You have 5 days = 5 minutes on the “stage of life’

Our daughter was 15 when she took her own life. It was a shock as obviously suicides are. My husband and I were together when we discovered her. We found her at our home and it was after 6 pm. Her brothers had been there, one all day and two others for more than two hours. Thankfully none of them saw her. I can’t even imagine what that would be like for them now. I am glad that if anyone, it was my husband and I.
This made a loud impact in our community. Not only was she 15, but maybe she did not realize how many people really did love her. She didn’t see it coming that she affected many more in our community that did not know her, even though it wouldn’t have been enough. Her funeral alone boasted numbers of over 300+. Pretty good for a girl that thought she was alone and had no one, or that she would not matter to anyone if she was gone. Kids poured in from the High school, the middle school, and elementary schools. Teachers were there, some teachers from schools out of the district and from cities we had not lived in for several years. There was an unbelievable support from my church. Many people that I am close friends with now were there and I did not know them at all at the time. Our family was very supported and very prayed for.
Social media is great for getting the word out fast regarding news like this. It helped me tell family members that were not in the loop, or were forgotten about by their point persons. It helped friends get the word out to other friends. I was able to literally last minute post a request that everyone wear converse shoes at the funeral with their dresses and suits, because that’s all my girl wore. But social media also spreads rumors. It can spread misunderstandings and non truths. Speculations were flying about “how” she did it. Death is a weird thing. We wonder all of these things about it because it’s so sudden and immediate and forever. We don’t know the mystery behind death and we cannot explain it. We all have our ideas and hopes and certainties or uncertainties about what happens after you die. Do you just fail to exist? Does your spirit come out of your body and you go to Heaven or Hell? Do you just go to sleep? Then there are those that look at the way in which she died and ugly things are said, “she is going to hell.” “That’s an abomination against God. “ “If she was so close to God, why did she kill herself?” Oh yes, we were not guarded from people being, well, human. No matter how tacky and distasteful – it was in our face.
My son, who was her full blood brother, was very, very worried about going back to school. The internet was swarming with all kinds of information and when you are a kid, things like this are magnified because it happened to a peer their age. Some of these kids have thought about the same things. Some of the kids were in total denial. Others pointed fingers at other schoolmates. There were widespread rumors of her being bullied. That was the theme of most teen age suicides at the time. No one that was not close to her knew what she was really dealing with. And if anyone really knew her, they would know that she was usually the bully. Dakota wasn’t going to allow anyone to step to her. Even her father bought into the “bully campaign” and gave a bunch of her photos away to someone that was going to eventually make a buck off of my daughter’s unfortunate decision from a “bully” book. I know why he took to that train, so that he did not have to look within himself and ask the question: “Did I play a role in this”?
Because my son was so concerned with what the kids were saying he asked if he could stay home another day from school. We agreed. The rest of the kids went to school. One of his brothers attended the same school he did, but I don’t think that many people knew that Dakota and my step son were related. Dakota’s brother had to go to school the following day and came home relieved because no one said anything to him. He did not hear any whispers in the halls and his friends did not treat him any different than they had before. It was almost as if life went on, like nothing had just tragically happened.
When you go through grief, time isn’t what it was. Everyone is going about living life, and you feel as if you are walking in slow motion, super in-tuned to your inner person and other peoples inner persons, that you almost feel as if you could survive without a body and you would get the same affect. It’s as if the world is in a cloud no one can see, but you are super focused on it. You hear louder for certain things and hear nothing for others. You are very hypersensitive and numb all at the same time and inside what feels like huge walls of confusion. Shock wraps all throughout you and sleep is either there in abundance or not at all. You catch yourself laughing, although it feels heavier than before. You really have to work at it to laugh and the thrill of the laugh is short lived. It’s like walking in a bubble. You feel isolated and alone unless you are with those that are going through it with you. Things and situations that you were ok with at first, after a week or some of time, you realize you are not ok with. You start to wonder where your audacity went. The family is just trying to practice breathing every other second and countless non immediate family members are dealing with the loss in their own way by stirring the pot in other areas. A week later, you are re living all of these experiences in your head, as if for the first time. Similar to having an out of body experience at the funeral. I remember looking back through the visitors’ book, surprised that some people were signed in, I don’t remember seeing them. I remember I was upset that certain friends didn’t show up when remembering distant acquaintances were there and lived farther away.
About a month after Dakota died, and after six months of processing that and the way things were making him feel, my son said something profound and absolutely true. “You have five days.” I said ”I am not sure what that means.” He said,” you are famous for five days, everyone is talking about you and your situation or your death and suicide and how it made them feel and how their family feels, etc. After five days, everyone goes on to something else. No one cares about you after five days. “
I contemplated that for a while. He was right; I remember there was a sigh of relief on his face when he came through the door after returning from his first day back to school. He was relieved that no one was talking about it. He was afraid to face the rumors of what happened, because, he would have had to speak the words of what she really did, no one was ready for that. Kids were saying she got hit by a truck, and there was much speculation about how she took her own life. I did some searching myself to see what they were saying. I almost corrected some of them and decided it would be too weird for me to get involved, so I stayed out of it as if I never witnessed it. We saw things that were posted; I had many kids friend me on the social networks. Our family touched many people.
But the majority forgot and moved on after 5 days.
My son went on to say – so If you are thinking about committing suicide to get attention, that’s stupid and if you are trying to do it out of anger, that’s dumb too because people are only going to care for about 5 minutes, and then some other stupid drama pops up.