Death Row

Dear Brandon Bernard (inmate #91908-080),

This morning, the sky is a crisp blue and wisps of clouds slowly move across the horizon. The clouds seem wrong, put there by an inpatient painter who wished she had used a different brush. This December morning, my mind has drifted to you. I hope this letter reaches you in time. I worry that I waited too long to write it. I have been hoping that I would learn some news that would change your fate and that I could write a congratulations letter. But not now, not today.  

I learned about you from Sister Helen Prejean, who did a talk at University of California, Santa Barbara.  I live and work as a psychologist in Santa Barbara. I am not from here, I grew up in New York, Chicago, Montana and Colorado, but my adult life has been in this state. Since I was a child, my curiosity and empathy has pulled me toward helping people like you – living out lives you would never choose for yourselves, because of one (or more) really bad choice. Because I am a psychologist, I like to look below, beneath that bad choice there are roots and a seedling that was planted and nurtured by the mistakes of others or society and that led to something deep and desperate. I know you have remorse and regret and would undo it all if you could. 

I have never believed in the death penalty. Every time I get a chance to vote on it, I vote to end such a barbaric punishment. At our dinner table last night, I told my three young children that I was writing to you, because our government (one that I did not vote for) had suddenly decided it was your time, as if you haven’t paid enough by spending all of your adult life incarcerated. My children did not understand what the death penalty was and when explained to them, they were horrified and then so sad. Activism has only been something that lives like a small, useless organ inside of me. I am shy and don’t often put myself out there for the causes I believe in. I think that is beginning to change in me though, because I am tired of watching from the bench on the sidelines. I am never going to help make a difference if I don’t get in the game.

Your story has moved me and I want you to know that your life has made a difference in mine. You have 5 people in this home rooting for you and for others who will come after you. Even if this train keeps on rolling and the plan to take your life is fulfilled by the end of next week, I trust that you will be held in the arms of the universe.

From one crocheter to another, our lives, like yarn, interlock and loop and slip through one another’s creating one long chain. That chain is only the beginning.

Wishing you a painless journey to the great beyond, see you on the other side.

Brooke Sears

Conception

It was an honor to represent the Santa Barbara Wellness Team, Santa Barbara Response Network and Santa Barbara County Psychological Association in offering support to the hundreds of people who gathered last night to mourn the victims of the Conception dive boat tragedy together. What a beautiful and healing gathering. I thought the words that were shared by all who spoke were powerful and meaningful and the music and the sounding of the shofar went right to the soul. While I may have only offered flowers, water, and tissues, I believe that our presence there was supportive and valuable. Gratitude was shared with me for just being there.

For me, being of service in times like these is what helps me process and integrate tragedy. Bearing witness to pain and being able to tolerate and embrace it, is one thing I know that I do well. Maybe it is a unique skill reserved for those of us in the mental health and health fields. Last night, as the sun was easing down behind the palms and casting a golden hue over the large crowd of people bearing flowers for the 34 victims and Amazing Grace was bathing us all, seeing the way people were holding onto one another, offering hugs, holding hands, reaching out for one another physically and emotionally, I was struck with the demonstration of the connectedness of love and grief. What a deeply touching experience to see grief and mourning as one of the most profound and raw expressions of love. The love that was offered and received in the crowd of mourners last night was truly breathtaking. My greatest hope is that the families of the deceased, who live far from here, have communities that hold them like ours did last night. I also hope that those brave and stoic first and second responders have the support they need too. Our responders have been so taxed these past few years.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide support and for inevitably ending up being supported in the process.

Letter to My Mother Upon Her Retirement from Hospice

Mom,

My first memory is of a woman.  She has white hair and I don’t know her name.  There was a large window in her kitchen, a round table placed in front of it, and I sat at this table with her, for hours it seems.  She taught me how to push flowers through wire and wrap it all around a hair comb.  She was a widow and one of your Hospice cases.  Although, my childhood mind encoded no grief in this memory, just pure fascination with this wonderfully patient woman who took the time to teach me her hobby. 

The next memory is of a retirement home, a cafeteria with tables and tables of elderly people eating and you introduced me to the woman who could remember every word to every song that she performed on stage, but nothing of her family or even her own name. I was fascinated with how a mind could do that to someone. Allow them to remember their profession, but not the people they love or even themselves. Next, was the oncology unit, where you learned humor was the best medicine for those who put themselves in harms way in the service of others. The nurses and the doctors played ongoing tricks on one another. You made fun of one particularly surly doctor by hanging a finger condom on the bulletin board with a note saying he needed it for his date tonight. The levels of appropriateness or darkness with the humor surely would not pass today’s standards.

You came to my classroom in sixth grade at a time I was embarrassed to even say “hi” to you in front of my friends. You made the students sit in a circle and put stockings on our heads, over our faces and gloves on our hands and then said, “This is what it feels like to be elderly.  Try to read this label. Try to open this bottle. Try to put on your shoes”. 

In the later years, your stories were peppered with details about what happens to the body as it dies.  The bed sores, the impacted bowels, the smells of mouths, the sound of inconsistent, labored, gurgling breath as a person is in their final hours. You often shared with me the cases that haunted you, challenged you, touched you.

Your life’s work has seemed to me to be the unraveling of your own experience with your mother’s rapid battle with ovarian cancer and her eventual death when you were only 20.  For the past 30 years, yours was the hand that was held at the bedside, the voice that consoled, the eyes that witnessed, the heart that was open in those final, sometimes scary, sometimes peaceful transitions. You gave to everyone you worked with, that which you did not receive when you were young. 

When most of our society is unwilling, unable, uninterested, running from, and terrified of the only thing we know we will experience – death.  You have been there.  Solid, present, compassionate. 

“By their fruits, you shall know them.” 

When asked about my work and what has lead me to wanting to be a psychologist, I say, it began with the woman who gave me life, who introduced me to a woman with white hair who taught me to weave wires through plastic flowers as she grieved the death of her beloved husband.

Letter to My Friend's Son After She Died By Suicide

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