My Fathers Suicide in 2008

MY STORY

By Kelli Pedrick-Karlton

Written in 2009, a little over a year after my Dads suicide…

Late one January morning in 2008, I fell asleep on the sofa, something I rarely did and haven’t done since.  The kids were all over me and the house as I slept, but I managed to get a good nap in.  I was awaken to my house phone ringing, then my cell phone ringing, again the house, again the cell.  I thought it was my younger sister wanting me to cut my nephews hair.  I wasn’t ready to wake up completely so I didn’t answer the phone hoping she would just leave a message.  The phones kept ringing and eventually my husbands’ cell phone started to ring to.  My husband came over to me on the sofa and said; “It’s your Dad calling my cell…” he could tell by the caller ID on his cell.  I knew something was wrong at that point.  I got up and looked at the caller ID’s and listened to voice mail after voice mail from my sisters telling me to call them there was an emergency.  I called my youngest sister back who was using my Dads cell phone and she was hysterical, saying what sounded like to me, “I’m so mad at Dad I want to shoot him!”  My sister and her nearly one year old son lived with my Dad and they often had their little disputes and she would call and vent to me – not this time.  What she was actually saying was, “Dad shot himself, he’s dead!”  WHAT???!!!  No, no, NO, is he dead, no, no, Ray, Ray, RAY, is he dead, no, Ray, RAY, NO!!!  I fell to my knees in the kitchen, Ray quickly got the kids upstairs and came back down to me, he had figured it all out in his head what happened, I never had to tell my husband what had happened.  My sisters wanted me to get to his house, which was all they wanted me to do and all they kept saying to me on the phone.  I had no idea why we needed to go and I really didn’t want to, I didn’t know what I would see or do or what.  I tried to get out of it and they kept screaming for me to please come over.  Ray got his father to come watch the kids and my neighbor came up to grab the kids till my father-in-law got to our house.  My neighbor didn’t know what was wrong, when I tried to call her she wasn’t home, her Mom answered the phone and a few minutes later she got home and her Mom told her something is really wrong with your neighbor.  She couldn’t get me on the phone so she walked up, I opened the door and she knew something bad had happened, that was the first time I uttered the words, “My Dad killed himself”, I immediately got nauseous and ran into the bathroom and got sick.  My neighbor took the two oldest of our kids and we took the baby with us as I was still nursing him.  The drive to my Dads house, which is usually about a half an hour, felt like we weren’t even moving, like I was on a moving set and only the back screen was moving.  We pulled up and my sisters with their spouses, my cousins, my aunt, my Mom, my Dads cognitive therapist, and some neighbors were all outside.  A state trooper guarded the front door, only the detective and coroner were aloud in and out of his house.  Neighbor’s walking their dogs walked by wondering what was going on as if they didn’t already know with a coroners truck parked out front, obviously someone had died inside that house.  It was a very warm January day for Delaware, in fact I actually remember not wearing a coat, I think it was partly because I was numb and in shock, and mainly because I left the house without one on.  It seemed like everything around me was moving in slow motion and everyone was talking really slow like in a movie when the character is about the pass out.  There were people, friends, family, police, and cars all over the place.  This wasn’t real, no way was this real; my Dad is in there sitting in his Lazy Boy rocker watching NASCAR or Golf, drinking ice tea in a sweat shirt and his black jeans and white socks and silly golf shoe slippers.  He wasn’t dead in there – how can this be!  Any second I am going to wake up and this will have been a really, really bad dream, right?   This wasn’t real, this didn’t happen, my Dad wasn’t dead, no way, my dad isn’t dead.  Why, how, what was he thinking, I don’t get it, was he thinking about us.  Oh God I have to tell my children that their Pop Pop is dead, their Pop Pop who they loved dearly, they are only four and six, how will they take it, will they understand death…anger started to come over me, an anger I had never felt before and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.  I couldn’t cry anymore, it hurt too much and I was dehydrated.  This isn’t real, what did he do, how could he do this to us – oh my God why didn’t any of us see this coming, what did we miss.  The things racing through my mind at a million miles per minute were enough to make me get sick again.

About 45 minutes after getting to my Dad house our one year old son needed to change and fed, so I went into my Dads neighbor/ friends house next door.  My Dad lived in a townhouse community and was very close to his neighbors.  Shortly after going inside, a lifelong childhood friend of mine showed up, ran in and held me, this was the first of many break downs to come!  After taking care of the baby, my friend was standing inside my Dads neighbors front door and as I started to approach the door she asked me to go sit down, I fought her and Ray ran in and asked me to go sit down that I didn’t need to see this – they were about to bring my Dad out of his house.  I reluctantly sat back down and I am very grateful to this day I didn’t see him being brought out of his house in a body bag on a gurney.  One less image I have in my head that is full of images I wish weren’t there.  After the coroner pulled away with my Dad, pretty much ruling it a suicide, the detective aloud us daughters and our husbands into the house.  Before my Dad shut the door to his bedroom to take his life, he left his Will, funeral paperwork and a note saying, “don’t come in, call 911” which is what my sister did.  Once she called 911 – these are the details I don’t talk about, to personal what she saw and as a survivor would like certain details of one’s suicide to stay unwritten which is why I’m not going into the details of how he took his life, the bottom line is he was successful, it doesn’t matter how. Nearly 15 months later, I still cannot stomach hearing how another’s loved one took their life.  Some “ways” I have heard from going to a support group really played with my own head and emotions.  Some of the ways one takes their life only proves that what makes a depressed person commit suicide and they way they do it truly shows that they were not in their right mind.  I really don’t like going into details about my Dads death, so I just say that he shoot himself…period.  I will add that my Dad was a very clean man in life and he was a very clean man in death…I just think the rest is very personal.

As we looked over the paperwork we cried, we knew he had a Will and we knew he had preplanned and prepaid for his funeral, so that wasn’t a shock.  What was a shock was the receipts that were next to his wallet for over $300 in prescription refills he just had filled three day before, pork chops in the refrigerator that he had taken out of the freezer that same morning for dinner that night, a case of 24 bars of soap and razor blade refills, enough to last him a lifetime that he had just bought that week before at a wholesale store.  Nothing added up.  Did he plan this, did the depression take him over this January morning, what the hell happened!  We were so confused, in shock, unclear at what just happened.  We decided to go to my older sisters house, were my cousin ordered us some food, the sister of my childhood friend came up, my sister from New York had finally arrived.  The next few days are a blur; actually the next three months were a blur.  I really don’t remember to many things in 2008.  Many suicide survivors will tell you the same thing.  Two days after my Dads death, we all met at the funeral home to make the final arrangements.  I felt like I was in a really bad episode of Six Feet Under and I did not want to be there.  The baby was still with Ray and I and we still had not told our other two kids, they just knew something was making Mommy very, very sad.  The funeral service was the following Thursday, it was cold this January day.  We pulled up in the limo and as soon as I got out. I locked eyes on my Dads older brother who looked awful.  I ran over to him and he didn’t let me go the entire graveside service.  I remember during the funeral, looking up at my Uncle and I felt as if I was in my Dads arms, they looked alike, felt the same way and smelled the same.  It all was so unreal to me.  There were over 100 people at the funeral, all in tears and in shock.  They say for every one suicide at least 6 people are affected, in my Dads case, over 100.  Some old friends, old and new neighbors, co-workers, golf buddies, relatives, his cognitive therapist, who was very upset – told us that he has some patients that he thinks might commit suicide and others he doesn’t think will and my Dad was one of those.  He told us that my Dad loved his four daughters, our husbands and his six grandchildren more than anything in the world and talked about us frequently at his appointments and the he is utterly shocked by my Dads death, not to mention countless other people from my Dads past that came to respect him and us daughters.  Some of you may be wondering where my Mom was in all this, we asked her not to come.  My parents divorced in 1996, and in that year I believe my Dad had one foot in the grave.  My Mom was his life, she came first in everything, and us daughter a very far second in his world.  She asked for the divorce.  In 2004 my Dad retired after 44 years.  He had everything, money, health, his daughters, son-in-laws, friends, a nice home, nice cars, golf and so much more – just not my Mom.  About three years before his death he became depressed, so depressed that he lived with us for three weeks while we got him help and on medications.  About 6 months later, he was fantastic, full of life, energy and just fun to be around!  He found a cognitive therapist that he really clicked with and was taking the right cocktail of medications.  He was the Dad all us daughters always wanted and our children were wreaking the benefits, it was too good to be true, I should have known.  Less than a year later, we lost him, not to death, to depression and never got him back.  It got worse and worse and worse.  He looked 10 years older each time I saw him, frail, small and tired.  I would tell my husband that I have a gut feeling I’m going to lose my Dad to depression – never thinking to suicide.  I thought he was going to give himself a heart attack or stroke from the stress of being depressed and fighting it so long and so hard.  My Dad would tell me he didn’t know why he felt depressed myself, he just was, he couldn’t understand it either and I certainly can’t having never been in depression, I just understand that it is a real disease after watching my Dad fight it.  And he did just that, he fought it, fought it gallantly, he went down fighting I have to say!  He gave up beer cold turkey after years of drinking because his doctors told him he can’t drink on the medications.  He went to every appointment, took his medications as directed, got out every once in a while.  Then little by little he started losing interest in things, staying home more, giving up things, selling his Buick that he loved so much, gave up his golf club membership he had for 40 years, thus giving up golf – his hobby.  Stopped going to family events, stopped meeting up with golf buddies and more.  Knowing what happened, these were all signs that none of us knew even existed.  I wish I could say that had I known the signs and symptoms of suicide, I would have had my Dad living with us, but I can’t because we all trusted him, we all asked him once or twice, even his friends if he would ever hurt himself and he always said, “No, I wouldn’t do that to my girls the their kids.”  But he did, so I feel betrayed in a sense.  I want to say he didn’t plan it because of the pork chops being left out for dinner that night and the newly refilled anti-depressants, but I’m not sure and I will never know.  The not knowing and the whys are the hardest things to deal with when you lose a loved one to suicide.  The what if’s and the should have’s can haunt you on a daily basis and consume you if you aren’t careful.  For the last 15 months I have been walking around with a ton of bricks on my chest, that’s what a suicide survivor is left to walk around with after a loved one has taken their own life.  “Taken their own life…” this isn’t the normal process of life, you aren’t supposed to die at your own hand, this isn’t the normal circle of life…but then again, neither is getting cancer.  What the normal circle of life is you are born, your grow up, you get old, you die.  So, if my Dad had died of a heart attack or cancer, would his death be any easier to deal with, perhaps, because it wasn’t at his own hands and power.  But, I DO believe that the person that took my Dads life that January day, wasn’t my Dad.  The Dad that I know would not have left his daughters and grandchildren this way, he was SICK, he was SICK, he was SICK!

It took me 11 days to tell our two oldest children that their Pop Pop was dead.  I tried on several occasions before that 11^th day to tell them and lost it and couldn’t do it.  I was so upset at my Dad for making me do this.  I had gotten frames for each one of them, even the baby, and printed them each a picture of them with their Pop Pop.  The morning of that 11^th day, I remembered my six year old son telling my Dad not too long ago, “Pop Pop you’re old!” to which my Dad replied, “thank you very much…” with a grin on his face.  That’s what I told the kids…Pop Pop was old and he died, that is what happens in life.  This was my children’s first dose of life and death.  Our six year old son squirmed around in his PJ’s, not sure what to make of it, our four year old daughter, going on 14, cried like a teenager.  It was awful, she cried all night, then she finally fell asleep and then I cried all night and finally fell asleep myself.  The next day, I let their teachers know and that next night our daughter came down and said her big brother was crying in bed.  I went up to him to find him sitting up in bed clutching the picture of him and Pop Pop in front of the #24 Jeff Gordon car taken a couple years before.    I held my son and told him it was ok to cry and to please never cry alone, that it’s ok to miss Pop Pop and be sad, that Mommy is too.  This would be yet another night I would stay up crying.  Seeing my children so sad was more painful than the death of my Dad itself, seeing the pain and lack of understanding in their eyes.  Even to this day, I get mad at my Dad for making me have to tell my kids their Pop Pop was dead, and even to this day I catch one of them crying over him or one of them has had a dream about him.  I like to think they dream about him because he is still around us, looking out for us, helping us through this.

My Dad and I loved NASCAR, one of very few thing in common I had with my Dad.  I would pretend at a little girl to like things he liked just to be with him.  I pretended to like golf so he would take me to play or I could tag along with him to caddy.  When he would wake me up early in the morning – because he liked getting the earliest tee time he could, I would just up out of bed, get dressed in shorts and a golf collar shirt and just in the car with him.  When we arrived at the club he would give me all his change and let me fill his ball compartment of his golf bag with as much snacks that would fit so I would be good to go during the three hours of golf head of me.  Afterwards he would buy me a soda and grilled cheese and orange sherbet ice cream and we would sit around with all his friends and chat and watch the sports TV on in the club.  I really didn’t like the sport of golf, but wanted to be with my Dad.  The funny thing is he left me his golf clubs in his Will.  The one bond we had that was “real” was NASCAR.  A month after his death was the Daytona 500.  Every year for the last 5 years, we watched the Daytona 500 at my house together.  Me cheering for Dale Jr. and him cheering for Jeff Gordon.  This first Daytona 500 without my Dad was very hard on me, I really didn’t watch it, I cleaned during it yet paying attention to it, but I couldn’t gather myself together enough to actually sit down and watch it.  I was so upset because Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon had become teammates.  We were so happy about this, my Dad and I.  Neither Dale nor Jeff won this race, however Dale did win his first race with Hendricks Motor Sports on Father’s Day…my first Fathers Day without my Dad…Dale Jr. WON!  I cheered and screamed till he hit the finish line and then completely fell apart!  My oldest son ran outside on the deck where my husband and father-in-law were sitting and yelled, “Mama is crying, Dale Jr. won, Mama is crying!!!”  Of course Ray came in, they were happy tears, and I truly felt that my Dad was watching over me that day, I will never forget that race for as long as I live, I even found the model of the car Dale Jr. was driving in that Fathers Day race in Michigan and have it in my hutch with all my Dale Jr. things and now hosts a new home for all my Dads Jeff Gordon cars and keepsakes.  My oldest son used to play on his Jeff Gordon rug that was in front of my Dads TV with all my Dads NASCAR’s so he was left the match box cars as he was the only grandson that loved NASCAR too.

My Dad wasn’t much of a family man, he was more a working Dad that kept his family clothed, fed and warm.  I accepted my Dad for was he was and for what he wasn’t.  He never really told me he loved me as a little girl, he told me more as an adult and a mom that he loved me and wished that when he died he would come back as one of my kids because he was proud of the wife and mother I had become.  He loved my cooking and come for dinner whenever he was invited.  I had more of a relationship with my Dad as an adult then I did as a child.  I know mostly because he lost my Mom and didn’t want to lose his four daughters.  Even when half of us sisters weren’t talking, he still kept a relationship with each of us that was very important to my Dad, to keep all his four “ladies” in his life!  He never dated anyone after my parent’s divorce he was content with his four daughter being the woman in his life.  I now try to remember the fun times I shared with my Dad and some of his famous one liner’s.  I try to remind my kids of some of the stupid funny things my Dad like one time when my Dad was over for a cook-out he came inside to get a soda and on his way out, walked right into the screen door and knocked it right off the track – the next time my Dad was due to come over again, I hung ribbon from the screen door, he thought it was funny.  One time when he was over our house, I said something smart to him and he told me to go to my room, now I’m a fully grown adult woman, married and a mom in my own home.  I went to my room jokingly and stomped all the way up the steps and slammed my master bedroom door shut, all of the sudden a roar of laughter erupted from my Dad and husband and sisters all gathered downstairs.  I even went as far as to ask my Dad if I could come down.  It was one of the hardest times I ever heard or saw my Dad laugh.  So, my advice, when the emotions are so raw and so hard, you have to make the time for happy memories and good times!

For those of us left behind after a suicide, like children, we wonder what our Dad (or Mom) must have been thinking at the time and the seconds leading up to their demise.  Would a picture of us girls or his grand children on his bureau stopped him, why couldn’t I have called him at that minute and maybe the sound of the phone ringing would have snapped him out of it, or would it have stopped him for just that day?  All these questions that remain unanswered are part of the mystery of suicide.  Then of course there is the stigma that surrounds suicide that doesn’t make it any easier.  I have had people say the most beautiful things to me once they learned how I lost my Dad and one that went as far as to tell me where my Dad was…hell.  I have certainly learned who my true friends are over the last 15 months, but for every friend I lost (yes, I have actually lost friends over this) I have met and made 2 for each one lost, most of them survivors themselves.  Each one of them more fantastic and meaningful to my life then the ones lost.  It actually felt good to “get rid” of the weeds in my life.  I believe after a tragedy like a suicide, those left behind need to have a sense of calmness and control to their life.  I have learned that life goes on.  I am alive, I still have three young children, a loving husband, a home and the life I dreamed of having as a little girl, there is so much life out there still left to be lived…so live on.  I will miss my Dad everyday for the rest of my life and it will hurt and sadden me the rest of my life, but again, I have to live my life!  Even 15 months later I forget for split seconds that my Dad is dead.  I will think of driving directions I need and think I can call my Dad and he will tell me, or my Dad would know the answer to something, and as fast as I think it – I remember I can’t…and it breaks my heart.  I think about my baby sister not having my Dad to walk her down the aisle some day on her wedding day like he did me and my two other sisters…breaks my heart.  I’m sad he won’t see my daughter grow into a woman and wife and mom someday, she was his only grand-daughter.  I still find it had to think of my Dad in the past tense, for example, my Dads likes NASCAR, not my dad liked NASCAR.  That’s very hard for me at this point, 15 months later.  I have a dear friend that lives on the opposite side of my Dad community and I was over at her house the other day, it was the first time I had driven in there since packing up his house when we sold it.  As I got closer and closer, driving the same route we drove the day he died, a know in my stomach grew and it got tighter and tighter as I got closer and as I pulled in called my husband and got very emotional.  Even though I was making a right and not a left towards his house, I still felt sick.  When my Dad was alive I would stop by and see him before or after I would be at my friend’s house and most of the time it was a surprise visit and he loved them the most!  To be sitting at his house all alone and then see my face at his front door, he was always happy to see me and any of my kids I had with me.