When Your Mother Kills Herself, You Learn a Few Things

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week.

This essay contains triggering material. Read at your own risk, and with your personal discretion.

In the physical/spiritual/emotional space surrounding me, surrounding my life, there is an open window which will never close. My mother exited through that window; the breeze wafts into my world from outside, beckoning, from somewhere mysterious and also present. The curtain is white and sometimes red velvet, like the curtains in her bedroom from when I was a teenager. The curtain is always moving. I forget about the window sometimes but when I look, it is always there, always open. I can never close it. It is an entrance and an exit. My mother crawled through, crawled out, and forgot to close it behind her.

My mother’s suicide ripped off my skin. There is no other way to explain it. When I say the word “suicide,” people cringe and look away. Immediately after her death family and friends told the truth or lied, depending on their tolerance for pain. “Why don’t we just tell everyone she…