10 Years After the Unthinkable

Saturday marked the ten-year anniversary of my father's suicide.

I'm not generally one for baring my soul on social media, and certainly not LinkedIn. Thank you to the brave leaders in my life who have paved the path of vulnerability and inspired me to share an experience that has defined me both personally and professionally.

In November of 2011, two major life milestones took place. Early in the month, I pitched the first version of Feathr at a "3 Day Startup" hackathon event in Gainesville and received significant interest/support from several local investors and business leaders. Later in the month, I turned 21 years old, and could legally drink at bars. Between these two happenings, I was on top of the world.

I was flying so high that a few weeks later, during the holiday break between semesters, I decided I would not return to my junior year as an engineering student at the University of Florida; I was going to follow in the footsteps of Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg by dropping out and focusing on my nascent tech startup. To my great surprise, my dad was (cautiously) supportive. Given that he was a by-the-book career officer in the U.S. Marine Corps who was constantly clipping newspaper articles about "top 10 highest-paying college degrees" for me and my sister (and ensuring that we internalized the fact that 8/10 were Engineering degrees), I went into this conversation ready for battle. Instead, I left with an offer to cover the first few months of Feathr's office space in UF's newly-opened "Innovation Hub" startup incubator.

An even more memorable moment of that holiday break was the sharing of "a beverage" (as he would call it) with my dad one-on-one for the first and ultimately only time; he had been unwilling to condone my previously extensive underage drinking by allowing it in his presence, so equally novel to my newfound access to bars was the allowance to partake at family gatherings. I'll never forget the rush of that experience, just the two of us sitting outside my parents' little condo at New Smyrna Beach, as I witnessed his normally reserved and serious facade shift into a goofy, even playful persona as he allowed both the alcohol and the "beach vacation" atmosphere to temporarily relax his mind. I felt like I was let in on a secret, between just the two of us, as he told jokes and spoke in accents as we shared easy laughter together in a manner we hadn't in years.

I'll admit that when I was in high school and early college, I reveled in frustrating and confounding my father. He often seemed to think I was wasting my potential on frivolous activities and that I didn't take life seriously enough, whereas I was determined to live life on my own terms and do things differently even if just to prove that I could. But once I started diving into Feathr, we found far more common ground. I was carving my own path AND focusing on something that he considered to be worthwhile. It was a new chapter of our relationship, one between adults, and we spoke more on the phone in those next 3 months than in the previous 30 months since I had left for college.

Yet our final phone conversation was one of mutual frustration, an echo of our previous relationship: me being immature and unnecessarily combative, him being exasperated by my unwillingness to take responsibility. April 13-15, 2012, I had gone with my girlfriend at the time and two other college friend couples for a triple date getaway weekend at the aforementioned New Smyrna Beach condo owned by my parents. As we were driving back to Gainesville on Sunday afternoon, the HOA board president had contacted my dad to report water leaking from our unit, and he in turn called me to find out what had happened. I ferociously denied any knowledge or responsibility, and the call ended acrimoniously. I never spoke to him again. Months later, I learned that my best friend had flushed a condom down the toilet and caused the clog, but had been too embarrassed to tell me at the time.

The next day, my father killed himself.

It is impossible to express just how earth-shattering this was to me. It was UNTHINKABLE. My mind couldn't process it. It wasn't "merely" the deep loss, the trauma of losing a parent, or even of the uniquely terrible tragedy that is suicide. This was a man who was the embodiment of "stability" –?he was even-keeled, reliable, responsible, and measured in all aspects of his life. He was the one always reminding my sister and me to recognize how great life was, how filled with opportunity, how much there was to appreciate. He was the rock of not just our immediate family but our extended family, the one others would seek out for objective advice on major life decisions. And then on Monday, April 16th 2012, without any warning, without any prior signs of mental struggle, without any diagnosis, without any form of communication other than a short farewell note with no answers...this paragon of reliability and moderation took the most unexpected and extreme action available to us as conscious living beings. It felt like my whole life was a lie, or perhaps that his whole life was a lie, the life of the man I had looked up to more than anyone in the world at that point, the one whose approval I had desperately wanted even in my most confrontational moments. I felt like nothing was real, everything was a lie, and I could no longer trust anything or anyone.

And I felt robbed. Robbed of the opportunity to apologize for our phone conversation the day before, and for a thousand other times that I had been an inconsiderate jerk unnecessarily; robbed of our budding adult relationship and the future it might hold; robbed of the opportunity to show him that –?despite my unwillingness to follow his guidance – I did share his desire for me to be high-achieving and successful; robbed of the opportunity to hopefully one day call him with the news that Feathr had secured our first round of funding, or that I had found the love of my life and planned to propose, or that I needed his advice on fatherhood. I felt envious of my older sister for having always had a better relationship with him and having shared a few more years of adulthood. I resented my best friend for the toilet clog that was the topic of our final conversation, but more than that I resented myself for being such a hothead and wasting our last conversation and countless opportunities for meaningful connection with my dad. And I felt shame, in the Brené Brown definition of "intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection".

Up until that point, I had lived a picturesque life of privilege and everything had gone my way. I have no doubt that this first encounter with significant loss made me both more resilient and more empathetic. I also hated the idea that anything good had come from such a horrific act, and hated the idea that I had benefitted in any way from it. For years I refused to engage in any conversations of "silver linings" or "everything happens for a reason" initiated by optimistic friends or extended family, and even as Feathr became more and more successful, I was haunted by the thought that perhaps a non-trivial part of that success came from throwing myself into my entrepreneurial pursuits with reckless abandon as a coping mechanism, or that maybe I was only able to push through all those early failures because of strength found in the grim humor of comparative suffering.

It's been ten years, and though I wouldn't say I have "closure", I do have acceptance. I accept that I will never know the full story of what really happened with my father. I accept that "moving on" does not need to mean "forgetting" (nor does it mean the end of grief). I accept that living my own life fully and authentically and joyfully is not the same as "pretending it never happened" or "sweeping it under the rug". I accept that growth can come out of loss, and that recognizing the growth doesn't devalue the loss. I accept that comparative suffering is harmful to both myself and others. And I accept that my father was a great dad, a great role model, and a great man for the 21 years that I knew him, in addition to being a fallible and flawed human being.

Consider reviewing the NIH's guidelines on Warning Signs for Suicide, as we may be able to prevent additional tragedy: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/warning-signs-of-suicide.

If you are ever considering taking your own life, please first call 1-800-273-TALK (the National Suicide Prevention Hotline) and have a conversation.