Despair, and a gun in the house

ON THE MORNING OF MY DAD’S DEATH, IT TOOK ME 10 minutes to choose what to wear, toast a blueberry waffle, and pour chai into a thermos.

- BY OLIVIA ROCKEMAN

It took 10 minutes to drive myself to school and choose a spot in the parking lot designated for high school seniors, a cohort that I finally belonged to. Within the next 10 minutes, I opted to leave my umbrella in my car and arrived at calculus class with damp hair. Each of these quick decisions unfolded in the same amount of time it likely took my dad to plan and execute his suicide.

In the months leading up to his death, my dad struggled with double vision and a limp that doctors couldn't get to the bottom of. It’s possible that those symptoms were caused by neurological damage from two brain tumor surgeries he had when I was young, or from another condition like multiple sclerosis, though he never received a diagnosis. Even so, my dad’s suicide was shocking. Despite his physical impairments, he worked every weekday, ran with me on the beach, and advised me on my college applications. He showed no obvious signs of depression. Even the people closest to him didn’t know the depth of his pain because of his calm, reserved demeanor.

The time between deciding to end one’s life and performing self-harm is, often, no more than 10 minutes, according to a 2021 study of unsuccessful suicide attempts. Following whatever intrusive thought my dad had on that December morning a decade ago, it wouldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes for him to write his suicide note on the desktop computer, walk upstairs to the printer, and bring it back to the office where he would kill himself.

58% of gunrelated deaths in 2023 were suicides

I hate to imagine it took only a few more minutes for him to get the gun down from the top shelf of the closet—a gun I didn’t even know he owned—and load it.