Growing Up in the Wake of My Mother’s Suicide
In 1983 I was five and my sister was twelve. We rode the bus home every day after school, and as far as I can remember, we were welcomed back every day by either my mother or dad. Mama and Daddy, we called them. Daddy was a firefighter, so he worked 24 hours and was off 48. On his off days, he worked part-time with another firefighter painting houses or some other odd job. He was able to get home in time to meet us getting off the bus, so it was not entirely out of the ordinary meeting him on this particular day.
Looking back on it now, I wonder if Mama had called him in distress or if he had some kind of premonition that something bad was going to happen. I’ve never really talked to him or my sister about the events of that day, so this is just what I recall after almost 40 years.
Whatever the case, it was quite miraculous Daddy got home when he did. Otherwise, my sister and I would have been the ones to find Mama.
He had to have known something was wrong because after he spoke to us, he hurried inside and was running back out toward us before we even got close to the front door of our single-wide mobile home.
He almost picked both of us up, running us out to the road and stuffing us into the car of a woman whose name I don’t even remember. I was comfortable enough to go with her without protest.
I was scared that Mama had gotten hurt. I kept telling myself that she had broken her leg. That was it. My sister knew it was more. With the wisdom of a 12-year-old, she had probably seen things not quite right with Mama that just never registered with me. She cried the whole time.
We were at the lady’s house for maybe two hours. She had a son and daughter. They had just been to the store, and the kids had candy they offered to share. My sister refused, but I was excited to get Pixy Stix — paper straws filled with sour-tasting sugar.
When Daddy finally got there, I assumed we were going to the hospital to see Mama. I didn’t know how long doctors took to fix a broken leg. It must be a long, I thought because we didn’t go to the hospital. We stopped at Granny and Granddaddy’s house.
These were Mama’s parents, and there were more people there than usual. They were all sad. Daddy took us back to what had been my uncle’s bedroom when he still lived at home. He sat us down on the bed and told us as gently as possible that Mama had died. Everyone cried.
I don’t remember if it was that day or later that I learned that she had killed herself. She had shot herself with a pistol in her and Daddy’s bedroom.
I am grateful this incident has never had any debilitating effects on me, my sister, or my father. My father remarried a couple of years later and has been married since. I have had some pretty sad experiences though.
I supposed I must have been embarrassed by what my mom had done because I can remember lying to friends when they asked why I called what they thought was my mother by her first name. I explained that she was my stepmother and that my parents were divorced. Luckily, I was never interrogated about it much further.
I am not sure if my mother had been diagnosed with mental illness, but I vaguely remember visiting her in a hospital where no one seemed to be physically ill. I still have pieces of arts and crafts that she worked on at this hospital. When I was a teenager, I learned that mental illness could run in families, which did cause some concern for a while. Though there have been short periods of melancholy, I am generally pretty stable.
In the pain of losing their daughter, my mother’s parents ended up making some pretty nasty accusations against my father. He was so infuriated that he wouldn’t allow us to see them. Though I don’t want to share the content of the accusations, I can say that I don’t blame him. Regardless, I would have liked to have grown up knowing these grandparents.
I believe in God and in His divine providence. He is not the author of evil but instead works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
I miss my mother, and I hate that she experienced so much pain she thought suicide was the only way out. But I am thankful as I look back at all the good that has come in my life.
