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A little more than 19 years ago
By
Lisa R. Berman
On June 15th, 1988, a little more than 19 years ago, my mother
killed herself. She took an overdose of the medication she was
taking for manic depression. I was 32. My brother was 26. He found
my mother. She was alone in her house- the house she lived alone
in, the house we had grown up in.
I am here today to speak with you because I feel I can help you
in your grief and your sorrow. I got a tremendous amount of help
from meetings like this.
When someone kills themselves, there are hundreds of things one
may look at, consider, wonder about and obsess over.
Could I have been a better daughter?
In our case, we knew this was coming. My mother was in pain. She
had been unable to find her footing after her husband; our father
left her. She had always been “nervous,” and had been
cited as the crazy one in the family. We tried to establish our
own lives and our own identities, pulling away from her and leaving
her mostly to her own devices. In the prior three years she had
been in and out of hospitals, ending in state institutions.
It was torture. I resented her for the stranglehold she had on
us and then felt horrible. I felt horrible for my inability to
soothe her or help her be happy. I felt guilt ridden that I did
not devote my life to her. I have been in and out of therapy for
much of my life and had gotten my own degrees in social work,
For many people the suicide of their husband/wife/child/friend/parent
comes as a total surprise. For them the questions include,” how
could they have kept it from me, how could I not have noticed?”
Depression is genetically based. Does the word, depression somehow
seem less stigmatizing than mental illness, or being emotionally
ill? How many people here keep their losses private for fear of
stigma from the outside world? How many grieving people work hard
not to show the world their feelings?
This perpetuates a society which fears its own vulnerabilities.
Let’s get back to this group - survivors of suicide. Can
we make sense of the suicide of someone we love? Can we live with
it, and now have the rest of our life marred perpetually by our
loss and diminish our lives?
Children of suicides are more apt to commit suicide themselves.
How do we make peace with our own genetic legacy, or learned legacy
or simply our own depressions? How do we prevent our children from
imitating this behavior?
When my mother killed herself, we got together with her psychiatrist.
I was so angry with him. He had treated her for over 30 years.
For what?
I understood my mother had no hope and saw no relief from her
pain and her fears. I believe that she was also angry with us for
__________ fill in the blanks and it still doesn’t matter.
Suicide can also be an act of revenge. There is an “I’ll
show you” piece in it that can not be denied.
Sadness was overwhelming. So too was the anger at her for leaving,
for not seeing that the world had some light in it, and that her
turmoil could pass. My brother and I did not know how to respond
and react. The first night we watched Monty Python, the British
comedy troupe late at night, and laughed. We formed a code that
said, whatever we need to do to get through this is okay. We do
not have to act any certain way. Which was good because the feelings
just swirled around and around in us.
Compassion is the opposite of perfectionism. My mother’s
psychiatrist wrote a book called Love Me, Love My Fool. My mother
had an inner critic, an inner demon that tortured her for her inability
to be a perfect mother, wife, businesswoman, friend, and on and
on. Eventually it was that inner harshness that drove her over
the edge and killed her. She was aware of all of this and used
to tell me, “Stand up to your inner 'shoulds'.”
Compassion says if you feel like crying, cry. If you feel nothing,
that’s okay too. When I got the word, I drove home alone
from work - drove to my family home an hour from the city, knowing
my mother’s body was still there. My mind thought of which
jewelry I wanted. I tell you this because it is important to know
that the grieving process is not linear and we do the best we can.
Was this disgusting? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. It’s
okay. It was how I dealt with it and it was the best I could do.
I worried about my inability to connect with my emotions around
my mother’s death. I thought I should. I wrote letters to
my mother, starting two weeks after she died. Sometimes, the letters
would set off a flood of feelings and then my own inner critic
would scold me for the falseness of it. Luckily the compassion
- that I also own - would say, it’s okay.
Compassion is the ability to forgive the people who killed themselves
for what they did. Compassion is what helped transpose my mother
in my memory from a controlling tyrannical woman to the fragile
soul who just couldn’t make it. Compassion is what helps
me understand that both women- the crazy mean mother and the fragile
soft weak person are the same.
I dedicate my healthy selves to seeking out help for myself. This
means that if I feel depressed, I find people who can help me.
It means acknowledging if my mother had a chemical basis for her
depression, I may also and that 20 years later, the options for
me to get relief may be better than they were for her. Compassion
says that I can feed my self and my soul by helping others and
that there are places and people where it is safe to open up. Compassion
means I will use my judgment to determine when stigma exists in
the world and when it will only hurt to be too open.
I spent a time depressed and suicidal. I was 22 and graduating
from college. I spent two months in psychiatric hospitals after
several suicide gestures. When I came out, I was still depressed
and didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t feel
like I had to die anymore, The thing I did was notice and accept how
bad I felt. I forgave myself for feeling bad and not accomplishing
much. Each day, my goal was to not feel worse than the day
before. Eventually, the depression lifted. I finished school, and
finished graduate school and went on to make a life. When I start
to feel what my mother called “the should’s” or “the
tyranny of the shoulds,” I try to step back, lower my expectations
and realize how much I’ve had; how much love and life I’ve
experienced since the time I wanted to kill myself.
So, I am a person who lost a mother to suicide. That is part of
my life. It is not all of who I am. I am a fallible person who
could not save her. She is gone. I can forgive her and sometimes
still be angry with her and sometimes wish she were here to meet
my children and sometimes still be glad that she is not complicating
my life with her insatiable demands. I can forgive myself for being
okay even if she was not.
Lisa R. Berman
LCSW
This was prepared as a speech for Suicide Survivor Day 2007 in
NYC. Lisa R. Berman is preparing to return to social work after
a 24-year sojourn in the world of TV ad sales. She is committed
to being helpful to others. She believes that some openness about
one’s own prior struggles will de-stigmatize emotional illness
and offer others a better opportunity to get help. While
this is risky and she is concerned about the results of this openness,
she believes the benefits to others and the possibilities for change
in the world to be worth the risk. Lisa can be reached at LiRob@nyc.rr.com.
Lisa thanks Delos, Voice Dialogue and Hal and Sidra for their wonderful
insights and continual support in creating a wonderful life. At
the entrance to their home in Mendocino, California, there is a
straw basket filled with colorful blankets. So too do they
extend their warmth to whomever comes into contact with them. Thank
you, guys.
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