October 15

On Friday, October 15, 2004, my dad took his own life. 

I may be a “writer,” but I doubt I’ll ever have the right words to write eloquently about this. 

It has now been seventeen years without him. Grief supposedly heals with time, but each year is another year of memories he’s not in. 

I have an inextricable connection with my father, this man I barely knew. We are alike in many ways, ways I do not know and cannot understand. I’m built more like him than my mom, and apparently, I act like him at times. Maybe this connection is why I feel like I’m responsible for holding space for him each year. 

The year my father died, I watched cops rummage through our house, looking for a note he never left. Each year since, October 15 has been a day I set aside to intentionally remember him and consider how to create a different world – a world no family has to have cops turning over their possessions, hoping to find some note to explain the unexplainable. A world without suicide. 

A world without suicide, a world where people aren’t oppression and marginalized, a world with fully-funded communities that care for and take care of each other without bureaucratic red tape and policy-driven violence. It’s possible. 

In a world without suicide, I’d know my dad. I’d see who he is and have memories with him that are my own, not stories told to me by others.

Though I will say, I want to share a story I learned about him this year from his college days: At the time, in Ohio, it was apparently illegal to have a vehicle on fire on the side of the highway. My dad had a cheap car commuting to college, and one day, when it started smoking on the highway, he pulled over and got out of the car. A cop then pulled over, not to help, but to tell him he was going to get a ticket if his car was on fire on the side of the road. So – my dad drove off in his smoking car. (Yeah, maybe we are alike.) 

In a world without suicide, my dad would’ve gone to my graduation and been around at Christmases. I’d know his favorite foods and maybe we’d go out to eat them together (because even in an alternate reality, I probably wouldn’t be a great cook). We could fight about elections and policies. I could text him and annoy him by calling him Daddio or some other ridiculous nickname I’d probably come up with. 

The saddest part about my father’s suicide is that it wasn’t abnormal. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States (in 2019). Mental health must be taken more seriously – in day-to-day interactions and in policy choices. 

Dan was forty when he died. Middle-age men are actually the highest demographic for “successful” suicide attempts. Society teaching us that men should not have feelings is largely responsible, as men are less likely to seek help for mental health. 

If you have a father figure in your life, please take some time this weekend to call, spend time, or take pictures with him. 

Please also do more for suicide prevention than post a hotline number or warning signs. Think about the intersectional impacts of suicide, and start the work in your own home and community. 

Today, I’m also grateful for my mother’s strength and love – the main reason I have survived and been able to live as I have lived the past seventeen years. 

This is one of the only photos I have with both of my parents. Part of that is a 90s thing – photos were mostly taken on disposable cameras, one parent at a time. But I have only ever seen two photos of me and my parents alone, and two photos of the three of us and my sister. When I say take photos, I mean it. 

ID: Hannah is six years old here - I believe this was the first day of first grade, so about 6 weeks before her father died. She is holding her arms out wide, being goofy. Her dad is on the left and her mom is on the right. The image is old and grainy. Everyone in the picture is smiling.