September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and it reminds me of the importance of noticing changes in our loved ones’ state of mind and encouraging them to seek help. Prevention is key since suicide is a permanent solution to what can often be a temporary problem.
My first experience with suicide was when I was 10 and my grandmother, who was also my caretaker, took her own life. From then on, there wasn’t much talk about Grandma until one day, more than 20 years later, when my parents were moving from my childhood home in Queens, New York. While packing, they stumbled upon her retrospective journal, which she’d written after emigrating from Vienna in the early 1930s. Only after reading her writings did I come to understand the deep roots of her lifelong, tormenting depression, which eventually led to her suicide at the age of 61.
I tucked her journal away and pulled it out 10 years later just after my breast cancer diagnosis. I was hungry for answers about the cause of my illness – after all, no one in my family had ever been diagnosed with the disease. I considered the possibility that my grandmother took her life as the result of a cancer diagnosis she’d kept to herself.
I hoped her written words could provide an explanation for my own health crisis, but they didn’t. However, something even more profound occurred: the details of her tragic life drew me spiritually closer to her.
I learned that my grandmother’s trauma was being orphaned at the age of 11 during World War I in Poland. Basically, she was forced to become an adult when other teens were dating and having a good time. The lifelog pain of that experience stayed with her until she died.
Grandma’s Legacy
While reading her journal, I realized that I’d never connected with another woman in the same way since her death. As a child, I was an extension of her, and even more so as an adult after her passing. She was the person who planted the seeds for my writing career – not only because she was devoted to the written word herself (evidenced by daily journaling and a propensity for leaving notes on the kitchen table) – but also because she taught me how to type and write my first story, setting the platform for my life as a writer.
Days after learning how to type, I went back and forth between writing stories in my journal and typing on Grandma’s Remington, much in the same way I do today – alternating from journal to keyboard. Thanks to Grandma, in college I earned extra money by typing term papers for other students, and as a young mother I chronicled my kids’ early years. Finally, as a breast cancer survivor, I wrote a memoir based on that experience.
Deep Trauma and Depression
I’d never thought much about the depression that lead to my grandmother’s suicide until after my first breast cancer diagnosis, when I came up against my own depressive demons. I’d always feared depression more than I feared death. In fact, in my 20s, 30s, and early 40s, I veered away from any discussion of depression. To me, it was the poison that killed my grandmother and also infiltrated my mother’s life, so I never wanted it to touch my life or my children’s.
But my commitment to that concept dissipated. I began reading about depression and its genetic components. I think some people (and I may be one of those) are prone to depression as a result of their genetic pool, and that trigger can spring us into a depressive realm. This is what happened to my grandmother as a result of her turbulent childhood and marriage.
When we look for reasons why a loved one would take his or her life, we rummage through our memories, large and small, poignant and delightful, dramatic and banal, horrible and wonderful, in the search for answers. After I finished reading my grandmother’s journal, I understood how a life filled with hardships and horror could result in drastic actions – seemingly inexplicable, yet somehow logical – such as suicide.
Keeping the Memory Alive
Although my grandmother chose to finally give up after her years of hardship, she felt compelled to share her life story in her retrospective journal. Writing about and studying my grandmother’s life has been my way of keeping her alive. Sharing her story has also helped me understand who she was, what she went through, and why she ended her life.
After spending many hours with her for the first 10 years of my life and then reading her journal, I now realize there were many aspects of our personalities and sensibilities that were similar. We were both strong and resilient women in the face of disaster, and we were both caretakers.
Reading my grandmother’s journal reminded me of the intrinsic value of writing and the value of passing on stories from one generation to the next. I believe we stand on the shoulders of giants, but if we didn’t know their stories, we wouldn’t be aware of that. Grandma’s journal was the greatest gift she could have ever bestowed on me.
A Life Without Love
I completed my first memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal on what would have been my grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday. As I neared its completion, I recalled every image and memory of her, and the result was a renewed understanding of her life and what she endured. This journey has helped me realize that a life without love is no life at all, and those who’ve survived severe childhood traumas continue to live with the pain until the day they die. It is with this new understanding that I will hold my grandmother’s soul close to my heart… and never let it go.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What childhood trauma has marked your life or that of a loved one? How has it affected you and others around you? What do you know about depression?
