Talk to Me

by Allison DuBois

  The majority of suicide notes are vague at best. They rarely disclose a real reason or provide closure for the family. While this note was extremely troubling, it was not definitely a suicide note. I called his mobile phone and left a message. I called his sister, but she hadn’t seen him. I then called his mother, my ex-wife, thinking that perhaps he was at her house. I read her the note and she became quite concerned, too.

  As I was talking to Adam’s mother, I headed back to the kitchen, hoping I’d find him somewhere in the house. The back wall of my living room is lined with windows. When I was about in the middle of the room, still on the phone, I saw out of the corner of my eye a figure sitting on a chair on the patio. My heart leapt! It was dark, so I couldn’t be certain, but I thought it must be Adam outside.

  By the time my next footstep hit the carpet, I noticed that the person was slumped back in the chair, head tilted to the side, and that there was a dark stain covering their chest and pants, and pooled around their feet. I was instantaneously engulfed by fear and my head felt like it would explode. As selfish as it sounds, I remember thinking, ‘Please let it be anyone but Adam!’ Before my next step had hit the floor, I recognised his features and I began saying to my ex-wife, ‘Oh no, it’s Adam! We’ve lost our boy! We’ve lost our boy!’ I won’t describe the gruesome scene I saw on the patio, except to say that Adam, my son and best friend, chose to end his life by firing a handgun in his mouth. It’s a sight that is indelibly burned into my psyche.

  Surviving a suicide—that is, continuing life as the relative of a suicide victim—is different from other forms of bereavement. It bears all the stages of the familiar grieving process, but adds other burdens on top. Unlike deaths from cancer or accidents, there’s guilt and the feeling that you’re directly responsible for your loved one’s death. And society STILL attaches a stigma to suicide. My ex-wife’s best friend abandoned her immediately. I was shunned by coworkers, and people assumed that drugs were involved or that I was a bad parent to let such a thing happen. There’s anger—if someone murders your child, you become angry, but when your child murders himself, a very confusing anger can result. And disconnection—my brother didn’t choose to die; I knew that if he could, he would have remained with us. But my own son chose to end his life, and trying to resolve that permanent decision with the love I was sure he felt for me was very difficult.

  For me, the burden of intense, unrelenting guilt was the worst to bear. I attended a support group and found it helped to share with others who have been through the same experience. They did not judge or make the assumptions that so many others around me did. I read many books on suicide that were beneficial. The most helpful book I read was Allison’s We Are Their Heaven. Whereas other resources gave me intellectual understanding and told me that I wasn’t alone in my struggle, We Are Their Heaven gave me real hope. Not just hope that I would someday heal and learn to get on with life, but hope that my boy was not really gone . . . that he is still here among us.

  Oh, how I wanted to contact my son! Yet I was still heavily burdened with the guilt and disconnection that suicide leaves in its wake. I thought, ‘What if I did somehow mess up and I was the reason for Adam’s decision? He chose to leave. That must mean he doesn’t want to see me.’

  As I continued to sink into the murky swamp of my own brewing, my thoughts evolved into a solid belief that my son was angry with me, hated me, and would want nothing to do with me—even if he could. I pushed away friends, hobbies, a girlfriend, and most forms of life’s pleasures. While I felt I was progressing through the stages of grieving, I was actually stuck with the guilt and disconnection. I was living a lonely, self-loathing life, and when I did try to connect with my son, I convinced myself that I sensed only anger in return. How could a man like me deserve to be happy when he had so obviously failed his child?

  I had never been to a reading. Frankly, I feared receiving confirmation of what I dreaded most. I would visit Allison’s website now and then and receive her email newsletter. Then I began to feel more and more impelled to check the dates of her events. I was always ‘satisfied’ to see there was nothing in my state. ‘There . . . see, can’t go. Silly idea anyway.’

  Eventually, it was bound to happen. Allison was having an event in a city three hours from where I live. I kept putting it off, all the while having it more and more brought into my mind. I finally said, ‘I’ll open Allison’s book, and if it gives me any indication that I should go, I will.’ (I admit I gave this little chance of success, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have done it.) So I stuck my thumb into the closed book and opened it directly to the page where she wrote of the needs of grieving fathers. I took that as a positive sign. I decided that I’d been living in guilt, pain, and fear for nearly five years. If anything was worth a short weekend trip, this certainly was.

  Arriving at the hotel, I was still very tentative. All I wanted was to know whether or not my son loves me. I decided to grab something to eat and sit out on the restaurant’s patio. When I walked onto the patio, the old song ‘Silly Love Songs’ was playing—at the chorus, ‘I . . . love . . . you.’ Coincidence, I thought.

  I was very nervous at the event. I still feared my son was angry with me and didn’t love me. At the meet-and-greet, I thanked Allison for her work and told her how much her book had meant to me. It was a short conversation, and then I took my seat that I had selected in the back corner. I knew I wasn’t guaranteed a reading and, in my self-loathing state, just assumed I wouldn’t have one. I finally had the courage to raise my hand at the very end. I wasn’t chosen; I didn’t know how to feel about that. Then, when I was exiting the auditorium, Mark came running after me and said that Allison wanted to have a few words with me and asked if that was all right. I followed Mark to a room backstage and sat down across from Allison.

  I didn’t know what to expect from a reading. I assumed it might be more vague, but I quickly became certain that Allison was communicating with my son. I won’t go into all the details, but at one point I said I was afraid that Adam might be angry with me or hate me. The response was: He loves me! He wants to be with me, and travel with me, go on road trips with me, and he will even listen to the ‘oldies’ music that I like! I broke down and cried like a baby.

  With that one reading, Allison broke the chains that had kept me in bondage for nearly five years. I literally felt as if I had been born again! I had positive energy and emotion swelling in me like tidal waves, forcing tears to my eyes for days. It was like being catapulted forward from total despair to instantly having a new lease on life. I loved everything: the trees were beautiful, the sky was beautiful, people were beautiful. Most of all, I felt my son and his love! I was like Scrooge on Christmas Day after his reclamation. I didn’t know whether to sing, dance or stand on my head. The following day when I drove home, I learned that it is indeed possible to drive and dance at the same time!

  In the hotel after the reading, I was afraid to go to sleep that night, fearing I’d awake my ‘same old self’. But I woke about six in the morning, still feeling euphoric. I lay in bed for a while, going over the previous evening’s events and trying to get a grip on how happy I was. Every now and then, I had to get up and do a little dance to release some energy. At 6.40, the alarm clock went off. The previous occupant of the room must have left it set. It was on ‘auto’, so the radio came on rather than the alarm. The first thing I heard was ‘I . . . love . . . you’—the same song, at the same chorus, that I heard when I arrived at the hotel.

  I love you, too, son!

  A BELOVED DAUGHTER’S SUDDEN DEATH

  I want to introduce you to Joni’s daughter, Kelly. Like Scott’s son, she was an adult when she passed, but both stories show that a child’s age is irrelevant, because to a parent our children are always the little buddy who wrapped their tiny arms around our neck and thought we were heroes. They are the babies who need us because we loved them first, and we are their home.

  It is very rare that I do private in-
person readings, because my schedule is dicey and can change at a moment’s notice. I would feel terrible if someone got their hopes up about seeing me and then I was called away on business. Often my clients travel from far away, and that can be inconvenient for them as well, so I try to stick with my event readings and phone readings.

  I cleared my schedule for September to do phone readings and be at home for the month, since I would be in Australia for much of December, away from my husband and our girls. My manager, Mark, asked what day, if any, I was available to do in-person readings, and I told him the tenth would be good. I go by feeling when picking dates; I let the deceased guide me and the dates they give me always end up being important to the person being read. Anyway, my schedule was set, and Joni and Ron were booked for an appointment with me.

  When I met Joni and Ron they appeared nervous, understandably so, but both seemed to be good-hearted, good-natured folks. As I began to scribble on my notepad, I felt ‘connected’ to their daughter Kelly, and I began to write down what she was telling me and convey what she was feeling. Without going into every detail of the reading—I’ll let Joni tell you about it—there were moments of humour and sadness, love and loss.

  I could see how much Joni and Ron loved their daughter, who had been diagnosed with melanoma at the age of 33 and tragically died within three months. I could feel how Kelly loved her parents and noticed how easily she came through due to her strong love and will. It didn’t escape me that she was roughly the same age as my friend Domini, who had died of melanoma at 31, less than a year after being diagnosed.

  Something that happens quite frequently in readings is that the person coming to see me will have a list of questions they want to ask. But before they can even ask them, their loved one will pass on a message that answers the question. This happened with Kelly and, as I explained to Joni and Ron, it occurs because the deceased knew what was on your mind prior to the reading.

  This reading took place at my house, something I never normally do, but on this occasion the space I would usually book for the in-person readings wasn’t available because of the Video Music Awards.

  After the reading, I realised Joni and Ron were looking directly at my family portrait that hangs above my fireplace. Eye-to-eye with my little girls’ faces—how difficult that must have been. Existing after you lose a child places you in an impossible spiral: you love to observe other people’s mirror images of your baby, all around you, yet these children serve as reminders of the one whom you can no longer touch.

  The whole Video Music Awards fiasco ended up being for a reason. Firstly, it brought this couple into my house, so Kelly managed to make it as personal as a reading can possibly get, as I was surrounded by pictures of my own little girls and family members. Secondly, Kelly worked for Sony Music, so music in essence is what she was and also what was responsible for bringing them to my house. I’m glad about that, and the Video Music Awards seemed symbolic of Kelly to me.

  In the reading, Kelly kept talking about music being very important to her. Clearly, this is quite true. I also thought it was interesting that Joni told me ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ was her and Kelly’s song, because this is a song that’s meaningful to Domini and me. Beaches was a movie that Domini and I saw together, and I wrote about how special that movie and song are to us in my book Don’t Kiss Them Good-Bye. Coincidence? I think not.

  So I felt as if Joni and Ron sharing their daughter with me that day brought something special to me, and is a reminder to us all to never assume we’ll grow old. Always tell your kids how much you love them.

  Kelly kept repeating in the reading, ‘I always knew I was loved; I always felt special.’

  Joni and Ron strengthened Kelly’s spirit every time they made her feel loved and protected in life. They’re the reason she is strong enough to stay connected.

  RON AND JONI’S STORY

  Our names are Ron and Joni Hewitt, and our daughter Kelly was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma on 11 May 2009. Three short months later, on August 10, our beautiful daughter was gone. She died one week after her 34th birthday, which was on August 3.

  In July 2010, I was still grieving for Kelly and crying every day. I was devastated by her loss. We had been best friends and more like sisters than mother and daughter. If we weren’t together, we spoke on the phone daily—several times. I just couldn’t accept that she was gone. I had read Allison’s book Don’t Kiss Them Good-Bye, and then I read her book We Are Their Heaven. As soon as I finished the second book, I went online to her website. I saw that she was going to be in our area for a seminar, and I purchased tickets. I also registered on her website and listed my private phone number. This is something that I never usually do, but as I was entering it, something (or someone) just told me to type in my private phone number.

  A couple of weeks later, I had a phone message from Allison’s assistant, Mark, telling me that the event was being cancelled, and he asked how I would like the refund. I couldn’t believe he was calling. I knew something more was going on. I called him back and asked if Allison was doing private readings. He told me he would have to get back to me. From that moment on, we just seemed to be in sync. He called me less than a week later and said it might be possible, and we talked some more. We spoke again several times, making the arrangements, and at one point he told me he would be calling me the following week with a date for our reading.

  A few days later, as I was telling a friend about the possible reading, Mark called me with some information. Then, the following week, on August 3, Kelly’s birthday, we were watching Kelly’s DVD, and I said I needed to call Mark to see if they’d come up with a date yet. He told me that he’d just spoken to Allison five minutes earlier and, yes, they had a date for our reading. I didn’t tell him that it was Kelly’s birthday that day, but I knew it was no coincidence. Our reading was also scheduled to take place on September 10, two days after my birthday. It just felt like the whole in-person reading was being orchestrated by someone else, someone who loves us.

  My grandmother, Betty, raised me and my three siblings. I had Kelly when I was only sixteen years old, so my grandmother also helped me raise Kelly and later her brother Jim. I couldn’t have done it without her. We were all very close and even cared for ‘Gram’ before her passing in 2002. As Kelly got into her twenties, she began to suffer a great deal with depression. During her most difficult times, it was my grandmother who she prayed to for strength. She began finding dimes frequently, and I would tell her they were signs from Gram—she was letting Kelly know that she was listening. When Kelly was dying and struggling to breathe those last two days, I whispered in her ear that it was okay to let go, ‘Grandma’s waiting for you.’

  These things are significant because when we began our reading with Allison, one of the first things that came through was Kelly saying that we were more like sisters or best friends, rather than mother and daughter. I saw the perplexed look on Allison’s face because she had no idea how old Kelly was—just that we had lost our daughter. But from that moment I knew it was Kelly.

  She also said this reading was a gift to me from her. It could have been for my birthday, but I think it was more than that. I believe she knew how much pain I was still feeling. She knew I needed assurance that she was okay, that she had finally found happiness. While she was alive I would tell her every day that I wished for her to be happy. One of the next things she said was that she was ‘sixteen’ again, she was in a good place and happy. This was also what I needed to hear.

  Allison said, ‘Part of her never felt she belonged here on earth.’

  Kelly had told me on more than one occasion that she wasn’t going to live long enough to grow old.

  Then, Allison looked at me and said, ‘She’s talking about your grandmother.’ I just nodded, and she stated, ‘She is with her.’

  That had been one of the main questions I wanted to ask Kelly, and now I know they really are together. Allison told me they love to sit around and eat bowls o
f lollies and Fudgesicles together. This was so Kelly; she loved lollies! And I could just picture Gram eating a Fudgesicle talking about how good it was.

  Another important validation was that Kelly was showing Allison her hands and mine, and telling her there was a similarity between them. I held my breath, waiting to see if Allison was going to mention a ring, and she did. Kelly wore two rings on her left hand for probably the last ten years of her life here. I have been wearing one of them since she passed—on my thumb, just as Kelly did. She said Kelly was showing her the ring and explained, ‘She says it carries her energy and it’ll help you to feel connected to her.’

  Ron is not Kelly’s biological father, but he has been her dad for the past 21 years. He loved her very much. Kelly’s message to him was this: she showed Allison a coffee mug that said ‘Number 1 Dad’ on it. Then Kelly said that he has always been her father, and that he should never doubt what he was to her. It meant so much to him to hear this.

  As well as Kelly’s brother, Jim, she also had three stepbrothers, Ronnie, Jeff and Kevin, and a stepsister, Anna. Her brothers were all adults when Kelly passed, but Anna was only six. Kelly adored Anna. When she was struggling with depression, she would tell me that Anna was the only thing that made her happy, and she was the only reason she got out of bed in the morning. When she was dying, she said that Anna was the only reason she wanted to live. All of this came through in our reading. The first thing Kelly said about Anna was that ‘she loved her very much and she could do no wrong’.