A father’s words: reach out, listen, reconnect, keep trying
I’m not sure how to start this exactly, so I’ll just start by saying what happened and talk about my Andy just a little bit.
On Christmas morning 2019, my beautiful, talented, superbright son took his own life. I’ll never know why, really. I and others are left wondering how such a brilliant light could go out so quickly.
It’s important to know that my son suffered through far too much grief in his life. He was there as a 4-year-old when His little brother Tommy drowned in our home spa. I know, that even though he was only 4, he still blamed himself.
Just a couple of years later, we lost his mom to a very ugly drawn-out battle with cancer and he was at her side when she passed. We went through terrible times back in 1995 through 1998 — things just never work right after that kind of loss. We lived in Palm Springs at that time and there were many of his mother’s family around us and Andy’s Filipino heritage was very important to him, but through time people were in touch less and less and I know that was hard for him.
Andy and I moved here in 2006 because things in Palm Springs just became too much. I was driving into LA three times a week for my job as the Training Coordinator for a program called Child Fatality Review for the whole State of California and dealing with so many things about the unnecessary death of children became too difficult to bear.
But, during that time my with the agency, ICAN (Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect), Andy got to not only attend, he got to entertain, and that is what he really loved to do.
He got to hang out with some real movie stars and that was fun for us both. He had an angelic voice and could sing complete songs by the age of two. When he was four, he opened our statewide conference by singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” acapella and in perfect key.
He would go on to open many of our conferences; one of his iconic songs was “Where Is Love” from the movie “Oliver” — never a dry eye in the house!
Music was always at the center of Andy’s life, whether performing in the children’s musical program, “Music Kids”, being in “The Nutcracker” at the McCollough Theater, or starring off Hollywood Blvd. in a play written and produced by our own Peter Wells, called “Blue Dove”. He loved music!
Andy went on to become a very talented music producer in the EDM music scene. Many of his friends and followers knew him by his stage name as Tropic Tiger and loved his edgy bassfilled tunes. He played festivals all over Northern California.
Andy was a natural athlete, too. He started swimming when he was just a baby and could hold his breath the whole length of his grandma’s pool by the time he was a year old. He swam in the Palm Springs swim club and then his interest turned to skateboarding and he shredded at that sport. He also boxed with me and helped encourage other young men to join the boxing team I put together here in Fort Bragg for Big Brother/Big Sisters.
He was a Fort Bragg High School varsity wrestler and loved and lettered in that sport. Andrew graduated Fort Bragg High in the Spring of 2009.
Andrew was that unusual person who always tried to make others feel better. He always had a reassuring word for people going through hardships. Many many people have contacted me with gentle words to tell me how Andy literally saved their lives. When they had been feeling so desperate that they didn’t know what to do, they turned to Andy and he helped them to see that they needed to live.
But who was there for Andy? We all were and we all weren’t.
Did we see a desperate person so sad that he could barely move forward? We didn’t. I didn’t! We were together the day before making Christmas cookies with his darling daughter Eva Marie. There was nothing in this world that he loved more than Eva and yet he couldn’t go on? I should have seen it, but I didn’t!
Suicide is a difficult word to say, but it must be said! It must be screamed at the tops of our voices, because it needs to stop! The solution to any problem is to solve the problem no matter how daunting, and we can only do that if we are alive. The permanent solutions to a problem, even a host of problems, are by their nature temporary, but death is so permanent.
Andy has lost several friends over the past few years to suicide and it was always such a gut punch for him.
And so for us, this pain will never end. For his daughter, she will never have her dad take pictures at prom, or see her graduate from high school or walk her down the aisle or see his grandchildren, and the world is so much poorer for that!
So I ask only one thing, and that is, please allow yourself to get help if you are feeling like you need to end your life. Talk to someone. To the person listening: do more than listen. Make the suggestion that help might work. I don’t have any answers, and none of my questions will ever have any answers and that is so hard for me!
But I will say this: hold those you love close and tell them often and show them that you mean it. For people in your life that you maybe aren’t speaking to for whatever reason, speak to them. Make up with them. Keep reaching out because that’s how this works. Help people feel wanted even when you think they already know, maybe they don’t.
With Love.
The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. For more information, visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.