My Parents Both Died By Suicide — On The Same Day. I Haven’t Been The Same Since.

In the middle of a plate of enchiladas and salad, the phone rings. I sigh — it’s been days since I’ve had the time or appetite to enjoy a meal. My husband, Tom, is busy at the kitchen counter, so I reach for the phone, and my brother says, “They’re both gone.” It’s 2 p.m. on Dec. 18, 1994, and with those three words, I am orphaned. 

After several years of suffering physical and mental anguish, my mother could take no more, and my father, who people later said couldn’t bear the thought of life without his bride of 46 years, went along for the final ride, ending both their lives in their garage.

On that day, as Tom and I made the 90-minute drive from our home in Massachusetts to the small farm in Connecticut where I was brought up, I looked to the sky, hoping for some kind of a sign — of peace, or comfort or simply of resolution. In the cloud formation above me I imagined two figures, waving goodbye.

That was the first of many signs I have received over the now 29 years since my mother and father died by suicide at ages 72 and 73, respectively. My view on things in general had always leaned toward “just the facts,” but in the space of 24 hours I began to look beyond the surface and open my eyes to what I could not or would not normally see.

The days that followed were a haze of sorrow-driven activity, but some of what transpired remains clear. 

My father had taken care of all final arrangements, leaving detailed instructions on where to go and who to contact. While not highly religious, my parents wanted to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, and so my brother, husband and I met with the congregation rabbi the day following the deaths, unaware that suicide was considered taboo in the Jewish religion. As such, my parents could not rest in hallowed burial grounds, something the rabbi made us well aware of moments after we were seated. He then asked point blank, “What was the reason for your parents’ sudden death?” I felt a slight tap on my shoulder and suddenly was aware of a way to place their final wish out of jeopardy. I blurted out “mental illness.”

“Ah,” said the rabbi. “For that reason, burial in our cemetery is granted.”

The next day’s graveside ceremony had me again looking toward the sky, but this time no cloud reached down to comfort me. Instead, the air fell cold on shoulders that were suddenly burdened by a weight that still, after all these years, has lightened, but never completely lifted.

Over the next few months, a redefined “normal” made its way into my life, but with it came a sense of vulnerability that remains hard to shake.  

I went back to work within a week. At the time, I was a general assignment newspaper reporter, trained to “get the story, get out, and get writing.”  Increasingly, I found myself lingering over interviews with those people who had been brushed or crushed by tragedy: the father of a drowning victim, a beloved high school teacher diagnosed with a brain tumor, the family evicted from their home by a heartless landlord. I somehow found solace in those I came to refer to as “my people” — others who had been hard hit by a catastrophic circumstance.

Soon that desire to cocoon myself in others’ misery morphed into something else: fear. Fear of today. Fear of tomorrow. Fear of anything that might go wrong. If my husband was more than 10 minutes late getting home from work, I imagined he had been in an accident. If our cat had a slight cough, I was convinced it was congestive heart failure. If my brother said he was feeling blue, I worried he would go down the same path our parents did.