Acceptance

Piecing Things Together in Suicide Bereavement

“Okay, I’ll be part of this world.” This line is my mantra for acceptance, borrowed from the Coen brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men.¹

It’s the emotionally strained last line of the opening monologue in the movie. Actor Tommy Lee Jones delivers it perfectly, conveying the bafflement, weariness, and ultimate resolve (or resignation?) of his character, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. He’s reflecting on the evolution of humanity and society, considering the nature of crime and violence along with the pursuit of order and justice, and contemplating his role in all of it. While applied to a different context, I use this phrase to help me do the same reckoning.

Part of the power in it is the implied choice, “I’ll be…” I will be… Not, “I am,” by default, or, “I could be,” or, “I might be,” in some hypothetical existence. No, it’s just, “I’ll be.” As in, I am willfully stepping forward into engagement of my own accord, with full awareness of the potential risks and unknowns. In the monologue, he notes that to choose to engage with a world that one doesn’t understand, “A man would have to put his soul at hazard…” and decide to persist anyway. It’s dark, but frank, and unnerving against the slowly unfolding awareness of the iconic villain, Anton Chigurh. It’s also empowering, converging to a simple conclusion. “Okay, I’m in…” Of course, simple doesn’t always mean easy.

Acceptance of my sister’s suicide is a still a choice I have to make daily. And though I arrive at the acceptance more readily these days, my own soul does feel put at hazard each time. It took a long time to get to this point, and just as long to also accept the ongoing need for this conscious act of acceptance. Accepting the acceptance. What a shitshow.

Early on, it was a struggle to even claim baseline comprehension of facts, let alone to accept them as true or real. The shock of Sarah’s death decimated my acceptably rational projection of the world into a puzzle of shards. My framework of existence was scrambled, reduced to random pieces that I was left trying to fit together. But the irregular pieces were also stripped of color; there was no recognizable pattern or form.

Some days I swept all the pieces into a plastic bag and hid the bag under the bed. But gradually, as I had the strength, I painstakingly held every individual piece in my hand, one at a time. I turned them over, analyzing them, trying to figure out which side was up, to find any way to put each of them into a context that I could process. There were no distinctive edge pieces. There was no clear starting point, no clues to what the final image was supposed to be. Some of the pieces were impossibly small. It was obvious that some pieces were missing altogether. The precious few discernible facts were pieces that I couldn’t place.

I kept slowly trying to rebuild reality, grasping for a representation that I could hold in my mind as an anchor point, as if I was making up my own image to sketch and tape to the front of a puzzle box. I told myself that if I could get the picture right, my understanding would also crystallize. I needed something as a reference point from which I could eventually make meaning and accept the outcome.

And I don’t mean recharacterizing her suicide as some will of God that I can’t understand because I’m too mortal. Fuck that. If that has worked for anyone, I’m glad for them, but that wasn’t accessible to me. I mean that I had to very consciously rewire my brain to be able to connect the dots and process the picture that was coming together that was so obvious to everyone else. Sarah was amazing, and she’d been troubled. We tried to be a loving family, in our way, and were all fucked. There is a familial history of suicide and suicidal ideation on both sides of my family. Sarah had been alone that night and she was found dead the next morning.

The implication of the facts stalked me like the villain Chiguhr. Principled, persistent, unempathetic. Unlike Chiguhr, though, who might have relented if the suitcase full of money had been returned to him, there was no offering I could produce that would alter the truth. She’s fucking dead and she’s not coming back. She did this. That was the horrifically pursued outcome, the image that was forming, the meaning to be derived. I didn’t like it, so I tried jamming together pieces that didn’t fit, hoping it would reveal something more palatable. Yet, eventually I couldn’t deny how certain pieces aligned. A small section somewhere in the middle of the puzzle started to take shape. I double and triple checked the fit of the pieces. My mind gently whispered to my heart, “This is real.”

Each new layer of acceptance makes way for another. The up-close interlocked puzzle pieces revealed details that I couldn’t even guess at on an isolated piece. So, as I slowly worked outward from the middle of the puzzle, I gained confidence and capacity to start perceiving the aftermath: changed relationship dynamics with others, withdrawal from (and hopeful re-emergence into) day-to-day life, an altered worldview, an unrecognizable, more-broken-than-before-if-that’s-even-possible self. Plus all the regrets, and the efforts at reconciliation of those regrets. There are too many to count, but one that made repeat appearances for me was an exchange we had nearly a year before she died. Her last Christmas.

That Christmas before Sarah took her own life, she was torn about her plans. She had a serious boyfriend, but he also had grown children and was planning to spend time among their families. She said she didn’t want to tag along, which is possible, but from the tone of her voice I wasn’t sure if she felt she would actually be welcomed. I thought it was odd, but didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I didn’t press. Plus, she had other options which she was considering. A group of her friends were going to the Caribbean, and our younger sister had put out a mass invitation for everyone to come to Christmas at her boyfriend’s mansion out west to bear witness to their volatile relationship in person.

The prospect of all the immediate family members getting together filled me with dread. Historically, any time more than two of us were together in the same place it somehow always devolved into an argument. Crying, yelling, blaming, shaming, airing old resentments. Then the silent seething and inevitable coldly forced interactions until it was finally–and thank God–time for everyone to go their separate ways. Unless someone had already stormed off and left early, which was common. So, I had already declined the family gathering.

Sarah also expressed serious reservations about going out there for the same reasons as me, and particularly because she and our younger sister hadn’t been on healthy speaking terms in over a decade. So, I invited her to come visit me and my husband. I told her I’d love to see her and she could stay at our house. We’d pick her up at the airport. She waffled; I could hear her weighing the options, humming to herself over the line as she thought about it. I considered interrupting her, pleading, telling her to just buy her ticket that day. I hesitated though, because we were planning to go to my mother-in-law’s house. It would be pleasant, and also be largely focused around accommodating and delighting my mentally disabled uncle-in-law who was in his late 60s and asked about Santa Clause all year long, every year.

I sincerely wanted her to come, and I also worried she would end up bored and wish she’d gone to the beach, so I didn’t insist. She went to the beach. She texted me a photo of herself with her friends. They were all dressed up and gathered around a beautifully decorated living room setting in the hotel. Sarah was smiling, but it seemed like a forced and practiced plastic smile, not of unbridled holiday merriment. I shouldn’t read so much into the faces people make in pictures, especially since I usually look like I didn’t know the picture was happening. I know it’s not always representative. Yet, in retrospect, that feels like another clue I missed.

In the years since her death, I’ve spent countless hours wondering if that phone call made her feel unloved, possibly detached, and contributed (among many other things) to her suicide. If I’d known it would be her last Christmas, I might have approached it differently. I might have flown out to see her instead, crashed her vacation with friends, even if she didn’t want me to, or if it embarrassed her. But I didn’t.

There isn’t a mechanism for going back and getting a re-do. So, I have to live with knowing that I didn’t do everything in my power to let my sister know how much I loved and admired her and would have cherished the time together if she’d come for Christmas. I have to live with the dis-satisfaction of speculating about the ways her trajectory (& mine) might have been changed if we’d gotten some substantial, in-person, one-on-one time together that holiday season. These realizations are another form of acceptance that I’ve gradually embraced. They start to form a semblance of an edge around the puzzle, even though they don’t provide any clear, straight lines. It’s enough that they form a flexible boundary that serves just well enough to contain the finality that what is done is done.

That doesn’t mean I feel fully resolved, or absolved about it. Nor about any other of the myriad interactions (or lack thereof) that I might classify as regrets. It just means I’ve come to terms with the absolute fact that I can’t change the past. That none of us can. Duh. I think coming this far is integral to the “acceptance” commonly referred to in the Five Stages of Grief.² But it doesn’t stop there. None of this is linear.

I don’t backslide too much from that point anymore. The puzzle is generally formed, most pieces have found their homes. Some missing pieces materialized under the couch, in the bottom of my bag, in the pocket of a rarely worn jacket. Some are still missing too, but there are enough that it’s comprehensible. I leave it laid out on the table so I don’t have to start over. Even so, every morning when I come downstairs, a few pieces have been removed and set aside. It’s almost as if the puzzle has its own agenda. It looks different as the lighting changes throughout the day. Sometimes it appears that the details have changed. The outside boundaries are still not clearly defined. I never know exactly which pieces will have been removed or rearranged, or how many, and I have to make the choice to put them back in their places.

This layer of acceptance is in reconciling the disparity between how I thought life was supposed to shake out compared with how it actually is. I think this is an overwhelmingly common human experience; we might simply call it disappointment. Yet, grief has a poignant way of highlighting this type of dissonance, when reality stubbornly refuses to align with what you believe(d) could or would or should be.

Part of me thought that Sarah and I might eventually have kids, possibly around the same time, and those kids might be buddies. I thought how cool it would be if we lived in the same state again, telling myself that my husband and I would move soon, once we had our finances sorted out. I told myself she was doing better, that she and Bob were about to settle down, and then she’d also settle down, finally feeling safe. But none of that panned out, and those options are no longer even on the table as a happy fantasy. This puzzle is not one I would have ever picked out. Yet, here I am, constantly tending to it, carefully re-fitting it back together day after day.

I finally accepted, too, that I do have some choices in this matter. I have some measure of agency, if I exercise it. I can wallow, give up on everything else. Let myself and my relationships deteriorate, skirt my responsibilities at work, fold. Some people do, and I don’t blame them. Some days I do, the puzzle is left unattended, untouched at times. Over time, though, I find I blame myself less and less when I have those days, and also have those days less frequently.

I’ve accepted that my responsibility is to put the pieces where they belong, then turn my focus to other things, as best I can. This helps make room for hope. When I allow myself to notice, I clearly see that there is still love, joy, and beauty to be experienced in my life, and to be remembered about Sarah. I’m grateful for the realization that I get to choose how to engage in any given moment, even though sometimes I still come up short. I’m grateful for the capacity to get to reset as many times as I need to, to keep choosing to make my peace with these pieces. And I’m grateful for a little mantra that helps keep me choosing to move forward: “Okay, I’ll be part of this world.”

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Thank you for the feedback & encouragement: Lily, Emily, & Malar.

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1. Based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name; opening scene; monologue script

2. The Five Stages of Grief were outlined in the seminal book, On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: https://www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/on-death-and-dying/