What I learned from my husbands suicide
[Applause]
[Applause]
the day was august 16th
- it was a friday i got up at 3am
like i did
every morning to get ready for a show
that starts at 4 30.
i went downstairs and my husband travis
did like he did every morning
he laid out coffee and my breakfast
but this day was different it was my
birthday so in addition to that
he’d left me gifts and a card
later on that morning he got our kids
ready for school
got him up got him dressed fed him
kissed them
goodbye that was the last time
any of us ever saw him he was
44 years old
my husband killed himself on my birthday
which if i think about it is outrageous
we were happy
we were happy he was educated he was a
successful
physical therapist he had two master’s
degrees
and a doctorate his had wonderful
parents and made
no sense but i’ve come to realize now
that my husband didn’t kill himself
because it was my birthday
he killed himself because he simply
couldn’t live
another day and i know that now
because he left a paper trail my husband
and i had been married for 15
years two months shy in fact
and as embarrassing as it is to say it
i never knew he suffered from depression
my guess is he was clinically
depressed but he was active he was
engaged
he got more done in a day than i ever
did
but i look at him now pictures of him
on her son’s birthday or at christmas
we’re sitting in a restaurant in tokyo
he looks miserable
and our children singing him happy
birthday
happy birthday to you
happy birthday to
you happy birthday
i don’t know how i could have been so
blind
it’s as plain as day and it haunts me
i told you travis left a paper trail
and a couple weeks after he died
i found these their notebooks he’d been
riding in
since 2016. they’re a window into his
mind
and a side of my husband that i never
knew one entry that’s particularly
stunning reads
i have to choose to let my pain consume
me
or find strength in the pain and find a
purpose
in my life my husband was a master
at hiding his depression he never talked
about being in pain
he never talked about seeing himself as
a complete and utter failure
but it’s there it’s in his journals
he called it the bully in his brain and
that bully
was relentless it refused to surrender
its power over him and i think about the
man i knew
and the qualities that made him such a
great husband and father and i realized
so much of who he was
was fueled by his depression nothing was
ever about travis
ever all he ever wanted to do
was to make us happy but the problem is
i don’t think he knew how to make
himself happy
i used to tell him all the time how much
i loved him and how thankful i was to be
married to him
and in those last few years he would say
to me are you sure
there’s 7 billion people in the world
i thought that was such a funny thing to
say i didn’t understand why you said
that but i get it now
he didn’t feel like he deserved to be
loved
this is where i could rattle through a
list of statistics
that show the link between depression
and suicide
but i’m not going to do that because
travis is
the statistic this is his story
of how he tried to pull himself out of
that hole of depression
after he died i checked the browser
history on our computer
i was astounded at the breadth of
research that he had done
on suicide and depression there were
hundreds of journal articles
and i found out later that the day
before he died
he spent 12 minutes on the phone with
the national suicide hotline
but when he came home from work that
night
he didn’t say a word to me
there were times in our marriage i knew
travis was struggling
but he was always centered around his
job
he thought he should be further along in
his career and to me that is an
easy problem to solve you just change
your circumstance right
and so i encourage him to do other
things
anything deeper than that he would say
he didn’t want to talk about it made him
feel weak
i let him get away with that but there
was one conversation
that we had about a month before he died
that was a little raw it was the first
time he gave me any indication
that his depression wasn’t situational
it was more systemic it was coming
from within who he was and how he felt
about himself
and to be honest it scared me
and the next morning he left me this
note
lori i love you your goofball husband
and that’s what travis did he downplayed
it
he didn’t seem to worry so i didn’t
worry it wasn’t until
after he died i realized just how
serious his depression was
but it took him dying to get me there
please don’t be like me don’t let
the person you love talk you out of your
concern for them
i don’t blame myself for my husband’s
death i blame myself i was so blind
to that illusion that he created i
didn’t act fast enough
to get him help
my therapist is a professor at the
university of utah she’s an expert in
mental health
she often says if only people
would view depression like they do
cancer
depression is a medical diagnosis that
deserves
medical treatment depression is not a
character flaw
depression is not a weakness you are not
a goofball and trust me you are not
going to snap out of it three years of
journal entries prove he could not
dig himself out of that hole so how do
you
silence that bully in your brain
i am not an expert but i know this
you can do everything right to get
yourself through a day of depression
but what happens on that one day
that one day you just don’t want to work
so hard anymore
who’s going to carry you through for
travis
that person should have been me
but i didn’t know
if you hear anything from me please hear
this
tell someone you love your struggling
yes tell a professional
but tell someone you love i knew
something was wrong that morning
i didn’t know something was that wrong
had i known more
i could have done more
i’m not here to romanticize suicide or
make a martyr
out of my husband what he did and what
he failed to do to get help
is not okay no family should go through
the pain
the heartache and the disbelief that we
have gone through
people talk a lot about suicide they
don’t often talk about the people who
are left behind
and the worst moment of my life was not
the police telling me that my husband
was dead
the worst moment of my life was telling
our children what happened to their
father
thankfully i had help the head of ksl
got me in contact with the woman who’s
now my therapist
the university of utah professor i was
telling you about she told me flat out
no matter
what i said to them i had to tell them
the truth no matter how awful it was
that’s the thing i wanted to lie to them
i wanted to tell them that their father
had fallen and hit his head or
had a heart attack anything but the
truth
but anne told me what to say and i said
it verbatim
your father died from depression
he took his own life
my son was 10. my daughter was 13.
how did he think that this was the
solution
because above all else travis loved his
children
had he understood the pain that he was
inflicting upon them
he never would have done it
now i will spend the rest of my life
trying to keep
my children alive because now they’re
more likely to die the same way
so not only am i mourning a past i
cannot change
i am terrified of my future and what
suicide
brings with it
despite that people say to me suicide is
selfish
and i will say to you
travis honestly thought he was being
selfless that bully in his brain
made him believe that we would be better
off without him
it would be comical if it weren’t so
tragic
i would say to you suicide is not
selfish
it is just really stupid
suicide will not get you the relief that
you’re looking for
it only causes a whole other cascade of
problems
that the people you love most in the
world have to pick up
and carry for you
don’t leave that legacy to your family
or to your children
i’m telling you this but in reality i’m
talking to him
i’m giving you the plea that i wasn’t
able to give him to convince you
whoever you are please
don’t take your life think about the
people you love
they will not be better off without you
i know
a year has gone by and a birthday is
fast
these are the gifts he left me that
morning
i can’t open them they’re a painful
reminder
of what was meant to be
a life lived together
you