Lily's Feelings

Bedtime is hard for Lily. She has extreme separation anxiety - complete with clinging, begging for "one more hug" and bringing up topics that are way too big to tackle when it is time for bed (and when Mom is exhausted).

 

The difficulty is that she doesn't want me to go. And she knows that if she brings up her grief for the loss of her father I'm not just going to walk away.

 

She asks the hard questions about things that a Mom doesn't really want to send her 9.75 year old daughter off to bed thinking about.

 

Her level of questions amaze me because these are the same mixed up questions that everyone has when they lose someone to suicide - and I already know they are unanswerable. 

 

Below is a collection of some of the things I have heard from her, at bedtime, over the course of the past 6 months.

 

• She misses her Daddy, of course. She wants to know WHERE he is...she points around the room like a blind person and says, "Is he there? Is he over there?" and then says, "Daddy? Where are you?"
• She struggles with the “not getting to say goodbye” – she talks about when someone gets cancer and dies you usually get to say goodbye. This seems to be a very hard thing for her – she talks about how she just waved and said, “See you Monday.” and that if she had just known she would have said a better goodbye.
• She wonders why some people have this same disease and DON’T kill themselves
• She gets upset when she tells people her dad had a brain disease and he died from it and they, in trying to be empathetic (which she does understand is their intent) talk about people in their family who are also depressed and are getting help. She wonders why her Dad was one who killed himself and finds it maddening because it makes her feel like they don't understand it isn't the same to know someone with depression as it is to lose your Dad.
• It is hard to hear other girls talk about their Daddy’s
• She still wants more information about the disease – did he have “the disease” before he started drinking? I told her I didn’t think so. I told her I thought that there was a family history of alcoholism and that when he started drinking at 14 that he enjoyed it and thought he could control it but that it damaged his brain so he couldn’t think properly. She wanted to know if anyone had tried to help him when he was a teenager.
• She talked about his selfishness to do this to his family.
• One of her questions prompted me to concede that it wasn’t the first time he had gotten so angry that he had threatened to kill himself. She wanted to know how I stopped him those other times? I told her I couldn’t stop him – he stopped himself. She wanted to know why he wasn’t able to stop himself the last time.

Also during our bedtime conversations I have learned that she has been given far too much information about her father's final 24 hours by her step-mother. These details I wish I could take back from her...

• Shawn's final words to Heather before he drove to the mountains to kill himself were, "I'm outta here". Why would you tell a little girl this? It is not helpful to her. Her take on it is one of anger..."If you knew they were going to be the last words you said to someone you loved wouldn't you say something nicer?"
• He left a note or notes and "she can read them when she is older - like when she is 15". Originally Amber told me she thought he had left notes for me and the kids. Later she said it was only one long horrible, hateful note written to her. I can imagine what it might say - I have my very own version that he wrote to me many years ago. Why was it helpful to tell Lily about the existence of this note? It was not written to her. It has no answers. And NO - the last thing a 15 year old girl should do is read her father's suicide note!! I've talked with both my and Lily's therapists about this extensively. We all agreed that, even if Amber agrees to not show her the note, there is nothing to stop her from giving it to her later (possibly out of anger at me, Shawn or Lily. There is also the possibility that Lily could find this note if it isn't secured. The only thing I can do is try to prepare her for the moment she is faced with a decision of whether or not to read the note. I did tell her the other night that I "didn't think she should ever read the note" because it was written in anger and wouldn't answer any of the questions she had and that "I didn't think her Dad would EVER want her to see it".

 

I have talked to Amber about the fact that this information has caused Lily so much distress. With the coaching of both therapists I have gently told her that "less is more" when it comes to sharing details of her father's final 24 hours. I encouraged her to share happy memories of him and to keep it simple if she presses for details on the end. Lily's therapist also talked to her this weekend. I am waiting for a report on that.

 

I understand it is hard and one doesn't want to feel like they are lying but I also think for a child of 9 that saying, "It is too hard for me to talk about right now." is perfectly okay.