Telling My Children About My Own Childhood Suicide Loss: Their Grandfather

My father died by suicide when I was eight years old.

When I became a father myself, I was afraid to tell my children that someone in their family had died by suicide. I feared that exposing my children to the idea of suicide, and revealing their grandfather had died this way, would put them at greater risk of suicide themselves. At the time, I didn't know that research shows having open and honest conversations about a loved one's death by suicide can actually help prevent suicide among survivors of suicide loss.

Despite not talking openly with my children about my father's death, it still heavily impacted my parenting. For instance, my family has always been very vocal about gun safety. I have even tried not to let my kids use water guns, or play video games with first-person shooters.

But not talking about my father's suicide also had a negative impact on my parenting. I realized there were even moments when I resented my children. Namely, I resented them for having a father. That is a hard thing for me to admit, but it's true. 

For a long time, eight years old never struck me as such a young age for me to have lost my father. It was just my reality. It wasn’t until I had an eight-year-old son myself that I realized what a young age that is. I began to see how much I had missed by not having a father for so much of my life. I would find myself doing something with my children, and it would occur to me that I never had a father to do these things with me. 

I had mixed emotions about these moments with my own children. Sometimes, I felt proud that I was able to do things for my children that my father hadn’t been there to do for me. Other times, I just felt sad. I wondered what it would have been like to have a father growing up, which made me miss my father in a way I hadn't had the context to miss him when I was a child.

Sometimes this sadness made me resent my children, for something they didn't know about or understand, and that was completely out of their control: I resented them because I was alive and helping them grow and develop. I was there to let them have fun and go to the pool, have play dates and play flag football, whereas my own father hadn’t been there to do those things for me.

My son would make some small and understandable mistake, like forgetting his mouth guard for flag football, and my reaction would be to resent him for appearing ungrateful to have a father to coach his flag football team. This began happening more frequently in response to all sorts of normal childhood behavior. It wasn’t fair to my children, and it was getting in the way of my being the father I wanted to be.

Eventually, I realized my children were not the reason for my outsized reactions to their behavior. The real reason was my father’s suicide. Not telling my children how my father died was not helping to protect them in any way. Quite the opposite. It was fueling my resentment, and creating a confusing experience for my children, because I was frequently upset with them for normal behavior without any explanation.

I resolved to finally tell my children about their grandfather's suicide, but the decision was still a difficult one for me. Today, I know my father’s suicide does not reflect poorly on me. I did not cause it. It does not mean that I am flawed. It does not mean that I will also die by suicide. Telling someone my father died by suicide is not an admission of some character defect or past sin. It is simply telling them the truth of how my father died. But even after deciding to tell my children, a big part of me still believed I was admitting some fundamental personal flaw, and that by telling them, I was passing the burden on to my children.

I have four children, and I started with my then 11- and 13-year-old daughters. I gathered them in our living room, and explained to them that I was not happy with how upset I had been getting with them and their brothers. I said that I wanted to share with them part of the reason I was getting so frustrated: it was because I was upset that I had not had a father when I was their age, and that my father had died by suicide. My daughters handled this very well. They showed compassion for me, and also seemed to better understand my behavior. I was proud of myself for telling my daughters about my father. I had shared my vulnerability with them and been honest about the causes of my behavior, and taken ownership for it.

While I was relieved to have told my daughters, I had yet to tell my sons, who I felt were too young at the time; and so my father’s death was still not something that could be discussed freely. In my mind, I had passed on the burden of this secret to my daughters. They knew about their grandfather, and also had a better understanding of my behavior, but could not mention it to their brothers. 

The topic unexpectedly came up in front of my sons about a year later, and in this case, I did not have time to overthink the conversation as when I had told my daughters. It was not perfect, but it was definitely better the second time around. Now, finally, the whole family was aware of how my father died. A tension that had lived with us in the background for so long had finally begun to dissipate.

Looking back, I now see my goal should have been to tell them that suicide was how my father died, in much the same way that cancer was how my wife’s mother died. Like cancer, suicide was a health outcome to a medical problem that my father had, and had not received proper treatment for.

I can't get back the time I spent in tension with my children, but now that our whole family knows about my father's suicide, we can speak freely about why some things are upsetting to me, as well as things like suicide risk factors, and how to minimize them. Sharing with people how my father died is something that once seemed impossible for me to do, but has now become healing for me, as well as for my family.