Transcriber: Bilal AlJamal Reviewer: Eunice Tan
David Pincus: Everyone has a story.
Some stories are intertwined.
This is ours.
My name is David.
Two weeks after my 13th birthday,
my mother killed herself.
She had attempted suicide several times before.
Seared into my memory
are disturbing images I’ve tried to forget:
my father breaking down the front door to our house
after she swallowed a bottle of pills,
puddles of bright red blood on the bathroom floor
after she slashed her wrists.
On the day of her death,
from the moment I opened my eyes
I was consumed by a strange sense of foreboding,
a knot-in-the-stomach feeling I’d never experienced before nor since.
Before that day ended, I realized that the dark sensation was warning me
that something terrible had happened -
something that was about to change me and life as I knew it
in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine.
For years afterward,
I had nobody to talk to who had even an inkling
of what it’s like to be left behind that way.
I felt lost.
I felt abandoned.
Most of all, I felt alone.
Until an overcast March morning in Maryland, five years later.
Richard Knapp: My name is Rick.
I was 14 when my mother killed herself.
My sister and I waited in the car in the garage next to the downtown hotel
where Mom had taken what Dad referred to as “a short vacation.”
Dad went in to get her, leaving us in the white Rambler station wagon.
For the longest time, neither of them showed up.
I kept my sister occupied.
We talked, told stories, played games.
A stranger suddenly appeared and told us Dad would be with us shortly.
But more time passed,
and my nerves signaled something was terribly wrong.
I tried to keep my sister and my mind occupied.
Until I finally saw Dad walking toward us, his head bowed.
And inexplicably, our rabbi was by his side.
Seconds later, I burst into tears.
For years after that terrible day, I felt trapped in a dense fog.
My sister, brother and I, and our father
had no extended family around us and no close friends.
I felt alone.
Until an overcast March morning in Maryland,
two and a half years later.
Now I’m 17.
It’s March of my senior year,
and my family and I had just moved back to Maryland.
I’m standing on a street corner waiting for the school bus.
DP: Hey, buddy. You’re going to DuVal High?
RK: Yeah.
DP: Wrong corner. Over here.
RK: (Laughs)
Well, that’s how David and I met.
He must have thought I was a real idiot.
DP: (Laughs)
Well, maybe a little.
But it didn’t last long,
because it didn't take us long to realize just how much we had in common.
Both born in New York City, both moved around a lot as kids,
both rabid baseball fans, both-
RK: Both sons of suicide.
DP: Both sons of suicide.
Once we discovered we’d experienced the same crushing tragedy,
the floodgates opened.
Finally, after years of being silent and holding it all in,
we each had someone we felt comfortable confiding in.
Someone who got what it was like to be left behind
by the person who was supposed to love us the most.
Someone who understood the need
to continually ask the unanswerable question:
“Why?”
And someone who shared the desperate feeling of being all alone.
We hadn’t been able to talk to our fathers.
They were lost in their own grief and confusion,
and they, like most people at the time,
believed it was a sign of weakness for men, or boys for that matter,
to dwell on or express their honest feelings.
Real men were expected, and still are,
to be stoic, buck up, push through it.
But ignoring or denying those deep-seated emotions,
that can be harmful, self-destructive, even dangerous.
RK: Neither of our dads ever uttered the word “suicide.”
The stigma associated with suicide was so pervasive
that my dad called an Air Force buddy who was editor of our local newspaper
and pleaded with him not to refer to the cause of death
in any articles or obituaries.
David, you had trouble saying the word too, didn’t you?
DP: I sure did, and still do.
A few weeks after the funeral,
I was starting eighth grade at a new school.
My homeroom teacher was filling out the standard paperwork on the new kid.
So of course she eventually asked
if my mother stayed at home or went to work.
I froze.
But she insisted, so I blurted, “She died.”
“How?“ she wanted to know.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“It’s OK,” she said, “You can tell me.”
“Suicide,”
I heard myself whisper seconds later, for the first time since it happened.
And then reality came crashing down on me.
RK: After our mothers’ suicides,
our families were shattered and would never be the same.
Each of our maternal grandmothers blamed our fathers.
My grandmother cut off her relationship with my dad and all three of his children,
and I lost that whole side of my family.
DP: And my grandmother vindictively refused
to include the word “wife” on my mother’s gravestone.
When our mothers died, each of us took refuge inside ourselves.
Yet that’s precisely when we most needed
to share our feelings, our fears, our uncertainties
so they wouldn’t fester and grow to consume us.
We needed to share the weighty burden with someone else,
someone who would listen without judging or shower us with pity.
That's what we found in one another.
And the more we listened, the more we were willing to share,
and the more we heard ourselves say out loud
what we’d only been able to think.
Opening up,
truly opening up,
was vital to us eventually coming to terms with our loss
and starting to heal.
An ongoing process, still.
RK: We each felt enormous relief the first time we shared our secret.
And once we started talking, we couldn’t stop.
Sometimes at David’s house, sometimes at mine,
often on long walks or on a park bench,
we’d bare our souls to each other.
Now we were no longer alone.
DP: We were 17 when we met.
We’re in our 70s now.
We became friends - brothers, really -
when we discovered we shared the unthinkable.
We’ve stayed close through all the decades
even though we’ve usually lived in different states and different time zones.
We’ve married, had children and grandchildren,
enjoyed successful careers,
traveled the world, often together with our wives,
and we’ve made many other friends -
some close, but none as close as the two of us.
Our mothers’ deaths, and particularly how they died,
influenced who we’ve become and how we’ve lived our lives.
But their suicides do not define us.
RK: We rarely spoke about our mothers, except with each other,
for most of our lives.
But two years ago,
we felt pulled to raise awareness of and help ease the stigma around suicide.
So we overcame our reluctance and went public with our story
in a memoir about the profound loss we experienced
and the healing power of our friendship.
Since then, we’ve written op-ed essays, participated in webinars and podcasts,
and given talks.
We want those who lose someone in this way to understand that they are not alone,
and we want to encourage those struggling with traumatic loss
to talk frankly with someone they trust.
That’s especially true for men and boys,
who are culturally conditioned to suppress their emotions.
Talking candidly can ease the pain and lift the burden.
And we’ve come to realize
that there’s a big and growing universe of people
who have also lost someone to suicide.
Sadly, some of you are in that group.
The numbers are sobering.
Nearly 50,000 people die by suicide every year in the United States.
Seem inconceivable? Well, think about this.
There are more than five suicides every hour of every day.
So in the 15 minutes you’re listening to the two of us,
at least one more life will be lost to suicide.
Alarmingly, suicide is the second leading cause of death among people under 45,
second only to accidents.
And clearly, each suicide alters many lives.
Stop and think of all those who are left behind:
the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers,
the aunts and uncles, the friends and coworkers,
the daughters and the sons of suicide.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University
found that children and teens who lose a parent to suicide
are particularly affected and at greater risk.
They are three times more likely to take their own lives
than children with two parents.
DP: To those of you grappling with unbearable loss,
know this:
The overpowering grief that seems unbearable now
can in time become bearable.
There is life - happy, fulfilling life - after the suicide of a loved one.
We offer ourselves as two examples,
and we offer these thoughts from the perspective of two guys
who have lived nearly 60 years since our mothers ended their lives.
We so wish we could remember the sound of our mothers’ voices,
but we’ll never forget them
or our good fortune to be standing on that street corner long ago.
We’ve said more than once:
Finding each other when we did may have saved us then,
but it has most certainly sustained us since.
RK: Few of us make it through life without suffering some kind of traumatic loss.
And that may be more true today in the throes of a pandemic
than at any time in our lives.
As many struggle against isolation, depression and loss,
calls to suicide hotlines have skyrocketed,
and psychologists fear dramatic increases in the number of suicides
over the next several years.
Today, a range of resources is available
to help those in need deal with suicide and other kinds of traumatic loss -
many that didn’t exist when we were the ones in need
more than half a century ago.
There are support groups and organizations
that offer counseling and a safe haven to gather and get help.
Organizations like the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention,
the National Alliance for Grieving Children,
and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
RK: Some suicide loss survivors never talk about their anguish,
or they wait too long before they do.
In silence, that pain weighs heavy, on some more than others.
A couple of years ago,
my wife and I were at a dinner party with three other couples.
The subject of the book David and I were just finishing came up,
and one of the men casually mentioned that his father had died of suicide.
And then our host suggested that once our book was published,
people would come out of the woodwork with their stories.
At the end of the evening, as our host was walking me to the door, he said,
“Remember how I told you people would be coming out of the woodwork?
Well, I’m one of them.
My mother took her life when I was 18.”
My jaw dropped. I was shocked.
Three of the four men at this dinner party were sons of suicide.
Now, this friend had not talked with anyone but his wife
about his mother’s suicide.
But now he too realized he wasn’t alone,
that he could talk about it, at least with me.
David, I’ll never forget the day we discovered we were no longer alone.
DP: No. Me either, Rick.
One of those days that never fades from memory.
When we met, I was living with Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Ben.
Like it was yesterday, I can still see the tears on my aunt’s cheeks,
when I told her about you
and she realized that I’d finally found someone I could open up to.
She knew immediately,
but we only came to understand years later.
RK: Opening up, confiding in someone you trust,
has the power to be the difference between becoming a prisoner of your own torment
and escaping that torment.
That someone could be a psychologist, a teacher, a member of the clergy,
a support group, a relative
or, if you are as fortunate as David and I were,
a close friend.
DP: As we said at the start, everyone has a story.
That’s ours.
RK: Yes, that’s ours, so far.
[When we can talk about our feelings,]
[they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.]
[The people we trust with that important talk]
[can help us to know that we are not alone.]
[-- Mr. Rogers]