Today Is My First Birthday After I Decided to Live

Here’s how I’m spending it

Grief is an obscene amount of work. So much work that in the past four months since my daughter died, I’ve considered just not doing it anymore. Instead of this agonizing grief and the toil of surviving another day, there’s carbon monoxide. There’s a bullet. There’s a bridge.

I’m no stranger to suicidal thoughts. They clobbered me almost to death in my early twenties, but I clawed myself out without prescription drugs. I know this is not the norm. The darkness of depression doesn’t just “lift.”

[I’m talking about suicide, so here’s your warning if it makes you squeamish. And if you’re considering suicide yourself, please tell someone. That’s what I did. I told my close friends. I told my doctor. I told my family. I spoke up because I’ve been here before and I now know that just giving voice to your thoughts can pull you from the grip of despair. You can also call your country’s Suicide Prevention Hotline. Here is the number in the US: 1–800–273–8255.]

“A permanent solution to a short term problem”

To me, this definition of suicide always seemed like something spoken by someone who didn’t understand suicidal tendencies. At all. “The problem, genius,” I would think, “is life itself.” Duh.

Back in my twenties, what happened is, I got lucky. There’s no other explanation.

I remember some things from that time. The half-assed botched pill episode. The Ipecac.

My mother ordering me to buy a pink dress and wear it, dammit. I’d feel better if I put on some makeup, she screamed. (I bought a pink sundress at Pier One. I hated to admit, but I did feel better.)

Around that time Peter Gabriel released his album So, which was the first music I heard on CD, and it sounded so extra clear and full, I played it loud at least a couple hundred times.

I also started running, literally running away from myself and my thoughts, like a girl on fire, and the flush of endorphins swooshed through my body to rescue me. I didn’t know the physiological, mood-altering effects of exercise at the time, I just knew movement brought me back.

“You can’t stop moving,” I told myself. “Or else…”

And I hadn’t stopped moving until thirty-some years later when my child turned up dead. Then the coronavirus hit like a trainwreck, ending all social, life-sustaining activities like going to the gym and seeing friends.

If I’d had the sense to care, I’d have known I was in serious trouble. Which is bad. Because unlike so many good people — and I wish it weren’t so — I’ve always considered suicide a viable option for getting out of trouble. The very last option, of course, but one which flickers through my imagination in the worst of times.

Until recently, that is… I’m beginning to change my mind.

The day everything ground to a halt

On the second day of February, numerologists were having a heyday. The numerical palindrome was a once-in-a-lifetime date (02/02/2020, yay!), and it was Superbowl Sunday to boot. The year had begun with promise and clarity. 2020 was looking good.

I couldn’t have known that would be the day my 21-year-old daughter died.

As I watched the half time show, I almost called Katie, who’s been dancing ever since we first watched the video of Tina Turner’s 2000 Wembly concert. As a gangly little girl, my daughter would shimmy with those backup dancers like nobody’s business. She wore that DVD out. I figured she was watching the game that night, dancing along with Shakira.

But no, she was lying dead in a closet with a scarf around her neck.

OK, maybe not a scarf, but something you can’t get fingerprints from. That’s all I know. That’s what they tell me. We’re now investigating the case as a homicide, suspecting some sort of foul play.

The world was grieving right along with me

It took my daughter dying to beckon musings of my own death. Thoughts of death (hers, mine, his) drifted, unwanted, into my first waking thoughts in the morning. It had been years since I last felt this darkness, but here it was, slipping easily into place like the last puzzle piece.

Katie’s death/murder/whatever-it-was, followed on the heels by a global pandemic, stopped the whole world in its tracks. Fitting, is it not? Because life as you know it shouldn’t continue after you lose a child. Audacious to think things could go back to normal.

I felt like a loser for entertaining the idea. Not only because suicide would heap trauma on my sons, but because I had buried those thoughts forever, so I thought. Yet every day for months I would mull over all the philosophical reasons for colluding with death, weighing suicide against the handful of reasons not to.

On the one hand, no one would blame me. My sons would get the house and a small retirement nest egg. On the other, I’d never find out if Katie’s demise met with justice. My children (possibly) still need me. My affairs are not in order. Noone knows my passwords. I haven’t destroyed my journals yet. Besides, I thought I’d outgrown this.

I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to live either.

By nightfall, I would allow myself the pleasure of life’s greatest gift — one more sleep.

And the cycle would begin again.

My great miscalculation

Because I still don’t know what happened that early morning of 02/02/2020, my thoughts border on dread almost all the time. Despite a wild imagination, I have yet to find out. At some point, I’ll get to see all the evidence. I’ll get to live through the whole thing again, but this time with her.

I’ve stopped beating myself up for not rescuing her, nor understanding the full threat of danger she was living under. I might have seen it coming if she had shared more with me. But she was always so independent, managing things on her own.

She was beginning to show signs of genuinely enjoying my company and vice versa. Mothers of adult children promise that a contentious relationship with a teenager will eventually blossom into friendship. It was finally happening.

For this blunder in perception, I punish myself. Obtuse to all the signs of the abuse and isolation she endured, I’ll forever pay the price. I didn’t know jack.

Still, at some point, the self-flagellation must stop.

Forgiving myself

In hopes of understanding just what Katie’s soul is up to, I’ve gone in search of meaning beyond my “faith,” which has proven shaky at best these days. I don’t pray to a god anymore, because it feels like I’m exposing myself to a Toxic Meanie, a joke of my imagination. It’s all been a colossal trick. A freak show. what comfort is a Christian god who snivels with us about human suffering?

And if I‘m going to make it through another day, I need more than a god who would forgive suicide, another dead sheep. This ineffectual god can hang. It’s my job to forgive myself for everything if I hope to make it through another half-century, give or take. Which I do.

My readings lately have been heavy on the themes of death, grief, and consolation. Everything from true crime, unsolved murders, cases about domestic violence (those involving both survivors and fatal victims); to writings by parents of deceased children, mourning widows, and the book of Job — which you really can’t call “Christian” because in it God uses people and makes deals with the devil. God should be above that sort of thing if you ask me.

My best friend, trying to help me make sense of it all, recently connected me with her spiritual advisor. In the course of a 60-minute phone call, this self-described “intuitive” revealed a comforting message about the path of Katie’s soul. He grasped the dynamic of our relationship before I even fully described it, and assured me that she had learned from me the proof of unconditional love.

I liked that. The simple message felt right, and I believed him.

He also recommended the book Journey of Souls, about “life between lives.” In it, Michael Newton explores the subject of reincarnation through the hypnosis of his subjects’ past life regressions.

Reincarnation is a concept I’ve dismissed all my life, but after reading Newton’s books I’m less sure where I stand. One section in particular got my attention because it altered my thoughts about suicide.

Here’s what I read about suicide: The soul that decides to end its incarnation by its own hand has to do it all again. In other words, if you end your life you will not be punished. No, not in the least. The spirit world is a source of love and gentle guidance. Rather, if you commit suicide without finishing your job here on earth, you’ll take on another incarnation (a brand new baby body) and deal with the exact same problems you escaped in this life.

According to people who believe in this sort of thing, it’s a simple rinse and repeat. You don’t pass GO until you learn whatever it is you are here to learn during this go-round.

This means essentially that if I say goodbye to this cruel world, then I get to endure the end of Katie’s life again. I get to experience all the grief again. And the sucky marriage, and the failed careers, and the embarrassment of sticking my foot into my tactless mouth again all those times, and my ongoing body shame, etc. All. Over. Again.

So no. If there’s even a 1% chance that Shirley MacLaine is right, then I’m not going to 86 myself. I won’t re-live these lessons again. Plus, at 53, chances are good I’m already more than halfway to the finish line.

Which brings me to my birthday

Today is my birthday. I’m fifty-three. My friends want to celebrate with me, but the thing is, I told them, I’m not celebrating. They tried to plan something over the past week, and I found myself distancing from the whole shebang. If I don’t return phone calls, and if I don’t comment on text threads, they’d get the hint, right?

Why should I celebrate the day I was born when my daughter did not get to celebrate hers this year? Why should I revel in my very existence when my own girl, whose life was just beginning, is a box of ashes under the windowsill?

I finally had to tell my closest friend, I just couldn’t face the day if anyone said “Happy Birthday.” Because there’s nothing happy about it, except…

Well, lots of things. For starters, she is the one who introduced me to the mystic, who told me about the book, which gave me a reason to scratch suicide from my list of options, which quite possibly bought me another day, or many of them. Thank goodness for friends.

So they agreed not to say those dreaded words if I would let them show up and acknowledge that I exist today.

I said okay.

There is something good here

I bought a basket of Fredricksburg peaches by the side of the road last weekend. One fellow, early-rising friend will come over this morning with all the other ingredients to make a cobbler with me. Then we’ll walk the greenbelt and swim in the pool before it gets even too hot for that. I will give the small gift of peach cobbler to people who stop by — hat tip to Hobbits, who give presents on their birthdays — and accept my visitors’ company, if not their impossible wishes for a happy year.

My old mantra beats like a drum: “Life is for the living,” which includes all of it, the death of my daughter along with the good — my sons, friends, family, home, nature, health, etc.

Refusing the company of people on important days breaks the social contract, absurd as grief makes it seem, and we all need the comfort that results from those ties. It would be like leaving a birthday card unopened. It’s just not right. If I don’t let people in, then the whole status quo gets twisty. It means in the future, I don’t get to insert myself into their days.

Celebrating someone else takes your mind off of your treacherous little life, if even for a short while. Being with others and graciously accepting their companionship distracts you from your pain, even if it doesn’t take the pain of living away. People need people for this very reason; to walk with, to eat sugar with, to soak up the sun with.

And shouldn’t all those things make me happy? If they don’t, nevermind. Life is still for the living. You just get extra points if you enjoy such things.

It could be that Katie’s soul is on a journey that has very little to do with me here on earth. It could be that her soul was called to a better, more interesting assignment. It could be that she had to go.

If anything, Katie’s death taught me that no one “deserves” another day of life. This is a hard world. Everyone dies. Some are killed “before their time,” which is a ridiculous concept when you think about it. Life begins and is over in the blink of an eye. Even if I don’t feel “lucky” to see another morning, the sun still rose today, and I can choose to let it shine on me, or not.

Sometimes kindness is the only way through a difficult day. So I will accept friends’ company today for the simple reason that we’re still here among the living. I’ll brave up and answer my phone when family calls from out of state. I’ll do this by turning my undeserved birthday into a day of giving, in my own small way.

When people tell me I’m strong and brave, I know deep down that I don’t have much of a choice.

I say thank you.