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I. The Egg

“I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you” – Charles Bukowski, “Bluebird”

The train, chugging towards the station, moved through a beautiful landscape of fir trees and chirping bluebirds. We were sitting at the front, soaking the scenery in. Up ahead, we noticed a mangled piece of track running parallel to ours and a crew furiously working to improve the situation. “Well, that sure is all horsed up,” he said, mocking our father’s deep Pittsburgh accent. We immediately started laughing together, reveling in memories of growing up. Once my laughter began to subside, I looked into his dark brown eyes, his face still spread with a deep smile. “Why Jimmy?” I asked. He turned to me, his smile softening.

My mind left the train. Entering consciousness, I reminded myself of the agonizing truth, “It was a dream. He’s not here.” My eyes opened, dispersing hot tears that streamed down my cheek. The white walls of my dorm room confirmed reality. I drew air in through my nose and held it. The exhale attempted to release enough emotion so my tears remained undetected by my roommate. I rolled over and picked up my phone before the alarm went off. “Happy first day of college!!” a text from my mom read. I rose from my twin bed and walked towards the vanity I shared with my roommate. I looked in the mirror, seeing myself differently than I had just a few short days ago. “Shove it down. Never let anyone see. You have to make friends,” I reminded myself.

I gave myself fifteen minutes to walk to my first college class, English 140, Contemporary Literature. Stepping outside, I felt the barrier I created enclose me. I passed unknown faces. Some with headphones in, others walked alongside friends, still more walked alone with their heads held high as they began their semester – the heavy truth I carried and protected within me unseen by all. I wondered if these unfamiliar faces were hiding anything, too.

* * *

“Luca studied entomology. He specialized in bees and was writing his thesis on their migration patterns,” Erica said as we drove to our suicide survivor group. Counseling services originally wanted to place me in a general grief share group with other students, but after I told the counselors we had found Jimmy’s letter, they referred me to an off-campus support group for suicide survivors. Erica was a grad student reeling from the loss of her friend, Luca. Every Tuesday, she would come pick me up from my dorm in her forest green Jeep. “I am a scientist. I always look for answers, but with this, I am having a hard time finding any,” she told me during our first car trip to group.

For the majority of the week, classes allowed me to avoid processing the anger and sadness from my brother’s death. None of the people I had met so far knew, and I was able to keep this painful secret hidden behind my self-constructed barrier. Tuesdays were when support group forced my truth out. Our group was led by a woman in her mid-60’s named Jane whose mother ended her life when Jane was 17. She was a tall, willowy figure with shoulder-length gray hair. Each week, she arranged the chairs in the room in a circle and placed a table in the center covered in tissues and trinkets she would use to lead discussions. The room was painted a soft blue made darker by the dimmed lighting. Participants treated seating like church, where each person had a specific chair they gravitated towards each week. Jane sat towards the entrance of the room and leaned her body over her crossed legs, as though she were leaning into us and our stories. I always sat by a couple who had lost their son eight years before. Each week I wondered if I was still going to be sitting in my chair for the next eight years.

It was our last meeting before Christmas. The last meeting before I returned home for the first time since Jimmy’s funeral in late August. “I want everyone to take a cup,” Jane said. Small Dixie cups were stacked on the center table next to a burning candle. Jane grabbed a box from her purse, a clinking sound signaling small items inside. “You all know how much I love trinkets,” Jane said as she poured small glass hearts and plastic beads into a basket on the center table. “For our last time together before the new year, I want us to go around and place a heart or bead into each other’s cups.” She picked up a fragile red glass heart and placed it in my cup. “Sami, this is for your brother’s red guitar and his love of music.”

The hour was spent bestowing symbols of loved ones and each other’s journeys into our Dixie cups. Everyone took turns collecting hearts and beads and distributing them to each other. I remained seated, staring ahead bent over and clutching my arms as tears streamed down my face. I felt raw, as if each clinking bead or glass heart placed in my cup cut deeper into me, exposing the anguish Jimmy threw me in.

Once Jane’s glass hearts and plastic beads all found a story and Dixie cup home, she rose from her seat to blow out the candle on the center table. After extinguishing the flame, she scraped off a piece of egg-colored melted wax stuck to the table. “Here, Sami, this is for you,” she said as she placed the hardened wax in my cup. “Since you are at the beginning of your journey.”

 

II. The Feeding

“There is no rush to put yourself back together all at once” – Alex Elle, Neon Soul

It was the first anniversary, and I was drawn to the openness and privacy of Penn State’s Arboretum. “How do you celebrate a death day?” I thought to myself. Do I wallow? Do I cry? Do I eat his favorite tortilla soup? Do I watch an old Penguins game and pretend he’s watching too? I reached the wooden bridge to the entrance of the Arboretum and decided to walk until I felt drawn to a spot. I walked past tall green hedges molded around the walkway blooming with white camellias. The walkway opened to a center greenspace and I became consumed by the rollercoaster of thoughts in my head.

“Did he think about how many people he was hurting before he swallowed those pills?” I thought to myself as I walked past children and families enjoying the final days of summer. My heart felt heavy, as if all my anger and pain towards Jimmy dropped into my chest. I closed my eyes and inhaled, acknowledging that I would never know the answer.

I reached the terrace on the Arboretum’s edge and sat on the grass facing the trees surrounding the property. I had been holding in my tears all day, waiting for this moment to free myself, but felt nothing. Perhaps my tears dried in the waiting. A monarch butterfly flew past my face, catching my eye like passing a recognizable face you struggle to name. Familiar, its appearance stirred feelings of significance from an unknown place. It flew around as if it were a protector or reminder of a part of my identity. A subtle smile spread across my face, acknowledging the mysterious connection between us. I knew he had something to do with my linkage to these insects, but the answer as to how or why had yet to come.

* * *

“I want you to have this. It was my mother’s.” Ms. Naomi handed me a butterfly brooch with blue gemstones. I ran my fingers over the brooch. Raised metal bumps texturized the surface and the dark gray coloring gave evidence of the pin’s maturity. Ms. Naomi had found me crying and shaking in Thomas Building when my father called to tell me my brother died and she walked me back to my dorm. A few months later, I received an email from her asking if I wanted to go to lunch. We formed a peculiar bond. She is a renowned statistics professor whose presence at the most pivotal point in my life forever linked us.  Throughout my freshman and sophomore year, she continued to reach out and take me to lunch occasionally.

This month’s lunch was at The Deli downtown. It was the first Thursday of the spring semester and Ms. Naomi had buried her mother over the winter holiday. She always wore a piece of jewelry or accessory from one of her travels, and today was wearing a pastel striped headband from Thailand. I knew this butterfly was connected to the one I saw at the Arboretum on the first anniversary without Jimmy. I put the brooch in my backpack and carried it with me until I returned home to my dorm.

I picked up my framed picture of Jimmy and me on my desk when I returned to my dorm. The image was from his high school graduation almost fifteen years ago. His dark brown eyes were beaming underneath his graduation cap and he was holding me on his hip. His bright smile would fool anyone into thinking he could never meet such a tragic end. I glued the butterfly brooch to the corner of the frame.

 

III. The Chrysalis

“What is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives” – Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“You do not need to carry him with you,” Pastor Owens said. Tears were streaming down my face, acknowledging the truth of his statement. I quickly brushed them away, nervous that a visitor would come in and see the receptionist crying. Sitting in his motorized chair, Pastor Owens was eye level with me as I sat behind the front desk. It was nighttime and the darkness streamed through the windows, darkening the entire room. No one had called or entered the facility for the past hour, as if the universe kept everything on hold until I heard Pastor Owen’s words.

It was the summer after my sophomore year and I had returned to my receptionist job at a local nursing home that I had held since my high school days. Pastor Owens was an Iraqi War veteran undergoing rehab at the facility after having his leg amputated. He was only 45, but his hair was almost completely gray and he had deeply set lines on his forehead. I never asked, but always assumed his experiences in Iraq aged him. We had met the previous December while I was home working during my winter break. He came up to my desk and began talking to me, sensing there was a truth I kept buried within me. He eventually pried me open and allowed me to release the pain and anger that had festered within me since my brother’s suicide.

“You are not going to do what your brother did,” Pastor Owens said to me. My chest began to feel lighter, as if a weight had been removed from it. For the past two years, I found myself depressed and easily agitated for no reason. Although seemingly fine from an outsider’s point of view, I was incredibly unhappy with the life I was living and had no logical explanation as to why. “This is your life to live. Never let your past take from your future,” he said as his eyes locked on mine. I looked at the clock and noticed my shift had ended a half hour ago. My eyes dry from the release of my tears. The evening news continued to blare in the corner, reminding me that the world has continued to move for these past two years. I stood up and hugged Pastor Owens, feeling every piece of guilt and loneliness from Jimmy’s death leave me.

I felt drawn to him when I returned home that night, as if I needed to tell him to become completely liberated. I walked downstairs to the basement, past my grandma’s old flower embroidered couch and Jimmy’s red guitar that had not been moved since he left it leaning next to the door of the storage room. Wreaths for every holiday, old little league and soccer trophies, dusty stuffed animals, and other forgotten items occupied the shelves of the storage room in the back of the basement. On the top shelf next to my father’s ski poles was a bright blue urn with three white doves pictured flying on the front. The gold rim of the lid glistened amongst the brown cardboard boxes of old family Polaroids and black luggage.

I lifted the urn off the shelf and ran my hand over the three doves. “It’s you, Bobby, and Jimmy,” my dad had said when we picked it out. One bird flew above the other two and I could not help but think that it was Jimmy watching over my other brother, Bobby, and me. My shaking hand twisted off the gold rimmed lid to reveal the cement colored ashes.

“I forgive you,” I said into the urn.

* * *

She was running around, giggling without a care in the world. “Watch me do this!” she said as she began to spin around in circles. She looked just like me. Blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin. I was sitting in a small room as the little girl circled around me. So full of life and energy, she made me feel ashamed of myself. How did I not know I had a two-year-old daughter? How could I neglect her for two years? She was so young and precious. Where has she been for the past two years?

A tight feeling in my chest woke me up. Realizing I was back in my bed at my apartment, I took a deep breath. I stared ahead at the white ceilings, relieved that my two-year-old daughter was nothing more than an invention of my dreams. “Why did I have this dream?” I thought to myself. I did the math in my head. Two years ago, I was incredibly lost, reeling from Jimmy’s suicide. I refused to process what happened for two years, opting instead to run away and hide from the grief and anger festering within me.

My eyes widened, and my heart began beating quickly. The little girl was me.

 

IV. Emergence

“And tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

“Look at you, thriving!” Ms. Naomi said as we sat and ate Creamery bagels. I relished her words, knowing for the first time in almost three years I was alive and thriving. The Creamery was bustling with students stopping for a quick coffee between classes and tour groups waiting in line for their first taste of the famed ice cream. We sat at a table in the center and I was excitedly telling her about dancing in THON and my upcoming internship.

Ms. Naomi had retired at the end of the previous school year and was now traveling across the U.S. with her husband in their RV. She had stopped in State College for the night and we met at the Creamery for lunch before she left with her husband for their next RV excursion to Florida. It was the beginning of the spring semester of my junior year and I had never felt stronger and more capable.

“While we were in Mexico, we went to a monarch butterfly sanctuary,” Ms. Naomi told me. “They really are stunning creatures. They migrate to warmer climates during the winter and somehow always know when it is time to return and begin the next generation.”

I thought about the butterfly brooch Ms. Naomi gave me two years earlier. “I wonder how they know when it is time to emerge from their chrysalis,” I said to her.

* * *

At the beginning of our senior year, my childhood best friend, Matt, and I decided to participate in our city’s suicide awareness walk. Matt’s family had a history of mental health illness and suicide and we both felt ready to participate in the walk. The event was my first time publicizing my connection to the death. I previously shied away from admitting the cause of my brother’s passing, not willing or ready to accept his decision. Upon entering, we were greeted by a tent filled with various colors of plastic beads where each color represented a different connection to suicide. Red signaled loss of a spouse, green for those who struggled personally, and a bright orange for participants who had lost a sibling. I proudly selected two bright orange beaded necklaces to wear, the cheap coloring soon rubbing off on my neck.

We roamed the sponsor tents offering free lip balm, reusable bags, and keychains, taking as many free items as we could. The last tent we came to offered no cheap plastic souvenirs from sponsoring companies, but rather small monarch butterfly stickers. “What do these butterflies signify?” I asked the woman working the table.

“Hope. Having the will to keep going,” she responded. I soon learned monarch butterflies serve as a prominent symbol of the suicide awareness movement, encouraging people to continue to grow and realize the opportunity and redemption of life.

I looked at the detailed image of the monarch. The vibrant, bright orange coloring contrasted beautifully with the butterfly’s black trim and white spots that line the edges of its wing. “This kind of beauty takes time to create,” I thought to myself.

Indeed, this kind of beauty takes sadness, acceptance, and forgiveness to create.

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Sami Scherrer is a senior studying economics and marketing with an English minor. Originally from Pittsburgh, she works for the business division of The Daily Collegian and is heavily involved in THON and was selected as a dancer for her organization, Futures, for THON 2019. She enjoys traveling with friends, writing, reading poetry and trying new food.