My Dearest Gabriel,
It has taken me too many years to write this letter to you. It was just too difficult for me to find the courage, the honesty and the words to talk about your mother, her life and her death. Thinking about her still brings a lump to my throat and sends a shudder of melancholy and a pang of guilt through me.
I was a friend of your mother’s. We were in graduate school together. For two years I was a student with your mother. I got to know her well as we worked our way through a night program that was teaching us about how to help people who are in pain. Your mother was beautiful. When she walked into the room the first night of school, she took my breath away. She was the type of person who always looked so put together and who seemed so proud. Your mother had a smile was wide and warm. Her energy beamed like a lighthouse.
Your mother was the bravest among us in graduate school. She would volunteer to be the first of us to practice the art of therapy in front class without shame or hesitation. She was always up for demonstrating being a therapist or client, or for being hypnotized or for offering a real life example of what we were learning. One night, she demonstrated being a therapist on me. I can still see the way she looked at me with such empathy and kindness as I stammered shyly through my own life’s pain.
Your mother was by far the most honest person I have ever met. She would share things about herself. She divulged things that many people burry deep inside themselves and let fester there. But your mother, she would talk openly about her terribly painful, traumatic and tragic childhood. She talked about her own devastating loss of her mother to suicide when she was just two, just like you. She shared her history with addiction – how she turned to drugs and alcohol to try to cope with the trauma she experienced as a little girl. She was eloquent about her terrifying and overwhelming battle with depression. Her honesty was inspiring. If only more people could be so open about themselves, so many barriers would fall, shame and stigma would be overcome and so much more healing could be done.
But most of all, Gabriel, she would talk about you. When she spoke about you, her eyes would come alive. It was like seeing a flower unfold itself for the first time or like watching the sun peak up from behind the San Jacinto Mountains illuminating the morning dew like millions of tiny gems laid perfectly across the lawn. She told me that when she was pregnant with you, it was the happiest that she had ever been in her life. She talked about you growing up so quickly – learning to walk. One day, she and I followed you toddling around our classmate’s backyard. She was so sweet with you and just beamed with delight when she looked at you. She was also careful with you and so very proud of you. One especially dark night, your mother told me that you were the only reason she was still alive.
I used to tell your mom about this song that I loved that had the same name as you, Gabriel. I sang a terrible rendition of it for her. I gave up midway and told her, “I’m going to bring you the cd. This song seems like it was written by you.” I never gave her that cd, so I am giving it to you with this letter. I want to share with you the lyrics.
Gabriel
Written by Lamb
I can fly
But I want his wings
I can shine even in the darkness
But I crave the light that he brings
Revel in the songs that he sings
My angel Gabriel
I can love
But I need his heart
I am strong even on my own
But from him I never want to part
He’s been there since the very start
My angel Gabriel
My angel Gabriel
Bless the day he came to be
Angels wings carried him to me
Heavenly
I can fly
But I want his wings
I can shine even in the darkness
But I crave the light that he brings
Revel in the songs that he sings
My angel Gabriel
My angel Gabriel
My angel Gabriel
Near the end of our schooling together, your mother’s depression began to take over. Her class work slipped, she no longer came to school the put-together woman we had come to know. A few classes she smelled of alcohol. Our last course together was a group therapy class. In that class, one Sunday, I told your mother that I had pulled away from her because based on my own history, it was too difficult for me to be around her when she was using alcohol to cope. I told her this in front of our professor and all of the other students and she began to cry. She cried and cried and cried. She skipped the lunch break that afternoon to cry in her car. Everyone in class said it was brave of me to be honest with her. But, all that I could think was: I hurt her… I hurt her… I hurt her… How can I take it back? To this day, the black tar of guilt still oozes inside of me when I think of that moment. I imagine that so many of us have been left behind with similar moments, holding onto them like hot coals from a fire long extinguished. Burning us as we wonder about how we might have added to her pain. Believing, if we changed this one thing, we might have changed her fate. The thoughts….if only, if only, if only…trailing behind us as if we are wearing them like a cape.
There were so many warnings, Gabriel, that your mother would die the way she did. All of us saw them, heard them, experienced them. She was surrounded by professors who were licensed psychologists and students who were training to be therapists. She had old and new friends, a therapist, a lawyer and your father. All of us knew. We knew she was at risk. We heard her threats. One of our classmates was speaking with her on the telephone a few months before she died. Your mother talked to her about how bleak she felt about her future, about her sobriety, and about how her choices and behaviors had caused her to lose custody of you. Our friend asked her directly if she was threatening suicide. She said, “If you are, I am going to hang up the phone and get you some help right now.” Your mom assured her that she would be fine and she would not do anything like that. But we all knew that she could. She knew that she could. So the afternoon that I got the call that your mother’s body had been found, I cannot say that I was shocked, but I was devastated.
I imagine you reading this now and experiencing it as something like a confession letter. Me telling you that I feel guilty about publicly humiliating your mother and that I have blamed myself all these years for not doing anything about her serious, life-threatening warning signs. With all of my training, (I actually did an hour and a half speech to our class about suicide, she missed that class), I did not stop her. In fact, I lost touch with her. I heard that she went to rehab, I was so happy that she was sober. I heard about her from others, but I never reached out to her. I am not sure that I will ever get over my regrets about her death.
When I think of your mother, Gabriel, I think of her warmth, her strength, her honesty and courage. I think of her smile. I think of her tragic, too short life. And I think of you. Suicide is never an answer. Suicide is not an ending of pain, it just disperses the pain among all of the people who are left behind. Your mother exhausted herself trying to heal her depression. She got a Master’s degree to try to understand how to heal, she tried medication and therapy, she tried to use relationships and drugs and alcohol. Her past haunted her, her sadness overwhelmed her and I have come to believe that she saw no other options. Such is the nature of the suicidal moment, pain leaves no room for comfort or silver linings. But there are always options, Gabriel. Even in our darkest hours of our longest nights, there is a sun that promises to come if you can just get through the moment. I wish I could have held her hand through that night, I wish I could have played her that song. I wish I could have reminded her, in her mentally sickened weakened state, you do have something to live for, you have someone to live for.
Gabriel, I know that your mother’s death has put a scar on you that will always send a spasm of pain. I imagine that her death and your grandmother’s death might have planted a nasty seed in you. One that if nurtured could bloom a weed that tells you this could be your destiny too. But, do not water that seed. It is merely a tiny one, smaller than a poppy. Without attention, it has no power. I hope that someday your scar might become a gift, a reminder that you were loved more than you were left, that your life was born from a happiness that overtook the most powerful of despairs. May your scar become an inspiration to make your own life or other’s lives better, to stop the legacy of suicide and learn how to help others. Gabriel, there are so many people in this world that wear similar scars and it is how we wear them that can shape our lives.
For me, now three years after your mother’s death, I have a scar too; one that I’m using to fuel research about how to help others who feel like you, your father, your mother. I am writing my doctoral thesis on survivors of suicide. I am researching about how therapists can best help people who lost loved ones to a suicide death. I am trying to do something to help me let her go. Your mother’s suicide has sent me on a long journey of forgiveness and healing, a journey that I am still finding my way through.
I am so, very sorry for your loss, Gabriel. I hope that somewhere inside, you can feel that brilliant light that your mother embodied because she had her angel…Gabriel. I hope that light will always be brighter than the darkest of nights.
With my deepest sympathy,
Brooke Sears