Category Archives: Daddy

Guilt Triggers

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Daddy, depression, Easter, explaining his death, guilt, powerlessness

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While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. (Luke 24:36-37)

This was part of our Sunday school lesson yesterday. Jesus has appeared alive after being crucified; now the disciples are holed up in a room talking about it. Our teacher yesterday described how all of the disciples must have felt at this time. They all had betrayed Jesus in one way or the other by not speaking up.

That was about as far as I could listen before my throat started getting thick and my bottom lip began quivering. These end parts of the Gospels hit too close to home for me. Yesterday, I gathered up my belongings and said with that voice I hate that’s all quivery and weak, “I apologize, this is just too hard.”

Last week, I left early, too, only I didn’t apologize because last week I tried to push everything down and pretend I was fine. That resulted in having a full-assed panic attack right there in the middle of the Sunday school class. I ran out with the church’s bible still in my hand. Afterward, I was embarrassed and thought myself a drama queen.

The above verses are a guilt trigger for me. I know exactly how they felt—they blamed themselves. I don’t think about failing Jesus when I study that passage. I think about how I failed my father who killed himself seventeen years ago. I still suffer from the guilt of not understanding how depressed he was, not insisting that he get help, not doing something. I think there is terror in that kind of guilt because it digs in like a diseased tick.

I am glad I went to church yesterday and heard this verse. Even though it hurt like all hell, I learned something. I’m triggered by feeling like a disciple, and not by the resurrection of Christ, which is what Easter is all about, that Jesus died and came back. Jesus was human and is God as well. It is complicated, and it is simple. Jesus isn’t my dad. My dad isn’t a God. Maybe I can work on untangling them in my mind now.

The death of someone I love cracked a hole in my heart and my soul. Stuff gets jumbled up. My dad killed himself just a week or two after Easter. I fear that holiday and the days afterward when disciples feel so guilty.

Yesterday, I also heard that Jesus said “peace be with you” to his miserable and frightened followers.

Therefore do not let anyone [I think includes myself] judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (Colossians 2:16)

Explaining his death

25 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Daddy, explaining his death, fear, suicide

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            I had a catch-up conversation with a childhood friend I hadn’t talked with in years.  We’d lost touch for too long, so the topics covered a lot of ground, divorces, remarriages, children, grandchildren, and even new careers.  The topic changed to how our parents were doing, and I asked plenty of questions to keep her talking.  I didn’t want to say anything about my father.  I hated saying the way Daddy died.  How do you explain? His death carried an undreamt shame.  Years had passed, and I still had trouble. 
I felt double-minded.  She spoke unguarded and defenseless about her life.  One side of me wanted to open up to her, to be vulnerable and share.  The other side wanted to keep my grief a secret and press it tightly against my heart.  It was hard to even listen through my loud and harassing thoughts.
            To leave out such a significant detail of my life in this conversation felt a betrayal to my own person. This woman was a part of my life—a part of my good memories.  Daddy was a part of those memories with her.  I stammered my way through the words and felt the whole time I should have kept them to myself.  She hesitated, listened, gave her sympathy, and asked if his health had been bad.  I said yes, changed the subject, and asked more comfortable questions.
            Keeping my father’s suicide a secret is as monstrous as finding his body.  It walls me off and isolates me.  It’s a part of this hell, at least, that I have some control over and can change.

Chasm

20 Friday May 2011

Posted by in boundaries, comfort, Daddy, grief, guilt, suicide

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            I found some un-mailed letters that I wrote to Daddy.  Written long before his death, they said all the things that I wanted to say in person: his emotional distance hurt me; he was too remote; I worked too hard for our relationship; he didn’t work hard enough; I wasn’t sure he cared for me, and I needed him.  It was there, written but not sent.  They were the practice letters.
            I managed to mail one letter.  Around my forty-first birthday and just before my second marriage, I told Daddy some of how I felt.  But the words weren’t the right ones, still.  They hurt him.  One day on his front porch, in front of Mom, he told me that the two of us would be ok with each other if I would never write him another letter like that again.  His voice was lower and scratchier than usual.  I swallowed hard, and stared the old oak tree.  I remembered it as a seedling.  I remembered, too, as a little girl desperate for his attention, that I ran bird-flight circles around Daddy while he staked it down. 
“Okay,” I promised, “no more letters.”  Afterwards he talked more, and hugged me tighter when I came to visit, and looked at me with different eyes.  My heart ached when I was around him.  I was still that needy kid.
            When he died, I felt I had failed him.  Yes, I knew he was the parent.  Yes, I knew what I had wanted from him wasn’t asking too much.  But how had he felt about me when I was a child?  Maybe I meant more than he could say.  Maybe, like me, he couldn’t find the right words.  Who knows the inner struggles of another if the words are not spoken out loud?
            Revealing yourself to another is a risk.  Setting boundaries, or asking for more communication are not bad things. They’re healthy and loving actions. Through the guilt-haze after a loved one’s suicide most everything feels wrong.  That doesn’t make it so.