Speech for the Out of the Darkness Walk

I thought I would post my speech from this morning.

Good morning. my name is Kelli and I am a survivor because I lost someone I love to suicide. Everyone here is a survivor. We have been through the horror and tragedy of losing someone to suicide. We have lived to tell about it and we continue to live with it every day. Others here are survivors because they have attempted suicide and thankfully it was unsuccessful.

After years of waiting for the man of my dreams to come along, on December 1st, 1996 I met him. His name was Tom. We were introduced by his brother, whom I worked with. On December 22 we agreed we were soul mates, meant to be together and decided we should get married. To say the least it was a whirlwind romance!

Tom was good and kind. He was one of the most giving people I had ever met and taught me what it truly means to be charitable and compassionate. He also had an amazing sense of humor. I could be in the middle of being furious at him for something and he would do something that would make me laugh. He was former military. Standing up and fighting for this country and freedom was very important to him. He wanted very badly to be a police officer. However, he wasn't able to fulfill that dream. It was always in his heart though. He was a great father, husband, son, brother and friend. He never met a stranger and could chat up anyone he came in contact with...and he did. He was very loyal and threw himself into whatever he was doing. A week after he met my stepdad, they became best friends. He spent the next several years taking care of him.

He served in Desert Storm and while he was there, he didn't just perform his regular duties on the ship. During his off time he volunteered in the POW camps and volunteered to work the oil fires. After serving 13 years in the Navy and 5 years in the Army National Guard, he medically retired due to an injury he sustained. Several years after Desert Storm, he was diagnosed with PTSD. His sense of duty to this country never stopped. On Sept 11, 2001 after watching in horror along with the rest of the world, he went down that day to the recruiter and begged them to take him back. They turned him away because of his injury. He was devastated by that decision. I believe this was the beginning of his spiral down. In the spring of 2002 we lost my stepdad. Tom lost his best friend and didn't know how to fill the void. In sept 2003, Toms baby sister was killed in a car accident. We had a lot of stresses in our lives on top of the losses suffered and Tom continued to spiral down. The sweet kind man I had fallen in love with was becoming more withdrawn, erratic, refusing to get help, refusing to talk to anyone, angry all the time and refusing to get out of bed. He would go from high mood to low mood in a matter of minutes. After 6 years of being smoke free, he started smoking again. He started drinking while he was taking antidepressants. During the last 7 months of our marriage we were separated with a lot of back and forth reconcile and separate again. That was very hard on us both and our children.

In the very early morning hours of Oct. 27th, 2004, Tom took his own life. In a matter of seconds, many lives were changed forever and a wonderful man was lost. The thing about suicide is the people left behind struggle to understand why and deal with the misplaced guilt. I wasn't myself for a long time. I was trying to help my two very small children grieve and grieve myself and just keep moving. I was afraid if I stopped moving, I would just stop. I stopped laughing and I began to wonder if I would ever laugh again. I was angry and sad all the time. I was furious. How could he leave me to raise these kids by myself? How could he leave his family like that when they had already lost his sister? How could he leave his older children in the time that they needed him most? Then I would cry uncontrollably for a long time.

I would tell myself that I just needed to make it to the next breath. That is exactly how I did it too. One breath at a time, then it became one minute at a time, one hour, one day, one week. Then one day I walked outside and I actually noticed that it was a nice day. I hadn't noticed that in quite some time. The sun was shining and then I noticed something else, I was smiling. I was smiling and I was actually feeling good and that is when I realized I was going to be okay. It definitely wasn't going to be easy, but I knew I was going to be okay.

I started dating again after my kids started telling me they wanted a new dad. Almost seven years later I still haven't found them that new dad, but I sure have learned a lot! I started exercising again and finding myself and what interests I have. I threw myself into work and into reading. I found a series of books that made me laugh so hard I thought I would wet my pants and that is how I learned how to laugh again. I also did things that I never thought in a million years that I would do. Some of them good and some of them not so good and most of them out of character for me.

My kids and I have a traditions. Every year on Tom's birthday and Father's Day, my kids will write notes and attach them to balloons and send them to heaven. I hope they never outgrow doing that. It seems to be healing for them.

The anger lasted a long time. I would think I was over the anger and then something would hit me and I would just get so mad all over again. Finally one day I went to my church leader and he said to me, "You're keeping him from progressing. Your anger is keeping him from learning what he needs to learn and letting him move on." That was the slap in the face that I needed. I was keeping us both from moving on.

I started doing research and came to the real understanding that people who die by suicide are not selfish. They are in severe emotional pain and they don't know how to end the pain. I started focusing on Tom the man as a whole, not the way he died and what led to his death. I am so proud of the husband, father, son, brother, friend and American that he was. I realized that it is not a shameful thing to have someone you love die by suicide. There used to be such a stigma attached to it. Even I had hard time talking about how my husband died, until one day I decided I was not going to struggle with that anymore. He needed help and didn't know how to get it. This issue needs to be brought out into the open. Because we are talking about it more, people are realizing there are all kinds of mental illness and it needs to be treated.

Following AFSP on facebook and signing up for the walk last year and this year, I have learned so much and I have grown a lot. Last year my high school best friend lost his brother, my very dear friend lost her sister, we lost someone from my high school days and we lost a coworker. All of this happened within a span of about 6 months. I won't say that me going through the hell of being a survivor is a blessing, but I will say that I was brought into their lives for a purpose and they were brought into mine for a purpose. I am there to help them in whatever way I can and they have helped me more than they could ever know!

Doing fundraising has been the most educational and inspirational time for me. I am able to talk with people who are struggling with loss and some who are struggling with inner demons. They have all touched my life in ways they have no idea. They were curious about why I was raising money for this cause. Why I'm so passionate about it and they were anxious to tell me their story. I am so honored they felt they could share their stories with me. When Tom died I felt like I couldn't talk about it. In my mind I thought people were uncomfortable. As the years have gone by I have learned I'm not going to be silent anymore. I will not hide from this. I have decided to make it my mission to learn as much as I can how to help and to make sure our military men and women know they can get help. I will also do what I can to make sure that our first responders, dispatchers, police officers, firefighters, emts/paramedics know that it is no longer the norm to "suck it up". There is help out there. If you are struggling, let someone help you. If you have lost someone, there is help for you too. Out of the Darkness is so appropriate for the name of this walk. How can we heal in the dark? We need to shed light on this subject. Suicide is preventable and we are all survivors!

I want to close with a poem that I wrote for my hsuband and for everyone who has lost someone to suicide.

Missing You

Overwhelming sadness and despair,

Why did you have to leave?

Was there something I could have done?

Life is so unfair.

I will never understand the pain you must have felt,

The struggles that you went through,

The desperation inside of you,

Or the cards that you were dealt.

Now I have my own pain,

The if only's and what if's,

The why's and the guilt I have,

Come over me again and again.

Even as I grieve and mourn,

I know that life goes on.

I will put on a smile through my tears,

Even though my armor is torn.

As each day without you passes,

I will love you more and more,

I know someday I will see you again,

And I can shower you with kisses.