiling inside my veins. But I knew.
He was 16.
I was convinced for years that no one could possibly understand my pain, and even still, I don’t think anyone does entirely. You can never fully wrap your heart and head around another person’s grief. There’s no right way to experience it, no time limit, no action plan, and it certainly isn’t linear. It’s not an experience anyone should have, especially as a child – to lose someone around you in such a violent way.
Even though I’d experienced loss prior, it felt like the beginning of dozens of unnecessary, tragic, dark, heavy losses of neighborhood kids in and around my hometown. The number of parents I know who have buried their children is simply unspeakable, and my own heartache, while deep to me, feels like a single drop in an ocean of agony.
I’ll always think of him, though decades later he shows up less in my dreams and as a mirage in the corner of my eye. His appearances in my memories are now less stormy and more warm. The climate has changed in the part of my brain where he is stored. Now I don’t curse the birds for singing, but instead encourage them to vocalize their happiness through chirps and whistling intonations.
Life is unpredictable. Sometimes the rain casually drips from the sky, and sometimes it downpours. So, celebrate the sun every second you feel its beams. When the darkness comes, the bright orb you’ve worshipped may just get you through the mourning.
Join me in supporting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I'll be participating in the Out of the Darkness Pittsburgh Walk in September, and would appreciate your support.
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