Looking to the Sky: Processing My Father's Suicide, in My Own Time

Father’s Day has always been my least favorite holiday. I’m pretty good at burying the feelings of being left behind by my dad on the other 364 days of the year, but on this day, it’s unavoidable. This past Father's Day, though, I reached an important new milestone: I was finally able to start processing his death.

My dad killed himself when I was two. That sentence feels jarring to write, but then that makes sense — the experience itself was jarring, too. Suicide is jarring. Unfinished. Sad. Painful.

He left behind myself, my two older brothers, and my mom, who was pregnant with my sister at the time. His death marked the end of years of struggle that impacted our family — war trauma, PTSD, alcoholism, mental health struggles, and poverty. Even though I don't remember my dad, I do remember as a little boy holding the sadness and belief deep in my stomach that he left before I ever had the chance to know him. On the playground at elementary school, kids would ask, “What does your dad do?” I never knew how to explain what happened. I’d see other kids with their dads and wonder what I was missing out on. Even forms that said “Father's Name” felt like a gut punch, and I was terrified of focusing too long on the blank space.

My mom was a hero, as so many mothers have to be. She did her best to explain his death to her four kids under the age of ten that she now had to raise on her own. 

“There’s your daddy,” she would say as a helicopter flew by in the sky, pointing up toward the heavens. It was an imperfect way to help us remember him positively. My dad was a hero, too — he had been a rescue helicopter pilot who saved lives while serving in Vietnam and Korea. Reconciling the uniformed hero in old photos with the dad who left us felt impossible.

At times, I have shared stories about him with adoration — the tales of him playing with my brothers at Florida beaches, the articles about his ventriloquist act that toured the country, or the cool picture of him with Jayne Mansfield at the Playboy Mansion pool. But it often felt like I was talking about a fictional character rather than my father.

I had never fully processed his loss. I still haven’t completely. I’ve visited his tombstone multiple times, feeling so empty that I didn’t even cry. I was trapped in sadness and once believed I was destined to follow in his footsteps.

I’m only now beginning to understand how my childhood sadness was pushed down and manifested in other ways. My coming-out process in my 20s was a fiery, self-destructive, addicted mess, fueled by the exacerbated fear that my family, church, and community would leave me behind, just like my dad did. A recent job loss, which should have been a minor setback, thrust me into a deep depression and triggered a freeze response, activating that same fear of being left behind.

A few months ago, I attended a meditation retreat where I had the space to grieve, and I cried what felt like 10,000 tears. I cried for that little boy on the playground who didn’t know what to say about not having a dad and feeling left behind.

At the end of a long night, I sat out by a bonfire, curled up in a blanket, and dried my tears. I heard the sound of a helicopter high above my head — it felt like a soothing white noise and a pulsing heartbeat. I knew he was there. I listened for a message and through the sound of the helicopter, I heard his voice.

“It’s okay to cry. I’m sad, too.”

He cried. I cried. We cried together.

My grief has been a lifelong, repressed process. While I can’t go back and comfort my younger self, I can now remember my dad's life, let go of what I need to surrender, and hold space to acknowledge his struggles. Processing my sadness is bringing me to forgiveness.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that healing doesn’t happen overnight. I have to feel my sadness, let the tears flow, look up, and take my time. If you’re someone like me, who has lost their father to suicide, and Father's Day feels more like Fatherless Day — or any day feels especially painful — please know you are not alone. Grieve and heal at your own pace.

I don’t know where my dad is in the sky today, but I hope he’s proud of the baby boy he left behind.