After the event at church Wednesday night for those whose lives have been touched by suicide, a woman placed her circle on the tree and then caught me before I left the church. She told me she had lost her sister to suicide and wanted me to sign her copy of my book, Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling. The cover was bent back, proof she had read the book, and before we parted, she told me how she tried to pay tribute with her husband to her sister each year. Then she asked me if I pay tribute to Denise.
I’m not sure why, but the question caught me off guard and I didn’t know how to answer. Finally, I said, the book, and pointed to it. She nodded and we parted. But I realized later that the book is not paying tribute to the life I had with Denise. The book is about her suicide, about moving forward and, to me, paying tribute would be about remembering the life Denise had, not her suicide. And the life I had with Denise.
My tribute to Denise is all of this– what I create, what write, everything you see on this web site. It’s a tribute to the childhood we shared, the creativity we explored together through coloring and making clothes for our Barbies on our grandmother’s old Singer sewing machine. It’s the inspiration I find in my daily life.
That’s my tribute to Denise.