Hardest Thing I Have Done

   From my end of the hall, I could see that her bedroom door was closed. If I had been fully awake, something that seldom happened before I had been through the morning routine and arrived safely at work, I probably would have dreaded the trouble this unpredictable wild child was creating in that room. But I wasn’t fully awake. Nor did I have any idea how deep dread could go.

    A suicide note was taped to the outside of her closed bedroom door.

   A suicide note! 

   A suicide note, written by my six-year-old baby, taped to the outside of the closed door that was usually open when I went to wake her for school.

    I was consumed by dread and too paralyzed to even think that every second counted.

    After a time – seconds? A minute? Days? There is no sense of time when you’re paralyzed and know you’d rather die yourself than do what needs to be done. I could not touch that doorknob. COULD NOT do it.

    Nor could I tell anyone else that, when seconds might have mattered most, I allowed paralysis to make me the worst mother ever. So, I opened that door. That simple action, turning a doorknob, I realize thirty years later, was the hardest thing I have ever done – a close second to standing in the shower, holding a phone, while the police officer who had called to ask if I was the mother of (this same) child found at the scene of an accident radioed the officers at the scene for more information.

    She was alive and physically fine (both times). Her plan had been to close the door, go to sleep, and never wake up. To her, that was how people died. And she wanted to die because people had told her that since his death, her father was in heaven watching over her – over all of us. Since she could no longer see him and going to heaven where he was meant she would be able to see him and everyone else she could ‘watch over’ with him, it seemed like a good deal to her.

    The good news was that she didn’t seem terribly disappointed to still be alive.

    Sometimes, every best thing possible lines up. Within an hour, I talked to physicians I knew and trusted, got a recommendation for ‘the best’ child psychiatrist around and permission to use their names since it probably wouldn’t be easy to get an appointment right away with him, called his office and explained my concern and need for an appointment as soon as possible. They called back almost immediately to say that he had a cancellation that morning and he would see her.

    And he was perfect. He allowed her (without me, of course) to tell him what she had done and why she had done it. Later, when he saw the two of us together, he gave me what I interpreted as a ‘please bear with me’ stare as he said they had had a great talk and agreed that they both wanted to discuss everything with me. Turned out, that stare was unnecessary because his opinion and mine were exactly the same – there is absolutely no proof that there is a heaven from which people get to watch over their survivors (or anyone else). He advised my daughter to play it safe – live a long, happy life with me and everyone else who was still alive and, then, if there really is a heaven, she can see her dad again when she gets there.

   She agreed with him that this was what she needed to do. She also stopped listening to people who tried to tell her things that they didn’t know to be true.