Start With What You Know

The night I learned my dad died I had a nightmare. My teeth kept falling out. My mouth was so delicate that every time I turned my head or whenever my fingertips barely brushed the tip of my jaw, a new tooth would fall out in a bloody mess. I was horrified. I tried desperately to keep the remaining teeth in, stricken with the idea that I wouldn't have a smile anymore. It’s easy to psychoanalyze the dream in retrospect, but at the time I woke up confused, panicked, and anxious. Those feelings stayed with me long after that fitful night of sleep.

The first 15 years of my life I grew up like a lot of my fellow Indiana Hoosiers—next to a giant cornfield. The sea of stalks lays directly beyond my backyard. The landscape would change dramatically as the seasons went by, from a tall jungle of stems and leaves to a barren, dusty field after harvest. My dad was the class clown, the designated neighborhood goofball. He would tease me and my brothers 'til we were in stitches, and we loved him for it. One day he gathered us all for the tale of the Corn Monster. A monster, as you might have guessed, made entirely out of spite and corn. The monster preyed on little naughty children. He would tell this story standing in our cornfield, his hands gripping an ear of corn still attached to its stalk. “This was Billy,” he said to us as we hid our snickering. “Billy didn’t listen to his parents and now he is a stalk of corn. Behave, or the Corn Monster will come and get you!” “BILLLYY!” We would scream and poke the imaginary corn boy, then run away laughing. To this day I still think cornfields hold a certain nostalgic sentiment. A time when my dad had my friends in fits of laughter and I didn’t question how God and the world worked. A time where the existence of a Corn Monster was not entirely out of the question. If my dad had passed away back then, maybe it would have been easier. I could imagine that the golden-eared beast took him away, planted him in the soil, and every summer he would be resurrected as a strong stalk of corn. It would be fitting for the man who loved Indiana so much.

However, I was 21-years-old. Corn Monsters don't exist, just the very real disease of depression that lived in my dad’s head. Two years later and I am starting to gather my bearings. The fog has lifted, the shock has waned. How bizarre the concept of time in correlation to a traumatic event can be. Months can seem like years and years can seem like seconds. I am no expert at this coping thing. I am a raw amateur at best. But I do know this: I must start with what I know. My failures in my journey of grief all stem from demanding the sky and the stars to give me the answers to the unanswerable. Why did he do it? When will I regain some semblance of normalcy again? Is this healing process done yet? Questions that I can scream into my pillow as much as I want, but will remain just that—a release of breath into the night. So why begin this blog with what I will never grasp? Let's begin with what I do know:

My dad loved me. He loved my four younger siblings and he loved my mom. He loved us all very, very, very much.

I have good days. Great days, in fact. Days when my dog makes my baby laugh uncontrollably, my husband gets off work early and cooks me dinner, and my little sister calls me up just to say she loves me.

I have bad days. Awful days. Days when the baby is fussy and my fragile, sleep-deprived psyche goes to that dark space that only a suicide-loss survivor is familiar with. A cold, unforgiving corner of the mind, filled with traumatic flashbacks and the intense feelings of guilt and anger.

I have found a wonderful community with the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. Advocating for mental health on the collegiate, state, and national level of AFSP has brought great meaning and comfort in my life.

Writing has been a great tool for healing. I hope this blog holds me accountable to continue to express myself in a healthy manner, and if it helps anyone else along that way that would be great too. This blog is my rawest form, open and vulnerable. A little bit of everything. Tread lightly.

I'm living in the South now and much to the dismay of my Midwestern heart, there are no cornfields here. My son is growing up among the tall, looming pines that seem to be a staple of North Carolina. When he grows older, I'll tell him all about his Grandpa and the Corn Monster, magical days spent playing make-believe in the backyard and the jokes that were shared. I'll tell him about what I know. That Grandpa Webb would have adored him. That sometimes we have good days and sometimes we have bad days. Above all, I will tell him that he will have difficult questions in life that simply have no answer. But if you start with what you know, you'll get a little closer to what you are searching for.