Walking Home

I am reminded of a reading my mom had done at a suicide survivors retreat. I don’t remember the credentials of the woman who did the reading.

In the reading she said she could see a young man who had a very messy space and the woman with him was older like a grandma who’s space was neat as a pin. She also said the young man is telling me he loved playing hockey but he really hated the cold. Then she said – this young man says he did not realize that what he did was so extreme and now he sees it differently. She was certain this was about Kevin and his Grandma Boulanger.

To my mom, these words held a lot of weight. In the late 90’s we didn’t have a smart phone or facebook, so there was no real way this woman could have know the details she knew – this reading felt genuine and real to my mom. I think if there is an ability to connect from the other side, my brother would have found a way to do this for her. It gave us all a sense of peace that he was now ok.

The weight of a decision to take your own life. Is that a heavy weight? Or is a light one?

My inability to make decisions links to this question. My ability to fix people also does.

Loosing my brother to suicide kinked up the part of my brain that could make a decision easily and over enhanced the part that connects to people and helps them.

The anxiety that even the smallest decision on a choice brings to me is unbelievable.

Is your favorite color blue or yellow? What do you want for supper? My breathe quickens, my heart rate raises, my eyes fill up.

It’s collateral damage. I lived most of my adult life surrounding myself with a circle of people who would make my decisions for me because it was easier for me. I really just want someone else to carry that burden.

I raised my children in this fear. They learned anxiety behaviours from me. I mean don’t get me wrong here, my daughters are amazing humans and the space they grew up in was the space they were meant to be in. But there is a part of me that wishes at times that I could have been a different parent. A parent that was more fun and not so tired from trying to control every single risk.

Like – “don’t run with ✂️” for me was “don’t pick up the scissors, don’t run at all, maybe don’t even walk”.

And when they were sad, I could barely cope. I had fear that saying or doing the wrong thing would bring on a depressed state, and they would end up being like him. And yes I know that is not how depression works, but in the early days of parenting I did not know how it worked so I was severely afraid of it.

Small decisions create anxiety. Really big decisions, life decisions they take me years to make. I must play every scenario and see every outcome. I think this is because his big decision was so catastrophic to me. It is fear, fear of deciding. And I know I am not in control of what happens in life, I believe this in my heart 100% but my kinked brain isn’t ready to get fully on board with it just yet. We are all a work in progress, and I need to practise what I preach sometimes.

Even with all that chaos behind my eyes, Your eyes will always tell me what’s going on. I don’t have to ask you, most often you will just tell me. Or I will have a really strong feeling that I have to share something or I should message someone, and most often that person is in a bad space. This is a gift and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, my brother gave it to me ❤️

Why is the suicide rate so high in young men? I have been asking myself this question since I started to write for me and for you.

A friend messages last month and says 3 students from her highschool have taken their lives in the last six months. All boys.

A friend messages last week sharing that a young man died by suicide in her sons post secondary location.

Can most of us say we know someone or of someone that has passed from this life that way? We can.

Suicide is a hugely sensitive, complex issue with a tangled multitude of causes – and the very nature of a death by suicide means we can never fully know the reasons behind it.

Is it harder for young men to admit when they are struggling? Is it harder for them to understand what they are feeling? Does their way of coping with low levels mask their symptoms? Do they have a support system they can trust and lean on when they are struggling? And would they reach out?

Was there enough signs to alert a red light to me that my brother was really struggling? No there wasn’t. I feel that now with what I have learned there were signs, but I don’t know for sure if there were or I am just perceiving that.

From the hundreds of books I have read since 1996 on the brain, depression, anxiety, suicide, survivors guilt and how to let go of someone who chose to leave you by suicide. I can say that he likely was weathering a storm inside himself for a period of time. If I had read those books prior to his death – I probably still wouldn’t have fully clicked the signs. I’m still not certain this act was preventable for him.

In my eyes, my brother had a great childhood. In my eyes, he was athletically gifted. In my eyes, he was always doing dumb shit that brothers do. In my eyes, he was normal.

But……. What did it look like in his eyes? And as I sit and think about this question, I can her my dad say “silent water, runs deep” .

For suicide survivors aftercare , in 2021 there are lots of options to reach out. To be honest, I’m still on the fence with this. In the mind state I was in, I think there could have been 1000 options to reach out and I wouldn’t have taken them. I do think that the support of 2021 may have helped the people around me to feel supported if that makes any sense. Awareness does have its impact but until you have been a suicide survivor or lost someone close to suicide I know you do not know of this impact.

My dad always told us – do your thing, have fun but don’t ever hurt me. I heard these words so many times in the aftermath. My dad carried that with him everyday. His eyes had a level of sadness and hurt in them that never went away.

This path of my brothers that intertwined with so many that loved him, it left a mess of tangled knots, some we never could unravel.

My dad had idle hands following my brothers death because he was still in recovery. I worried about him constantly, checked in on him to a level of annoying I’m sure. I imagine his thoughts got the best of him some days, probably most days. I remember him making a lot of soup. This was the only thing I had ever seen him cook in my lifetime with him.

My mom went back to work right away. It was harvest she said and they needed her. I think she needed them.

2 weeks passed. Wham bam let’s get back to normal. I was not strong enough to face people. My husband told me it was time to get back to work, and I did not want to hear that. How does a person go from flatline to a new normal? Had he not pushed me, I might have continued to stay in bed ….. either way he was a part of that walk home for me. The second thing I remember is my first day back, my coworker (the same one who sent the muffins I mentioned in my prior writing) said “I am sorry about your brother”

Oh no I gotta get out of here, I can’t do this, I don’t want to be here. As tears welled up for both of us I told her it’s ok.

Stop.

It wasn’t ok. It wasn’t ok to be in this space, to have a broken family, to have a dad with a serious heart condition making soup and a mom working so hard she had no time to think. It wasn’t ok to be so lost and feel so alone. The weight of the day was heavy. She knew it. I knew it.

But at that moment I needed it to be ok, to have a space I would go to every day where people wouldn’t look at me and feel sad.

You know the look.

Even though we weren’t close friends, she has a place in walking me home probably without even knowing it. Because she let me know she cared and then let me choose how that day and all the days following would go in that space.

We push forward because we have to and because we can. We continue the walk in shoes that don’t feel like our own. Like who’s f&(($g shoes are these?

Our first steps to walking each other home, were to walk out of the hospital that night without him. I don’t remember leaving there.

As I started writing this, I noticed my words repeating that I don’t remember what happened.

The brain has a way of suppressing memories that are made during traumatic events. Even 25 years later the memories of that time mostly don’t exist in my brain. I’ve never been able to find them.

Memories are like quick flashes of color for me. They dart in and out. They have no beginning or ending.

Navy blue – It’s late I am aware of this

Red – A red stop light

Green – A hotel with no vacancy

Black – A call with my husband where I said the words “Kevin is dead”

Dark Blue – The feeling in the pit of my stomach, a deep ache and feeling of nausea that keep me tossing and turning all night.

Lights – Making one call the next day to tell a friend

Red – my parents going to Lana’s apartment to see her and to see what mess there was.

Brown and Red – The impound lot and my brothers car

Red – my mom crying saying she wished we didn’t clean up the car and his things (I don’t remember doing it, but I obviously did)

I am fighter and a peace keeper all in one, and was long before this traumatic night. As tears run down my cheeks right now, I know the body remembers what the mind keeps a secret. Maybe that is the fighter in me, maybe it’s the peace keeper, maybe it’s just a little of both.

White – the cemetery

White – a hug from the minister, her name is Heather, her voice is soothing, she stands with me as we look at the casket and she says – he is not there.

Blue – his friends that helped to walk him home. One that stands out to me, his head is hung down. One hand is holding his baseball cap, with the other hand he is holding his eyes with his thumb and finger like he is trying to hold his tears in.

Pink – flowers delivered from a friend who says – I just don’t know what to say

Brown – a basket of muffins from a friend who says – time is a great healer

These are my only memories of the first few weeks following Kevin’s final walk home. I know I travelled a number of miles, made a number of plans, walked a number of steps, hugged a lot of people and likely didn’t stop crying. But I don’t remember it.

I literally have the memory of an elephant lol. But I don’t remember how I got home from Saskatoon on the first day or much else until a few weeks, yes weeks later.

Each time I write for you and for me, I learn something. A flash that comes to my mind. Boys should be raised that it is ok to cry. If you have one, make sure he knows it’s ok to cry and he doesn’t have to hold his eyes to keep the tears in.

Humans, we have a limit we can carry. Even the fighters and peace keepers. Trauma is personal. It does not disappear. It permanently changes you. And you learn that’s ok, because it has to be.

1996. This was not a time in the world where depression, mental illness or suicide were discussed or brought to light. I am not sure I even knew what any of it was. There was no “better together”, “bell lets talk” or anything like this. There was no awareness of any kind.

Yet, as we meet the doctor that pronounced my brothers time of death and we are asked if he had a history of depression….. my mom, my dad and I all answered yes. What in the %^*$*? How did we know this? We had never talked about it.

Did my brother have a history of depression? Well I think only he could answer that question. Are people who commit suicide depressed or do they suffer from other mental illness? I also think they are the only ones who can answer that question. All humans are different, we all cope and suffer differently. The levels of life and stress that we can handle is not the same.

Is there an incident that is the one that makes life too heavy? I think that is also individually decided. Maybe there were signs, but in 1996 we certainly didn’t know them. Kevin had trouble keeping a job and he was always needing money. He was gifted athletically and I feel like he had trouble accepting it when he didn’t make it to the levels he expected of himself. He also hid behind a lot of untruths. The summer before his death, he said he had a job working for the town. I actually do not know if he even had this job at all, or if he had it and was fired from it. He hid this from us, by getting up every morning and going to work then coming home when work was done – but he didn’t actually go to work and we don’t know where he went all day. Was this depression? I do not know, but I don’t need to.

My dad was very ill that summer. He had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. He spent many weeks in the hospital and we were very focused on him. Did we miss the signs of depression because of this? I do not know. My mom told me that she and Kevin had discussed dads illness and how serious it was. His response was that if he was ever that sick he would probably choose to end things himself rather than be in a hospital sick. After he took his life, my mom always felt like that was his way of asking her if it was ok.

The last weekend he came home he was so happy. His smile was captivating. Many of his friends remember this weekend as he made a point of stopping in to see them. In the aftermath, we all know that he had made his decision and he was feeling peaceful and he was home to say goodbye. I remember this weekend like it was yesterday.

A week later, he went to the mac’s store near his ex-girlfriends apartment(where he had been staying without her permission)and he stole cold medication capsules from the boxes (leaving the boxes on the shelf) and went back to her apartment. He took rat poison to thin his blood and then all of the cold medication and laid down on her couch and fell asleep and asphyxiated. She found him when she came back to Saskatoon that night to start her second year of university. This is the story the police and doctors pieced together from the apartment and his tox screen.

My brother always had many friends. He had a good heart. And he is still missed to this day by so many. Death leaves a big hole, that never gets filled. Suicide in my opinion leaves an even bigger hole. A friend of his told me that she felt we all played, loved and lived a little harder because he couldn’t. This is one of his parts in walking all of us home.