Category Archives: a loved ones suicide

Don’t Forget to Say I Love You

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Many hearts long to hear the words I love you and many hearts struggle to say them.  When these three life-giving words remain unheard and unspoken, the suffering and destruction cannot be measured.

Those raised not hearing these words often struggle to say them. Some say actions speak louder than words. More often than not this is true, but not in this case. Now when it comes to saying I love you.  The notion that people should know we love them misguided and it is not the point. There is something deep in our child hearts that hungers and deserves to hear these words.

My last conversation with my mother Virginia took place on the phone three days before she committed suicide. She had said she was going to commit suicide. The last words I said to my mother were, I love you, Mommy. The last words she said to her son were, Thank you, Peter. When I hung up the phone I crumpled to my hands and knees and sobbed. I sobbed because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to save her life (I couldn’t!) and she couldn’t say, I love you.

I inflict zero judgment on those who struggle to say these words. More than likely the people who were and are deeply precious and important in their lives never said I love you to them. Somehow, some way, this pattern needs to be destroyed. And for those of you who have not heard the words I love you from people in your lives, please don’t give up – and don’t forget to say, I love you.

Writing My Mother’s Suicide

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Writing about my mother’s suicide in the memoir is, as you might imagine, a deeply emotional task. I can’t say it’s an unwanted to task because at least when I write the sentences I have some control over their content, and suicide, if you’ve had the misfortune to encounter it in life, is a remarkable and merciless reminder that we control very little. Even with our best efforts, we can’t stop someone from ending their life if that is what they want to do.

My mother commited suicide with a well-researched mix of drugs and alcohol on August 12, 1992. I will say nothing more about that in this essay for it is not the salient point of the essay. The salient point is this; my mother, Virginia Kahrmann, was a complete human being who does not deserve to be defined by that admittedly singular moment. Nor does she deserve to be defined by some of her rather harsh and emotionally brutal treatment of me when I grew up. Very few of us, if any, are all one thing. We are amalgams of life experience. My mother was no exception.

Her suicide was the culmination of a life that, for a variety of reasons, some I know, some I don’t, robbed her of her ability to love herself and thus her ability to believe anyone loved her. How do I know this to be true? She told me.

I once told her that her death (no matter how it came about) would be one of the biggest blows I would ever endure in life. She was completely and utterly baffled by this. “Really, Peter? Why?” I was speechless, a rare state for me.

As cruel as she could be to me at times – days after my father died when I was 15 she told me if I hadn’t been such a bastard he might have had enough strength to live – she inflicted far more damage on herself.

Yet, she was far more than the aforementioned. She was brilliant and the best conversationalist I’ve ever known. In the last 10 years of her life we became very close. I’d go to visit her in her Pearl River, New York home mid-morning, and we would talk straight through into the evening, our talks being accompanied by coffee, crackers and cheese, and going out to dinner.

We conferred regularly as we both threw all we had into fighting for the Brady Bill – a bill requiring states to have a waiting period to purchase a handgun until they had an instant check system in place – or when we fought against the death penalty, or the rights of immigrants. She countless volunteer hours to the GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) a group she referred to as the best run non-profit in the country, and worked tirelessly to help refugees from Laos find homes.

Her demons killed her love for herself and ultimately guided her into ending her own life. I am asking, hoping, that readers will not allow those demons to blind them to the beautiful person she in so many ways was, and in my heart, still is. If they do, then the demons win again, and winning again is the last thing they deserve.
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