My Heart's Got a Mind Like A Steel Trap

A word-sketch on the grief of suicide survivors and the magic of memories.

My husband and I just got done watching a movie whose name I will omit in case you've never seen it. In the movie, there's a wonderful relationship between a father and a son who have a unique ability. The father gets cancer and the son has an amazing opportunity to go back in time and see him one last time. They walk along the beach, skip rocks and laugh together. They leave nothing unsaid.

It's a beautiful movie that punches you in the gut in the best way.

I imagine those of us who lost our fathers too soon are maybe more affected than most. Or maybe it's just anyone who's lost their father, because I imagine it always feels too soon.

But it's moments like these that sting a little more, the pain a bit more acute, because my dad didn't die of cancer. He didn't suffer a heart attack or a stroke. He didn't get in a car accident or drown tragically. All of these would be horrible and losing one's parents is never easy.

But in these moments I shed an extra tear (or 50) for those of us whose dad's chose to leave. Maybe he walked out when you were young. Or maybe he wrote you off as a teen. Maybe he just wasn't great to begin with. Or maybe, like mine, he took his own life when everyone least expected it.

That's the kind of gut-punch-pain that continues to reverberate like an echoing shout bouncing off the walls of your heart.

Suicide adds another horrible, painful layer to untimely deaths. You know in your head that there's really nothing you could have done. They made their choice and it likely had very little to do with you.

But in your heart you wish you were blessed with the magical gift of time travel. You wish you could unsay the things you wish you'd never said and would have picked up the phone a bit more. You wish you could have overlooked their hurtful comments and tried to sow more love instead of yelling back and hanging up the phone.

And you wish you could go back, just one more time, and make sure that they know you love them. No matter how cutting their words could be, no matter how much you never seemed to measure up, you long for one more moment to say what you left unsaid.

Even though your head knows, your heart thinks, "maybe then he wouldn't have done it."

Maybe he'd still be here and things would be different.

Maybe he wouldn't have chosen to leave. Maybe then it would have been enough.

The pain wells up in your heart and spills out your eyes. And your head wraps its arms around your heart and says, "There, there. Let it out."

Because the thing your head and your heart can agree on is it shouldn't have happened this way. It shouldn't have happened and it hurts.

So your brain lets your heart express all the things it tries to reason away. You find yourself in your living room sobbing after watching what was supposed to be a sweet movie shared with your other half. Or crying in the bathroom at a wedding during the father-daughter dance. Or any of the other random moments that come along and remind you of what's gone, but shouldn't be.

But after a good cry, your heart is able to hear your head again. And your head knows it's not your fault and you did the best you could. "But we can learn from this too," it says. "We can notice the little things more. We can let go of the minor annoyances and pay attention to the small everyday moments, the moments we would miss if they were gone. We can make sure the people we love know, without a doubt, in their heart and in their head, that we love them."

I know the waves will continue to come; the heart doesn't easily forget.

And really, my head is okay with that.

Because memories are their own kind of time travel after all.