They set down their chairs and start the circle. Soon, others join. The room begins to quieten as everyone settles into their groups. Glancing around the circle, Kavita notices that she and Hawthorn are among the youngest. Apart from one other middle-aged man, Hawthorn is the only male. Kavita is the only person who isn’t white.
Brenda takes a seat to Kavita’s right, once removed. She starts by explaining how things are going to proceed. First, they will take turns introducing themselves. Then they will share the name of their loved one, when they died, how old they were, and how they died. This gives the session structure, but they shouldn’t feel constricted by it. If other things come up, they can feel free to share them, bearing in mind everyone needs to be given a chance to speak by the end of the session.
“The more times we talk about our loss out loud, the more real it becomes. Sharing in a supportive environment also helps to combat shame. After all, shame can’t survive when it’s met with empathy.” A few people nod in agreement. “I’ll start things off. You heard a bit of my grief story earlier. What you didn’t hear was that my mother completed suicide. She was bipolar for most of her life. But her bouts of depression were always more frequent and severe than her highs. Medication and therapy helped her cope, most of the time, but each time she sank into depression, she seemed to sink a little deeper. It would take her longer to come out of it. It would take more effort.
“Before she died, during another high spell, she stopped taking her meds, convinced that she didn’t need them anymore. Shortly after that, her health started deteriorating. She went back on her meds, but they always took weeks to kick in. By then it was too late. She was convinced she would always feel as bad as she did in withdrawal. A few days before she died, we spent some time together, and she told me how worn out she was by it all. It was a red flag, although I didn’t see it at the time. They found her car in a parking lot near Remic Rapids, along with a note on the dashboard that I wish I’d never read. Her body was never found. We had nothing to bury, other than some of her belongings. Her name was Anne. She was fifty-five. It’s been ten years, but sometimes it feels like it happened this morning.”
Brenda’s story awakens the welter of emotion within Kavita. Her insides quake. She feels on the verge of breaking. She squeezes her arms around her midsection, tightly. As she tries to still herself, it occurs to Kavita, what shocks her almost as much as Brenda’s story, is the counsellor’s ability to speak about the nightmarish with ease, as if it is normal.
But that’s what it is, she realizes, isn’t it? For suicide survivors, the nightmarish is the norm. The nightmarish is what they wake to each morning, what they carry throughout the day, throughout their lives, unbeknownst to the world around them.
Brenda turns her attention to the woman sitting beside Kavita. The woman has long hair parted in the middle and it is dyed black. She is wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, and sturdy black boots. She is biting her nails.
Brenda’s eyes float across the woman’s nametag. “Joan? Would you like to go next?”
The woman sits up straighter. As Joan shares, Kavita is too distracted by the rapid pace of her heartbeat to pay full attention, even though she wants to. Sparse words make it through: “rifle” and “found him” and “forty-six” and “three children.”
Kavita will have to share next. She doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it to this circle of strangers, these people she has barely known ten minutes. How can she tell them more than she has told her husband, her best friend, her parents? How can she reveal parts of herself to these people who will carry her story with them from the church basement, to their homes, into their lives? How can she trust them?
She glances around the circle. Maybe because she has no other choice. She promised to find a better way, and this is where that promise has led her. These people her collective, the one she has been longing for since Sunil’s death, the ones who understand as only they can.
Still, fear of speaking lights a fuse that travels from her heart, through her belly, to her feet. Why her feet? she wonders, as she becomes acutely aware of them inside her boots, the waves of energy buzzing from her heels, to her arches, to her toes, and back again, as if they are batteries charging up, as if her body is preparing to speed to the exit ahead of her thoughts.
“Kavita?” says Brenda, tilting her head to one side. “It’s your turn to share, if you’re ready. Although newcomers always get a free pass at their first meeting. It’s fine if you just want to sit and listen this time.”
The moment to speak has arrived, yet Kavita sits mutely. She thought her mind was made up before she descended into the church basement, but Brenda has offered her a way out, and with so many eyes upon her now, she can’t ignore the appeal.
“I can go first,” offers Hawthorn, as he peers at her sidelong.
All she has to do is utter one word—pass—and the discomfort will be over.
“If you want,” he adds.
All she has to do is keep hiding the way she has been for months, without a voice, or a hope.
“Kavita?” Brenda asks.
Everyone in the circle is watching her. She can feel the weight of their stares. They are waiting for her to open her dry mouth, and make a choice.
“It’s okay,” she says to Hawthorn at last, then shifts her attention to the rest of the circle. “I’ll go.”
“Take your time,” Brenda tells her.
Kavita clears a clot from her throat. As she stares at the middle of the circle, she suddenly knows that they have formed more than a shape with their chairs. They have formed a pit. A place to throw things. Their pain and sorrow and shame. The things inside them they have yet to name. The things they know too well and can’t escape. The things the world either caused or rejected. The masks the world demands they wear everywhere, except here, in this safe place.
“My brother’s name is Sunil,” she begins. “He died six months ago. He used sleeping pills and vodka, at least that’s what we think. We still don’t have the toxicology report, so the exact cause of death is still unknown. He was thirty years old. I know he’s gone, but it still doesn’t seem real.”
Kavita has no voice left. These short phrases have taken everything she has. A hand pats her shoulder. Although she doesn’t lift her gaze, she offers Hawthorn a cheerless grin as thanks.
“I’m sorry,” Brenda says. “Do you have any other siblings?”
Kavita shakes her head.
“Taking care of grieving parents can be a lot to bear alone. Do you have any other family you can lean on?”
“No,” Kavita replies. “There’s no one else close by. It’s always just been the four of us.”
“That must be difficult.”
Kavita nods.
“In general, suicide survivors lack visibility, but among us, the silencing is usually even more pronounced for those that have lost a sibling. Sometimes the surviving sibling doesn’t feel entitled to their grief. Sometimes their grief isn’t acknowledged adequately by their families and friends because their loss is perceived as less severe than their parents’. All in all, it can be very invalidating, not to mention isolating.” After a brief pause, Brenda asks if Kavita has anything else she would like to share. Kavita declines, Brenda thanks her for opening up, and moves on to Hawthorn.
“You did great,” he whispers to her before addressing the group. “Hey everybody, I’m Hawk.” He raises one hand in a wave. “Okay, here goes. My twin sister, Sequoia, died by suicide two years ago. We just got through the second anniversary. Two years, one week, and five days. Am I the only one who keeps track like that? Anyway, somehow I thought the second year would be easier than the first, but it wasn’t. If the first year was about surviving, then the second year was about learning how to live my life without her. It finally hit me that she’s gone. I guess shock protected me during the first year, but that’s mor
e or less worn off by now. I guess I had these expectations of what my life would look like down the road. I thought things would get easier. And they’re different, that’s for sure. Less raw, less intense. But I can’t say things have gotten any easier, in a larger sense, is what I mean. I guess because what happened, losing Sequoia like we did, that won’t ever change, it can’t, so there’s only so much better things can ever get. Sorry about the tangent. It’s just been a lot to deal with, lately. So, about Sequoia. She lived with depression for most of her life. She medicated with alcohol mostly. She was on a waiting list for a treatment program. She lived out in Vancouver with her boyfriend. He found her. No note. She was twenty-eight. At the time, I was in Costa Rica taking a therapeutic yoga course that focused on treating depression and addictions. I was doing it for her. I spoke to her a couple of days before she died, and she sounded okay. Calm, which wasn’t like her. I guess that must’ve been a sign but I didn’t see it then. I feel guilty for being away when she needed me most. Maybe if I’d been closer she wouldn’t have gone through with it.” He falls silent and holds one hand over his tattoo.
Kavita wants to reach out and comfort him the way he comforted her, but doesn’t feel familiar enough yet. Instead, she sends him a compassionate smile. He winks back, acknowledging.
“As survivors,” Brenda says, “we often feel responsible for the death of our loved ones. We feel like we should’ve known what they were thinking. We blame ourselves for not seeing the signs, for not acting quickly enough. But we need to understand and accept that we did the best we could at the time. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. But it’s also hypothetical. The only real thing was the situation each of us faced. After all, no one here ever wanted their loved one to die.” Brenda pauses, allowing time for the truth to sink in through the thick crust of hurt that covers each of them. “So,” she continues, “the next time you feel the guilt and anger starting to creep up again, tell yourself that you did your best. You did all you could do at the time.”
“That sounds good,” Hawthorn says. “But the problem is, it wasn’t enough.”
Brenda grins at him, dimly, sympathetic, but doesn’t say anything, because he is right, and there are no words she can offer to make that truth singe any less. It can only be borne like the other burdens that come with this loss.
“Hawk,” Brenda says. “What you mentioned about your sister sounding better when you last spoke to her? That isn’t unusual. For some people, once they’ve made up their mind, a kind of relief sets in, and for a while things can seem like they’re improving.”
“No more losing the war.”
“Which of course only makes their deaths even more shocking to those of us left behind. Our guards were down. We blame ourselves for not being more vigilant.”
Brenda thanks Hawk and moves on to the older woman sitting beside him, who tells the group about her grandson, Stephen, who passed away four weeks ago, and his struggles as a gay teen, and the medication he was put on despite the warnings. The same medication Sunil was taking, Kavita notes. She’s angry he was put on the medication to begin with. He wasn’t sick, she insists. He was being bullied. They didn’t do enough at the school to protect him. And there was bullying on the internet, too. What’s wrong with children these days? How can they do these things to each other? He snuck out with the car, tied a pipe to the exhaust, and asphyxiated himself. He was seventeen. Not even graduated, yet. She doesn’t know how to help her son through this loss. She buried her husband two years ago, but he was an old man, his death made sense. But this, burying the son of a son, it’s too awful to comprehend. She’s an old woman. How can life have turned out this way? She tried to get her son to join her tonight, but he won’t talk, not to anyone, not even their pastor. Her family doctor told her about the group. That’s why she came tonight. Also, she’s started taking antidepressants, but hopefully not for long, just until things get better. Things will get better, won’t they?
The middle-aged woman that shares next talks about her brother, Jeff, who was fifty-two, and his life with schizophrenia, and her frustrations with the system that isn’t really a system at all, it’s too disjointed to warrant such a name. How there’s such an emphasis on youth, but youth grow up, and when they grow up, there isn’t enough support to help them when they need it. She confesses his death has been harder for her to deal with than losing her husband to cancer. The cancer was awful, make no mistake, and losing her life partner is one of the hardest things she’s ever been through, but the difference is her husband was given every resource. She can accept that, in the end, they did everything they could for him. But in her brother’s case, it was like no one cared, no one acknowledged that his life was more acutely in danger than even her husband’s had been at certain points. The healthcare professionals she met during his appointments acted as if they deserved awards for even the most mediocre care. She wants to sue the useless resident he saw at his last appointment. That fucking prick who downplayed her brother’s symptoms and only cared about saving his own ass when she called him on it later. He was a carpenter. He loved working with wood. He fell on his table saw and bled to death. It’s coming up on a year, and she’s dreading the anniversary. Her parents have never looked so old. She feels helpless. There’s nothing she can do to make things better for them.
The man after her chooses not to speak.
The next is a mother who has lost her son, Matthew, three months ago. He was thirty-six. She had never known him to struggle with mental illness, it doesn’t run in their family, as far as she knows, so she can’t say whether or not he was depressed. All she can think of is he was stressed at work. He had moved out to Calgary about a year ago for a new job and his boss had turned out to be a real piece of work. During their last conversation, he mentioned being worried about getting fired, and not being able to pay his mortgage. She downplayed it, as a way of calming him down, told him he was fretting over nothing. Over nothing. Those words still haunt her. A week later, he leapt from an overpass. He was her only child. And he didn’t have any children. And she lives alone; she divorced his father when her son was still a boy. He was always a happy child, and an easy-going adult, her rock. No, he wasn’t depressed. He wasn’t sick. She hates it when people paint him with that brush. She misses him so much. Lately she’s been wondering what she’s living for. Brenda asks the woman to stay behind once the session has ended.
Another mother follows. Her son, Gabriel, was about to finish university. She knew him to be sensitive, but she didn’t know he was depressed, if he was, it went undiagnosed. The only reason she can think of is that his long-time girlfriend broke up with him recently, and he took it hard. But even that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to do something so drastic. There must have been more to it, but she’ll never really know. His roommate found him. He hung himself. She has a daughter too, a couple of years older than her son, but she’s been hard to reach, she lives out east. Her husband won’t talk about what’s happened. Lately, he’s been spending his evenings either at work, or at the Legion. They used to be a close family, but everything feels like it’s coming apart. If things don’t change, she thinks she’s headed for a divorce. And she’s worried about her daughter. What if it happens again? She never used to think like that, but the impossible happened, and now it’s like a door’s been opened, and she’s worried about who else might walk through it. She can’t sleep at night without the handful of pills her doctor prescribed. Does anyone else have nightmares? His twenty-third birthday is in two weeks. She doesn’t know how she’s going to face it. Later, the mothers exchange numbers.
A woman in her late-thirties speaks next. She lost her older sister, Stephanie, four years ago, but this is her first meeting. Her sister had struggled with eating disorders in the past, but had gotten treatment, and things seemed manageable, so she doesn’t think that was the reason. Anyway, she was a dancer, so it was normal for her to be thinner than the average person. Sh
e lived in Toronto, where there were more auditions, and she taught dance, but she was about to turn forty and the big break she had been hoping for hadn’t panned out. But she was happy, or at least seemed to be. She had a beautiful son, who was eight at the time, and a husband she adored. A good life. She came back to Ottawa for a week before she died, and while she seemed a little preoccupied, she was otherwise normal. They spent a lot of time together. She doted over her niece, who was only one at the time. They talked about meeting up in Toronto soon. The day after she got back home, her sister’s husband found her in the bathtub. In the note she had left behind, she said she had made a deal with herself: she would live until forty and if things didn’t get better by then, at least she would know she tried. The woman threw herself into motherhood as a way of coping with her grief. But now her daughter’s in school and she has more time on her hands and suddenly everything’s flooding back to her. She feels guilty for pushing it away like she did, not being there for her nephew and brother-in-law like she should have been, but she didn’t know how else to handle everything at the time. What kind of sister is she? How could she not know her own sister was in trouble? There might have been signs, she keeps wracking her brain, but she was too wrapped up in herself and baby to notice. It’s all so open-ended. Her sister was there, and now she isn’t, and she can’t make sense of any of it. What is she supposed to tell her daughter now that she’s older?
By the time everyone in the circle has spoken, two hours have passed. The thread that runs through the stories is more than suicide. It’s confusion, utter disbelief, even when there is a clear-cut reason for the loss of life, and devastatingly more so when there isn’t. They are a circle of people, stunned, staring at each other from left to right, wondering what in God’s name happened to their loved ones and their lives, how it could have happened, and always and forever, why?
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