Please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline if you need help. Dial 988 and you will be connected to free confidential help 24/7.
Mom,… I love you and I’m sorry.
She left a note.
Emily tried to text me from school after taking 30 Extra Strength Tylenol. That’s more than a lethal dose for an adult male. It’s five times the recommended daily maximum dose. It can lead to liver failure and death. I don’t check my phone when I’m with patients, so she didn’t reach me. Or Paul. Thank God she reached her Aunt Bec who called the school and started a cascade of actions to help Emily. Bec called the front desk at my office, and I vaguely remember Bec telling me something bad had happened to Emily. I told Andrea what little bit I knew, and Andrea looked me in the eyes, and said “JUST GO!” I remember the delusion of thinking I can take care of this situation later after work, but I have four more patients to get through first. “JUST GO” snapped me into the familiar reality that everything stops and everything changes and there isn’t a way to make this unexpected nebulous slime of terror fit nicely into the way I thought my Tuesday would go.
Grace and Harry were the first to reach Emily at the school. I spoke with school admin while Emily was being checked by EMS and loaded onto a stretcher. I hugged her tightly and told her that everything stops now and we will get help for her. Everything stops.
She spent several hours in the emergency department before being transferred to a private room for a slow-drip of acetaminophen antidote. Two days. Once she was medically cleared and her liver function was confirmed, she was moved to the psych ward. Six days. And it all seemed too familiar. It was a lifetime ago that we were here with Grace, but emotions are no respecter of time. No sharp objects. No sweat pants with drawstrings. No bras with an underwire. And the emotional trigger is pulled and seven years is barely a flash.
We were all there with Emily. Bec, Paul, me, Grace, Harry, Eli, Lauren, and Gavin. It was hard and precious and gut wrenching. I spent the two nights with her in her private room before she was sent to psych, and Paul would go back to the house. He was the one who found her note. Just to me. He didn’t find a note to whom it may concern. Just to me.
It started out like a love letter. “Mom…” She thanked me for this and that. She mentioned the fun things we do together. Plants. Makeup. Smoothies. Talking in the car. And she praised my character and my parenting. Then it turned dark. Pain. Worry. Burden. Battles. Tears. Sadness. And she knew this would break my heart, but “I love you and I’m sorry.”
I asked Emily about the note and why she only wrote one to me. My questions agitated her and she insisted she had written notes to everyone. Her dad. Grace. Eli. Lauren. Gavin. But not to Harry. The notes were password protected on her phone, and mine was the only one she had put on paper. Her phone had been tucked in my pocketbook ever since I’d gotten to the school. No Emily, they never would have gotten those notes. But I got mine.
I cried over not having a note from Grace. Not having something in my hand to tell me what Grace had been thinking. I cried over knowing that Grace hurt so badly that this was the only way she thought she could end her pain. I cried over knowing she would leave us without saying goodbye. And I cried over having a note from Emily. I cried knowing one piece of paper could never make this make sense, and I would never really know what Emily had been thinking. I cried knowing she felt so isolated in her self imposed isolation that she would forever punish us by leaving us completely isolated from her forever.
Leaving a suicide note is absolutely the worst choice. Not leaving a suicide note is absolutely the worst choice. They are simultaneously the single worst choice because there is absolutely a good choice. Don’t kill yourself.
Not because it’s about me, or about the people you leave behind. But you are leaving us behind.
Could 15 years of Oh Emily really all boil down to this? Would the very essence of her note, thanking me for my mothering then consoling me in my loss, be distilled into her last line scrawled with graphite on paper…six words…”I love you and I’m sorry.”
I’m gonna need some time to get over that shit. And thank you, Friend, for telling me to call a counselor. I heard you, and I’m scheduled.
Visitation in psych is very limited. Paul and I were the only ones allowed, only twice a day, and visits were short. One visit was particularly harsh. Not a shining moment for Paul, me, or Emily. We each said crappy things we shouldn’t have said, but we were raw and tired, and the blame-game started . Emily was crying and jumped off her bed and ran into her bathroom. I followed her, and we stood in the dark because good grief how the hell are exhausted, grief stricken people supposed to work these stupid light switches! I held her in the dark next to the toilet and the shower, and we cried and I told her “I love you and I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”
Psych doesn’t last forever. Emily has come home. I asked her if it was ok to write about this and she said it was alright. Grace did too. We are headed to the beach for our family vacation. We need this. And I’m left processing Emily’s note, feeling hurt by it, and hopeful in spite of it. I’m thankful those weren’t her final words to me, but I do think they are wise and healing and insightful beyond her 15 years. “I love you and I’m sorry.” Same, Em. Same
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
TreasureSeeker 