The Shame Caused By My Father's Suicide

This is an excerpt from my book published earlier this year, The Secret Struggle: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One. The book is my effort to help others who have experienced a loss of a loved one by suicide to feel less alone, less guilt, and as I have seen all too often, less isolated.

My father was a contradiction to me, even at a young age. On the one hand, he was the life of the party. He was quick witted, lighthearted, and certainly had friends. He would periodically produce an Irish brogue, but my brother Desmond and I weren’t sure if he was celebrating his Irish roots or just having fun, since he’d spent more of his youth in New York than in the years growing up in Ireland. I guess it didn’t matter, since those were the good memories. He knew how to tell a good story, and a good story or joke always sounded better in an Irish brogue. I remember him capturing the attention of a room and how I wanted to feel proud of him. Somehow, the attention he gave and got at parties never translated to attention for any of his kids.

He was a veteran, and I have tremendous respect for those who serve our country. He was a member of the US Army and had fought in the Korean War. If you would ask his sister Mary, she would tell you that he was over there winning the war single-handedly. My mentioning her pride is more than an admiration for his military service, as there is a connection later in the book to veterans who return from combat situations struggling with PTSD, putting them at a higher risk for suicide.

I was about ten years old when my parents decided to divorce, and I was told in no uncertain terms by both parents that I was now “the man of the house,” and needed to step up in my responsibilities. I had been parentified at a much younger age, caring for my younger siblings in a home of two alcoholic parents, but this proclamation solidified this role. It was not something I welcomed, but I saw how hard my mother was working, and I didn’t mind helping her. She was a true single parent managing both a high stress job and coming home to four children. My father, in contrast, was either unwilling or unable to take on parenting responsibilities. He didn’t coparent, and I never slept under the same roof as him once he left. As a result, I became extremely resentful of him. I didn’t see him working in a career, as a parent, or as a partner. He was absent, and I was angry.

I recognize that I am not unlike many kids without fathers. Anyone who grew up without a father knows the feeling of wanting a dad in their life. Instead, he would show up every six months, take us to the same Pizza Hut each time, and pretend like he was a dad. He’d ask the standard questions like How is school? without listening for the answer. That showed me how unattached he was. It drove me up a wall. He would insist we study hard and get good grades, but he never once helped us with homework or projects. He didn’t make it to our sporting events or theater performances. He just wasn’t there. Desmond, my sister Siobhan, and I would never say anything to him about his six-month hiatuses and awkward Pizza Hut trips, but we all felt the irony and phoniness. Our family culture would not allow us to confront him; that would have been seen as disrespectful. And the need to keep family issues a secret meant not sharing how we felt with anyone outside the family.

By the time I made it to college, I no longer resented my father. I felt like I got out of the ongoing family chaos and could start my life anew. Holding onto that resentment didn’t matter anymore. I had moved on and was looking toward the future, seeing opportunities and positive relationships ahead. I didn’t believe my father would ever be there for me, but nonetheless, I always hoped he’d change. I continued my silent aversion to confronting him, as the expectation that I show respect to my parents followed me into adulthood.

The first time I did confront him on his lack of presence in our lives surrounded my college graduation. I had some moderate success in college and was the first of my siblings to graduate. My mother was excited to celebrate. When she made a specific request that my father not be at the graduation ceremony, I took it as an opportunity to break out of the family directive of silence. I had no intention to be mean to him; in fact, I was looking for words to say it gently, but it wasn’t going to be subtle. My message was clear: Mom had raised us alone and supported me through college. My graduation celebration was as much about her as it was about me.

I called my father that night, immediately hoping for the sound of his voicemail. He answered, and we had a brief chitchat about how things were. Then I let him know that while he and I could go celebrate another time, I’d rather he did not attend my graduation ceremony. As I explained the rehearsed rationale, my upbringing kicked in and I tried not to let my words hurt him. I felt guilty as soon as I heard his disappointment through the phone. I remember not being sure of whether he was upset about not attending graduation, or whether he got the message that he hadn’t been there as a father as we were growing up. I was far from confrontational, but I had made my point.

He killed himself within the next two hours. April 7, 1989.

Time was a blur for me over the next several days. It was like I was in a trance. A state of fog overwhelmed me, and I didn’t understand what had occurred. I can barely remember the call from my mother telling me that he had passed away. In hindsight, I know I was experiencing shock. She tried to protect me and told me several times that it was accidental, but I knew better. I needed more information, and I eventually received it a couple days later reading the police report and talking to an officer on the scene that night.

With that clarity, though, came tremendous guilt and shame. The guilt was truly indescribable. I had this message on repeat in my head: if I hadn’t called and confronted him, he wouldn’t have ended his life that night. Logically, I know I did not do anything to intentionally cause his death. My brain can rattle off countless arguments about how many years this must have been building up for him and that there were many things had contributed to him drinking to excess throughout his life. Maybe he had PTSD from his time in the Korean War. Maybe he had been depressed throughout his life as Brendan had been. Those arguments were logical.

But my heart didn’t listen to logic. My heart told me a different story. There was a direct cause and effect that is as clear as anything could be. Had I not confronted him, he would not have killed himself at that moment. He may have ended his life a week later, but I would not have felt the same guilt. The timing was what it was, though, and I found myself with no answers and only myself to blame.

My mother told me repeatedly that it wasn’t my fault, but she couldn’t convince me. I shut down and didn’t talk to anyone outside of a small circle about what really happened. I shoved my feelings down for years and didn’t let them out. I kept thinking, How could he have done this to me? But the guilt-monster always posed the inverse question, turning all that guilt into shame: How could I have done that to him? What kind of a person could do that to anyone?

The message my father gave me through his suicide was twofold. First, it reminded me that I was not worth being around for as a child. I wasn’t worth his active parental participation, so he chose absence. Second, when I finally built myself up to start a new life after this difficult childhood, my confrontation had been significant enough for him to end his life. I received the juxtaposition loud and clear. It was the violation behind the violation.

As a child, I was taught to keep my emotions to myself, and that continued into my forties. I’d learned to just suck it up and move forward, and that’s exactly what I did. I shoved all my feelings of shame and guilt into a dark place, and there, those feelings and thoughts festered. Thirty years after my father’s death, I finally dealt with them with a therapist who’d gotten me through my divorce the year before. She was an astute clinician who, after I alluded to my childhood experiences, knew that there was a lot more there. Now, after years of working in therapy and subsequently opening up to people in my life, I want to believe that the feeling of guilt is past tense. But, if I am being honest, it is not. I hope someday I can fully let go of those feelings, but at this time in my life, I wonder if I ever will.

Therapy has gotten me to a place to understand that my father did not intentionally dump this guilt on me. But I am only learning this because I am addressing it. When I tell you that I told everyone in my life that my father died in a car accident except about ten people, that is not an exaggeration. To give you an example of the level of shame I felt (and the commitment to secrecy of the elders in our Irish Catholic family), I have six first cousins that I had to reach out to in the last six months because I was writing this book, and I needed them to hear the truth about their uncle’s death from me directly, before they saw it in print.

The tragedy of the suicide of a loved one should not define your life and how you feel about yourself. If you experienced a suicide of a loved one, it was not your fault, just as my father’s suicide was not my fault. I promise you that talking about your feelings with a professional or someone you trust helps. I won’t lie to you though - it’s brutally difficult, and in many ways, it will get harder facing those truths before you feel much relief. But it’s worth it. Please learn from my experience: talking with those you trust will help you in the long run. I promise it’s better than bottling that pain and confusion up for twenty-five years. And if I can do it, I promise you can also.