This blog contains sensitive content, even for the writer.
Anniversaries. Strange things. Sometimes they are happy anniversaries. Sometimes they are days for remembering. For contemplation. For quiet.
March 19. 2004, I think. It's been so long since Sarah's death. Sarah's suicide. My cousin. Practically a sister. My best friend. My teenage do-everything-together buddy. Candy red flat-ironed hair. Safety pin jewelry. Smoke secret cigarettes and listen to Nirvana. Talk about moving to Seattle when we grow up. Laughter. So much laughter.
So long ago.
Did she really exist?
Many thoughts and feelings around her. Her death. Tradition and culture and my own expectations call for me to make any creation about Sarah's death be about Sarah and only Sarah, but when I search inside, I discover her death is about me.
Is that wrong? What is wrong? Is death even about the dead anymore once they are gone? All that loss, that pain, that grief, that confusion, the deceased aren't feeling it. That shit's only for the living.
Who would I be if she was still alive? She lived across the country when she left this realm. Would our friendship have faded? Would the influence of our connection on my life have become minimal or nil, just as though she had been lost forever?
Even if it had, I would not be the same. My life was steered by my inclination to drink after she ended hers. Her death was too painful to process. I drowned the feelings in rum at home. In beers and shots at bars, where I spent long hours and met many people. Had Sarah not died, many songs would not have been written. Bands would not have been formed. Choices would not have been made. Paths not altered. I may never have moved north. I may never have endured my own self-discovery in the solitude of a new city.
If Sarah hadn't died, not just died, but suicided, I wouldn't be this me. I would be someone else. I don't think I would like that someone else as much as I like this one. I'm proud of this me. I've done a hell of a lot of work to get to the stable, self-and-other-compassionate place that I am now. The opportunity to heal doesn't sit around in obvious abundance waiting to be found. It has to be sought. Usually that seeking takes some hell-on-earth experiences.
I wouldn't trade the work I've done for anything. But godfuckingdammit Sarah could have done that work. She could have done that work and gotten past the shame and the pain inside that wanted to kill her. That did kill her.
I wish she had known. I wish I had known, then. I would have told her.
I remember the day I didn't throw myself in front of the train.
Disoriented, exhausted. At work. Depleted. No longer connected to my body or my life. Said I felt sick. Got to leave early.
On my walk to the light rail station I noticed something wrong with my favorite sunglasses. They didn't fit right. I crumpled them up and threw them into a bush. Kept walking. Crossed the bridge over the highway with its tall, unscaleable fences. Took the stairs down to the train station. Sat on a bench. Waited.
It would be easy. The train pulls into the station fast. Just jump in front. Over in a second. I would wait at the edge like everyone else who wanted to board. Nobody would see it coming. Nobody would react in time.
I waited. I could hear the train coming. Feel it pulling me toward the tracks. I shifted in my seat.
There! There it was. Lights on shiny white whirring 'round the bend. People began to queue. I knew what I had to do.
I got up.
Turned around.
Climbed onto the bench with my back to the train and held on so tight not even a hurricane tsunami tornado nuclear blast could have pried me off.
Somehow I got home. I guess I took the train. I don't remember. I just remember asking for help, and getting it.
The journey was hell for a long time. Often I hated it. Every day for years after I thought about quitting. I didn't. One day at a time. Many of those days were worth waking up to, it turned out. In time I learned how to let go and say no to the things/habits/people that made the journey harder and that didn't need to be there. Now, seven or so years later, all cells have turned over anew, I made it, I'm ok, I'm content and often happy. I'm doing good.
Sarah could have taken that journey. For years I found comfort in telling myself that she found a way to escape her suffering but NO GOD DAMMIT SHE COULD HAVE FOUND ANOTHER WAY. I did. She didn't have to kick that chair out from under her. She could have stopped. She could have asked for help. She would have gotten it.
She's dead. She's dead forever. One day I'll be dead forever, too, and she can tell me if it was worth it.
Sarah was 27. She was smart and pretty and had a silly laugh. She could doodle and draw like nobody's business.
My Uncle Dan was 54 when he did it. Almost four years ago, now.
"Were you close?"
It took me a while to understand this was just one of the many things people ask when you've had a loss because death is an awkward topic. It was not a determinant of how much grief I was allowed to feel.
Were we close? When I was a kid, yeah. After that most of our lives were spent in different cities. We didn't keep in touch. The few times I did see Dan, at family gatherings and such, he was heavily medicated for bipolar disorder. Kind of a zombie. Not the creative, spontaneous uncle I remembered from childhood. I felt uncomfortable around him. I avoided him.
Shortly before he left the planet, I received news from my dad that my uncle had gone missing. I had his number. I thought about texting him. Didn't know what to say outside of hey, I once decided not to throw myself in front of a train, I hope you decide something similar, so I didn't reach out. He reappeared a couple days later. Told everyone he was going to get help. That he was gonna be ok.
A day after that Dan threw himself off the Coronado Bridge.
I started sewing. Spent every free second making bags, doggy backpacks, anything I could. My grief over Dan's suicide mixed with the repressed and unprocessed grief over Sarah's. I think I was trying to keep my shit together with needle and thread.
My shit fell apart, though. Hard.
Most of that time is a blur. Except for one vivid memory, mid-sew, when I found myself down on the floor, hands knees tears snot slobber and clawing at the floor. Grief splitting my body in two right at the gut, separating head from feet. I'm not sure how I survived that cry, but I did. And when I got up off the floor I finally fucking saw it MY GOD I FINALLY REALIZED how fucking fleeting life truly is and what the fuck was I doing not living my life the way I wanted.
Me and my old dog went backpacking and when we got back I broke up with my shitty abusive boyfriend of 8 years and moved into a new apartment and started over. I still made and make mistakes but I managed to glean some good out of these fucked up life experiences.
There is no shame in suicide. Only the loss of the one chance you have to be alive.
There is always hope.
Always hope.
Always hope.
when my uncle took his life
we crammed fifty people
into a house
to cry for him
outside, the temperature soared
high above the hundred mark
inside, the air conditioner broke
tears and sweat rolled off sweltering bodies
everyone spoke of love
and conjured up memories
and invoked the kinds of laughter
that undulates through the body
back and forth
a shaking of shoulders
laughter
then sobs
then laughter again
heat evaporated conversations
memories
a shimmering haze
a mirage
of the man
that used to be
my uncle
In loving memory of Daniel Adamson and Sarah Horvitz. Thank you for all that you were in life and all that you continue to be in my heart.
All pictures and words copyright/property of Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.