Category Archives: Loss

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Her Suicide Still Speaks, Part 2

Here is WHY I am writing about suicide on Thanksgiving week

-1993-

In 1993, the church’s Thanksgiving celebration dinner was on a Sunday night. All the people’s praises and proud moments from the past months were being shared publicly. It was all happy. I couldn’t sit there any longer. Joining in the joy was impossible. I wrapped my coat around me, left my family at the table, walked across the gym to the double doors and out into the cold night air. A woman followed me. I knew of her hidden pain. We stood there, just the two of us, looking at the stars. I held back my tears. She was teary-eyed. We were in pain, neither of us talking.

She’d been married ten years and desperately wanted children. But two recent miscarriages plus an upset in a church where her husband had pastored and where they had ministered together, had left their mark, and with doubt and confusion about their calling. Wounded. They were trying to recover, to get their feet back on solid ground. My sister’s passing two months before had left me sad, injured, regretting, in raw pain. I was utterly dismayed by it. The woman had known my sister in college.

I said to her. “I’m not very thankful this Thanksgiving.” She said, “I’m not, either.” Our broken hearts comforted each other that barren night.

-2018-

At first I had misgivings about posting this blog post about suicide during a week dedicated to being thankful. It seemed inappropriate and the content too dark. I knew some of my readers would be waiting for Part 2, but some of the others might find it depressing. Then I thought of how people get suicidal during the holiday season. That is the WHY I am going ahead.

Three friends recently talked with me about suicide before I wrote the original post (which is now divided into three parts). One person asked me why Lois  ended her life. That is the usual first question I am asked, along with a second question, whether I think she’s in heaven or not and why I think so.

Maybe it is the right time, afterall.

Lonely people suffer during the holidays. A few of them consider committing suicide. Some will follow through, sad to say. They can’t take it any longer. I believe emotional or physical pain, loss of hope and belief that it will never get better, chemical imbalances and depression, spiritual alienation, abuse, disorders, significant loss –relationship, health, financial– negative self-talk, and despair are some of the reasons. I believe Satan whispers his lies and uses the power of influence to deceive the discouraged, suicidal person into believing they are better off dead than alive. He is a master of disguise. He makes good seem bad, and bad seem good.

My mother delighted in her children

Mother and Lois birthdays were a day apart. Celebrating at my house.

Like the rest of us,  Mother missed Lois, but her’s was with a mother’s heart. That has got to be more intense. She had birthed Lois, had dreams for her daughter, had prayed faithfully for her. She was excited about Lois’ successes, but she was worried over her daughter’s increasing distance from her faith, from her Christian beliefs, and from her famalial heritage.

When it doesn’t make sense

The three years before she passed, my sister chose a different way, which meant she had less interest in attending family events, and had less commonality with us. That hurt and confused, and we didn’t really understand what was going on with her or the reasoning behind it, other than the occasional hint. This scared us.

We feared for Lois, knowing that abandoning one’s faith removes the moral compass and invites wrong thinking and wrong friendships. My sister Marilyn in Oregon and me in California committed to praying specifically for Lois, every day at mid-morning, believing the verse, that where two are gathered in his name there is power.

My siblings were concerned for Lois, as was Mom. After a family reunion, my sister told Mom that she didn’t believe like the family, and she didn’t believe in God anymore. Mother was devastated by this. Her view of our perfect Christian family tumbled to smithereens that day, like a house of cards. Her life’s work — us kids, collapsed. Her prayer life deepened out of concern for Lois. I am sure many of you can relate to this. Mom grieved, then and later, probably more than I can imagine. She carried her hurt and loss alone, rarely speaking of it.

Mother encouraged me in my spiritual quest, in my desire to help wounded people. I think the reason she supported me was because of losing Lois, and her realizing that life is not so simple as Christians glibly say, and because I get that. She wanted me to get my message out.

Like my friend Bob once said, “I grasped for love, and caught its pain.” I love that line. It is so true.  Pain happens to all of us.

After Lois died, Mother and I would talk about Lois when it was only the two of us. She couldn’t talk about Lois with her friends and not much with her family, either. It was a taboo subject, a silent thing, something forbotten, mysterious, like something you almost have to have permission to talk about.

It was safe for Mother to speak with me about Lois. I was open, learning, curious, sensitive. And I spoke with grace in regard to Lois. That ministered to Mom’s need. She was hurting in ways not visible. Lois’ death was like an earthquake, not like a little rumble. She and I could not understand it, though. We put some of the pieces together, but some of Lois’ secrets and troubles went to the grave with her.

This year, 2018, it has been twenty-five years since I last spoke with Lois, in person, four weeks before she left us. The kids and I made a trip to Oregon to see my sisters. It was a beautiful day out and the kids and I went for a walk with Lois at a park in Beaverton, OR, near where she lived, and we had dinner and watched a movie at her digs. She was thoughtful and quiet that day.

You are never the same after you lose someone to suicide

I write about suicide on this blog since that is how I lost my sister.  I know first-hand how much it hurts. My dad, now eighty-nine, said to me the other day, that he has had a good life, that he has no regrets, that marrying my mother was one of the best decisions he ever made. He paused, then said, “except for losing Lois.” My parents, in particular, bore that loss deep in their hearts, in silence, though not in bitterness. They never blamed God, they accepted as best they could, the difficult and almost impossible to accept.

We miss Lois with a sadness that is different than most ways people experience sad feelings. Suicide begins a painful journey that speaks a strangely silent sorrow that you can never quite get over, although you go on, and the pain lessens, and you heal. Fortunately, its effect dims with time, to some degree, but there’s still that empty spot, the person not there, the hole in the heart. Regret, failure, nostalgia, love, pain, longings, memories, sweetness all come with the sorrow one experiences after a suicide.

. . .

How are you doing?

Are you in despair? Have you come to the end of  your rope? Do you wish somebody cared? Someone does care. I care. If I could give you a gift right now, I would give you hope. Hope says, the sun will rise again. Life will become sweeter after the storm has passed. Sunshine will come into your life once again, down the road and around the bend. Don’t listen to the voices in your head. They’re lying to you. Lay it all at the feet of Jesus. If it’s all dark, pressing, heavy, and you don’t think you can face another day, please call a crisis line or reach out to someone. That’s your next step. The world needs you. I want you to hold on, to make it. I want to know you made it. I’m going to pray for you right now. Hold on to hope. Copy that. God bless you.

Part 3 — Continued in my next post.

Part 1 is here.

Photo — At Grandma’s house with my sisters: Juanita, me, Lois,  Marilyn and Uncle Vernon and Grandma Weigold. Circa 1983.

Disclaimer. I speak for myself, not for my family. This is my personal opinion, my take, and my conclusions.

Thank you to my family for allowing me to share our family’s heartache. You were willing to trust me with this.

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Her Suicide Still Speaks, Part 1

A shocking reality

Lois Faith Brumbaugh circa 1980

“Lois died today,” it said. The words jumped out at me. A warm tingling sensation caused me to tear up.

We were cleaning my mother’s room when we came across a brown lidded container in her bottom dresser drawer. In it were tablets organized by month and year with brief notations my mother had written. I thumbed through the tablets specifically looking for September, 1993. Found it.

I plucked the small tablet out of the box. I was curious to see what my mother had written about my baby sister’s passing. The entry was in extra tiny script, like she was hesitant, or it was too hard to bear to write it.

Just one line, three words. “Lois died today.” That was all. Its starkness shocked me. The ending of her baby’s life was reduced to one line in a tablet. But, oh what it did not say, what Mother didn’t allow herself to say–what Mother would have said if she’d given herself the permission to say it–how Lois’ sudden death had shocked her and had shaken her to the core and totally crushed her heart. How she felt like a failure and believed she hadn’t done enough. How she had wanted to talk to Lois via phone that night but had not been feeling well enough to make the call.

Oh the regrets, the terrible regrets.

My sister’s suicide stunned us, Mother, Dad, my siblings, me. All of us were devastated. We couldn’t believe it. Christians and children from Christian homes aren’t supposed to commit suicide. This compounded our loss with layers of shame, blame, and guilt. You can’t help but blame yourself. If only, became the refrain in almost every conversation for months, and in the heart for forever. . . .

A death by suicide begins a painful journey for family and friends.

Lois’ Bible

I am at my folk’s home right now, reading in my sister’s bible. I sit in a burgundy recliner reading scripture.

A couple of days ago I noticed a thick, coffee-colored bible on my mother’s nightstand, not knowing it was my sister’s.

Lois’ familiar signature on the inside cover, in confident, elegant script, reminds me of her essence. It is so like her. My sister was witty, beautiful, stylish, with an eye for tasteful decor. She was keen in thinking, smart in application. Lois amazed me, a shy kid turned accomplished adult. I’d been proud of her.

I’ve never stopped missing her.

As I turn the bible’s pages, it is obvious to me that my mother read in this bible quite a bit. The pages are soft with use. I wonder if it made her feel close to Lois. It does for me.

Every September I write a remembrance about the sister I lost. This past September got away from me as did October, and it didn’t happen. What would I write this time? For a couple of months I’ve thought about it, what to say,  what will speak to my readers?

Reading from her bible reminds me that it is time to speak of Lois once again. Her life still speaks. It speaks through the words I write. It speaks to people who knew her and were loved by her. It reminds us to pay attention to others.

Suicide is difficult and confusing.

Suicide touches many families in the Christian community. I want you to know what it is like after a suicide for a Christian family. I also want to speak life to those who consider suicide as their only option to end the pain. That will come in Part 2 and Part 3. I think we cannot be silent about suicide or its effect on our families.

A thought or two

Lois has been on my mind a lot lately. It is the time of year. Lois was born in September. Thirty-three years later, she died in September. Twenty-five years later, I’m writing about her and my mother with a new freedom. The nearness of death, with the recent passing of my mother, her services and goodbye, brings the memory of Lois close. She should have been with us, mourning our mother’s passing. Maybe she could see us from her heavenly home. If so, I think she would have been moved by our sorrowing.

Photo by Son 1 from earlier in 2018. He decided to pay his respects to his Aunt Lou.

I thought of Lois more than usual as we went through the letting go motions with Mother. We have done this same drill before, at Lois’ passing, and with a similar ending. Lois’ goodbye was with a sorrow too deep for words. There on the hill at the cemetery in Stayton, Oregon, by the side of her grave, the casket already lowered in the ground, with our arms wrapped around each other, Dad said, “I never expected something like this to happen in our family.”

We stood there, remembering, sorrowing, and weeping, rooted to the spot. Death is a long goodbye. But suicide makes it ten times worse. Her life didn’t have to end that way. She was like a beautiful flower that left us, leaving an empty spot in her place. How I longed to speak to her, to hug her, to help her, to love her back from the grave.

When Mother was fading last August, I imagined my mother entering heaven’s gate, her joy at seeing Lois, and their embrace. I pictured their happiness at being together. Tears formed at the thought. A friend said to me, “Soon your mother will see Lois again,” and we both smiled as I nodded in agreement. I pictured their reunion as a beautiful moment of tender love and pure joy.

Continued in my next post: A Mother’s Broken Heart

A suicide changes a family. My sister's suicide changed our Christian family.
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Disclaimer. I speak for myself, not for my family. This is my personal opinion, take, and conclusions.

Link to my first blog about Lois: In Memory of My Little Sis, Lois Faith Brumbaugh