When it Happens to a Famous Person

“Unspeakable.”

Regina King’s son Ian died of suicide last night. 

Died Of. 

But no one says that. 

I’m glad that American culture has recently begun to approach, albeit in one tiny baby step, something a little bit more trauma-informed, a little less sanitizing of the realities of death and grief.

Suicide is still a bad and stupid conversation. 

And, frankly, it will continue to be a bad and a stupid conversation, because the way suicide loss survivors feel, especially initially, is bad. And stupid. (“How did I not see?”)

So that’s a tiny bit helpful. But honestly, guys, it’s not. Not really. The profound aloneness of suicide loss is remarkable. Is remarkably horrible. Is a nightmare. Is a nightmare. You wake up, and you re-enter the nightmare. Ad infinitum. When does this end? I can’t do this, and I have no safe place to find compassionate, understanding help. No hands. No bodies no warmth no listening no soothing voices after the funeral is over. 

That gives your unimaginable trauma ONE WEEK to resolve itself. Does that sound like something that you could do? That horror, that timeline? Really? If you’re being very, very honest? 

And I very, very honestly hope that you can only climb into your imagination to answer that question. But too many people have a very, very real lived experience that is triggered by these questions. Too many of us have lost a brother, a mother, a partner, a best friend in this traumatic, truly unbelievable way. Unbelievable. 

After the funeral, you are left alone. Our American culture has no further rituals. The script ends. 

This quickly isolates the grieving person, who, honestly, after one week, looks around and sees no one. Not their dead person, and not their support system. Nobody has a script, and everybody is afraid, and so everyone goes silent.

I hope that Regina has trauma-informed people who are surrounding her now, and who will stay with her, surrounding her, holding her up, for the next several years. That’s the minimum amount of time that she will need her people to stay close and at the ready to help. She needs them; her risk of PTSD is exponentially increased by long-term isolation. I hope that in this and future moments, she feels safe and held and heard and somehow understood. 

It bothers me that the best I can do in this situation—an article about which, in People magazine, no less, reduces me to blubbering tears—that the best I can do, in this exact moment, is *hope* she has these people. And resign myself to the sadness that she likely will not have them, and if she does, this moment will be fleeting. It makes me despondent. I hate it. Shit just ain’t right. Ain’t how it should be. Absolutely has to change. 

I’ve heard smart folks speak on the potent power of getting profoundly curious about the things that repeatedly wound you or make you feel helpless.

So I tried that. Just recently. Well into my thirties, I tried listening to what wounded me, what made me cry, repeatedly, the shit that invariably hit me every. Damn. Time. And then, instead of popping a bottle about it, or hitting up MedMen in Venice, or scrolling Instagram for five hours to quell the overwhelm, I sat and stayed with it. What came up? 

For me, it was the realization that what I’d forever been most fascinated by, and simultaneously most wounded by, AND simultaneously most afraid to feel—maybe especially that part?—turned out to be the human spirit in the immediate and long-term aftermath of traumatic grief. 

So! Instead of resorting to my usual mechanisms of hiding and masking and blurring and seeking oblivion, I applied to graduate school. 

I know, what?

But then I got in. 

And now I am one week into a two-year Masters program for social work, at the end of which I will be eligible for licensure to help grieving children in a clinical setting. 

My mind has bloomed and continues to bloom in this time since I got quiet and leaned in to hear the frightening call. What was I put here to do? 

And the answer was: at least this. At least this, and at least this right now. There will likely be other things. But it is this, and it is this right at this exact moment. 

As soon as I leaned into this decision and began on this path, my whole self and soul has been flooded by a thousand wild Yes Ands.

I urge you to try this, and see what you can conjure from within. Ten bucks says you’ll realize that something you’ve been resisting has been calling out to you for a very long time. I hope you walk toward it. I already feel more aligned and more certain of who I am and why. 

I can’t help Regina King today, but I can write about this moment. And I can do my homework tonight. And I can raise awareness in my small way in the meantime. And soon, I will be afforded the mighty opportunity of being able to help in a very tangible, critical, meaningful, transformative way. Now that I know my What and my Why, I am on my way. 

Next summer, I will be equipped with more than hope. Once begun isn’t technically halfway done, but I work in the realm of the human spirit now. 

Grief isn’t solvable via algorithms or mathematics or fucking code. That smart, successful man, the one who looked the part, who hit every milestone on time, who’s killing it on paper, the one I once believed was my be-all and end-all? He can’t solve this, nor would he ever endeavor to dip a toe in these waters. He wouldn’t even dare to discover himself. Too many dark places. Can’t get lost; might lose traction and time. 

But I have not been afforded the luxury of choice. Of gazing at grief from afar and thinking, oh HELL no. Sounds terrible! Sounds painful! Sounds impossible! I can’t blame him for opting out, though admittedly I do, a little. Sure would’ve changed things for me. And by things, I mean the entire rest of my life. 

But I did not have him in the way I needed him, and I didn’t have anybody else in that way, either. I have suffered immeasurably. Alone. But now I finally see what I can do with that, besides lament my wasted years and tears and continue to be ashamed of my life and afraid of the world. Now I get to go into it and gather all my helpers. Now I get to help. 

So tonight I am helplessness and thoughts and prayers for this woman in the media who is enduring her own personal nightmare in real time, and that pains me. 

Mister Rogers recommended that in times of crisis, we look for the helpers. Tonight, that’s what I’ll do. 

But next year, I’ll be one of them.