I understand mom’s death better now, but I cannot stop asking, ‘Why?’

In 1973, my mother drove to a railroad track about 4 miles from her home. She got out of the car and walked onto the tracks in front of a speeding train. Ever since that day, I’ve worn a band on my right hand. It has no color, and no one can see it. For years, intermittently, I’ve felt it cut into my wrist. And when it does, it hurts. As time passed, I could go for days without feeling the burden of my invisible band. But an event here, a word there, can bring it all back — and the band tightens, tugging at my heart more than stressing my wrist. Back in 1973, there were no awareness wristbands to denote the illness or peril of a loved one or friend. Now there are red bands for heart disease, blue for colorectal cancer, purple for ADHD. I wear a pink band that tells people someone I know is fighting breast cancer. Until recently, there was only silence for survivors of a loved one’s suicide. But now there are colors: yellow or purple and turquoise, colors designated to represent suicide prevention awareness. I was 22, married and with no children, the day my mother died. I was expecting my husband to arrive home soon from his reserve unit at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston when my brother-in-law appeared at my backdoor. He sat me down and told me the news that would change my life. People say it happens like that. From that moment on, you live in a “before my mother died” or an “after my mother died” realm. Let’s say what I couldn’t always back then: “before my mother died by suicide.” We know now that my mother was depressed after my father’s recent death from heart failure. Even though she was “not feeling well,” and I had taken her to the doctor, my sister and I thought then that our mother was simply experiencing a form of natural grief or depression. We did not know that she was receiving Valium, lots of Valium, from her doctor. She might have been mixing other prescription medications with it. Back then, the oftprescribed drug for a generalized diagnosis of depression was Valium, and it had serious side effects, one being suicidal thoughts. The morning after her death, my husband went with authorities to claim the car near the tracks. A railroad representative informed us that his company would pay the funeral costs. Always frugal to a fault, our mother had parked the car so we could sell it intact.

She walked into a rolling freight train presuming that her funeral expenses would be covered. We had already discovered that she had paid all her bills. I would later find her wedding ring, the one she never removed and had promised would be mine one day, in her jewelry box.

She thought she was taking care of everything so as not to worry us. She was so wrong.

Through the years, many have asked how my parents died, since I lost both within six months of each other. I tell them my father died of a heart attack at 56 and that my mother was 58 when she died in an accident. Sometimes, I say it was a car accident. Of a broken heart, I wanted to say. Overdosing, I wanted to admit. I found it easier to lie than to say “suicide.” Easier than seeing their shocked faces. Why make it difficult for both of us?

The stigma of suicide is unconventional. (Didn’t you see something?) After my mother’s death, I read everything I could to find answers, to relieve my guilt. But back in the ’70s, most of what we thought we knew was dour. I remember reading that a loved one who chooses suicide by a horrific means is sending a message that no one was there for her — an “I’ll show you” revenge.

Then there was the shame of mental illness or suicide in one’s family. As a Christian, I was taught suicide is murder — a person’s own murder — and that person was surely suffering in hell for eternity. It took years to face, and ultimately refute, these concepts.

Today, research provides more definitive answers for survivors of suicide. There are organizations and groups that help. SOSL, Survivors of Suicide Loss, is one of many that provide group and individual support, community outreach and much more. We find resources and comfort, but we are also still asking, “Why?”

For me, the much-publicized suicides of celebrities such as Robin Williams, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have reignited my invisible pain. I grieve for the person who died and for what was lost, but I grieve most painfully for those they left behind, beginning for them that question of why, why, why …

I now know we must share our stories, and we must wear yellow or purple and turquoise to remind us to bring awareness to a painful epidemic.

That invisible band is there on my right hand too, along with my mother’s wedding ring. It still tightens at times. And it still hurts.