This October 29 Marks Eight Years

since my dad died...

It was October 29, 2015. I was in a doctoral seminar that had just finished. I saw I had a missed call from my mom, nothing new.

What was new was her tone, an urgency to it.

“Danielle, call me when you get this.”

I dialed my childhood residential number. She picked up immediately.

“Mom?” I say, “What’s going on?”

“Your father, he’s gone.” She says, her voice blank, neutral, devoid of emotion.

“WHAT??? How?”

“Well, I came home and there were police officers here. They wouldn’t let me in. One of them said, there’s no easy way to tell you this ma’am, but your husband took his life.”

I had been headed out of the classroom, starting down the stairs. But when I hear this, I freeze.

My legs forget how to work. I immediately have to sit, sitting down in the stairwell, my classmates walking around me.

“Where are you?” I ask

“I’m at home.” She says.

There?!? I think. Where he did it? I’m appalled. She shouldn’t be there.

“I’m coming to get you.” I say.

“Okay,” she responds, the first note of relief in her voice.

I hang up. I catch a glimpse of my professor headed down the stair case.

Automatically, I reach out and grab at her, I reach her arm, to stop her.

Though I am often pretty confident, self-assured and resilient, I suddenly feel small, scared, alone, desperate. Frantic almost.

I recall this still, vividly.

My professor was very kind to me.

She sat with me a moment. Offered to drive with me to New York.

In a moment of quietly validating my experience and where I was, she said—

“Your life just changed forever.”

Indeed it had.

It did.