My stepfather died by suicide in July of 2019. I was 20 at the time, living in a fraternity house in Wyoming, delivering pizzas as a summer gig.
A month before he died, my mother informed me they were getting a divorce. I was puzzled and disappointed because I’d known my stepdad for 15 years. He was the father of my four little sisters, and it was disheartening to learn they’d have to experience what I went through: growing up with separated parents.
A month after that conversation with my mother, my cousin texted me, asking if I’d heard what had happened to my stepdad. I was confused, and she wouldn’t elaborate. She urged me to reach out to my mom.
My thoughts raced with possibilities. Did he get a DUI? Is he in jail? Did he hurt one of my sisters?
I called my mom while out on a pizza delivery. Nothing could have prepared me for what she divulged.
“A few days ago he…took his own life,” she told me.
This information took months to register. I’d never pictured a world without my stepdad in it. Because I was away at college, it still felt like he was four hours north of me. Then I’d remember the truth and hurt all over again.
I’ve never been able to recall the last interaction I had with my stepfather. I know it happened only two or three months before he died, but I often wonder how it played out. Was I telling him about my drunk escapades or the girls I’d hooked up with? Were we making plans for a camping trip? Was he sharing something from his college days?
Surely, we said goodbye, but did we hug? Or shake hands? One thing is certain: neither of us knew we were saying farewell for the last time.
When my mom gave me the bad news, I started crying, but not hard. I was shocked. Numb. I returned to the pizza place and told my manager that I’d had a death in my family. I asked if I could leave early, and I reached out to the store group chat, but nobody offered to relieve me. So, I continued working for two more hours in a fog.
Days later, my dad brought me to my hometown in Wyoming, where my mom and sisters still lived. I met my mother and my eldest sister, who was 13 at the time, at the funeral home. My other three sisters, twin five-year-olds and a nine-year-old, didn’t come because they were so young.
I remember staring in disbelief at my stepdad’s lifeless body. He was at peace but looked as though he could open his eyes and crack a joke at any moment. My sister sobbed, and I held her as she quivered.
That day, I made a promise to her: Mom and I would never abandon her.
My Stepfather’s Childhood Trauma
My stepfather’s death is still the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to me. Looking back, it’s clear he had demons. Evidently, he believed he was broken beyond repair.
He was a robust cowboy –a man’s man, truly. He wore flannel shirts and cowboy boots. He chewed tobacco. He drank beer and adored country music. Growing up, he was very involved in 4-H, a youth program involving agriculture. In adulthood, he played a big role at his family’s ranch. He loved to ride horses, tend cattle, fish, and hunt for arrowheads. Overall, he embodied Wyoming’s cowboy culture.
My stepfather didn’t speak about his childhood often, but what he did mention was insightful. He told me that he and his older brother once watched too much television as kids, so his father cut the cord to their TV. Their dad had the old-fashioned mentality that, “Children should be seen and not heard.” In his mind, the most effective method of correcting behavior was through harsh reprimands and physical measures.
The most traumatic experience my stepfather shared with me was losing his little sister when he was just a child. She died from heart complications a few days after she was born. His mother became emotionally unavailable after her death. The losses were traumatic – so traumatic that, more than two decades later, the mention of his sister brought tears to his eyes, his lip trembling.
Suicide Warning Signs, in Hindsight
Toward the end of his life, my mother and sisters weren’t safe around my stepfather because he simply wasn’t himself. He started pacing around the house for hours at night. He took his clothes to his mom’s house to wash, fearing they had drug residue on them. He threw away one of my sister’s Polaroid cameras and her Scentsy wax bars because he thought they were drug paraphernalia. He also took a cabinet out of the basement and drove it down the road.
Then his high school football coach died, and he and my mother’s marriage deteriorated, two major losses at once. Mom had custody of my four little sisters, and he had occasional monitored visits. In the weeks to come, he became extremely depressed and resentful.
My stepdad, ever the quintessential cowboy, was never equipped to resolve his pain alone. He feared appearing weak. He never got professional help that I know of.
Stages of Grief After My Stepfather’s Suicide
The five stages of grief have always fascinated me. Long before my stepdad died, I’d lost my great-grandmother and a golden retriever named Quill. Those losses were challenging, but I saw them coming. They were very old, and I was prepared.
Through research, experience, and reflection, I’ve learned how unpredictable and sporadic grief’s stages can be. As others have noted, they typically don’t occur in any particular order, and the severity of each wavers over time. After my stepfather died, I experienced all five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial: The First Stage of Grief
When I saw my stepdad a couple months before he died, everything was fine. He spiraled into suicidal depression sometime after that. So, when I received the news from my mom, I was too puzzled to feel much of anything. I wasn’t sure how to feel about his death. I was completely confused with no answers.
In her book Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison explains:
“Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.”
I agree with Dr. Jamison. No one can truly grasp the bewildering nature of losing someone to suicide unless they’ve experienced it.
Anger: The Second Stage of Grief
I experienced anger for years. Some people who endure this stage direct their frustration at others, but I channeled my anger toward my stepfather himself. Although being resentful toward a deceased individual is futile, I felt my reasoning was sound because he abandoned every person who cared about him—most notably, his four little girls.
Additionally, he stole my opportunity to end my own life. He placed me in a position in which I have to stick around no matter how bad things get because, if I died too, my sisters and mother would never recover.
Despite this, my anger has abated over time and been replaced with compassion.
Bargaining: The Third Stage of Grief
For me, bargaining looked like reminiscing about the past and wondering how the trajectory of my stepfather’s life could have been different. There were many rounds of woulda, shoulda, coulda.
If I was there with him, I would have seen his mental state and maybe been able to help. I should have called him to see how he was holding up during the divorce. There must have been something I could have said or done to prevent his death.
Thoughts like these haunted me for years. I often imagine how his life could have turned around had he not ended it. Surely his pain would have resolved eventually, in a more natural way, but I will never know.
Depression: The Fourth Stage of Grief
The most overwhelming symptom of my grief was depression. After my stepfather passed, my substance abuse ramped up. I started drinking alone more frequently, and, if drugs and alcohol weren’t a crutch before, they certainly were now. I shed many tears. In the years following the funeral, I found myself profoundly unhappy most days.
Statistically, people are far more likely to die by suicide after losing someone to it: “Suicide, dangerously, has a contagious aspect,” Dr. Jamison also notes in Night Falls Fast.
I got so depressed that, on many occasions, I considered taking my own life. I’d felt suicidal before, but my suicidal ideation became severe after my stepdad’s death. I knew how much it hurts to lose a loved one to suicide, and this kept me going. I refused to do that to my mom and sisters.
I felt powerless. Fortunately, over the course of seven years, the pain gradually subsided.
Acceptance: The Fifth Stage of Grief
In the first spring after my stepfather’s death, I was lying in bed at night, tossing and turning for an hour before a sudden realization hit me: I will never see my stepfather again. It was a shocking revelation, as though I was realizing it for the first time.
Sometimes, even though so much time has passed, I still can’t believe he’s gone. He genuinely wasn’t the sort of person you’d expect to be in such a dark place.
It feels as though just yesterday, we were enjoying black coffee or crushing beers around our bonfire in the country. It’s still difficult to picture life without him. Over time, I’ve learned to look toward the future and accept that he is gone forever, despite that being difficult to comprehend.
Depression and Isolation
Individuals who are suicidal often find themselves unable to discuss their pain with others. Researchers have found that only half of people who die by suicide ever told someone else, directly or indirectly, of their intentions.
When I felt suicidal, I tended to isolate. The phone always felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Confiding in someone that you’re suicidal is incredibly difficult. What if they don’t take me seriously? What if they don’t understand? What if they have no reaction at all? What if I worry burden them with worry? What if I tell them and regret it later?
I never found the appropriate time or place to confide in my friends or family. Dr. Jamison herself states in Night Falls Fast:
“Never once, during any of my sustained bouts of suicidal depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up the telephone and ask a friend for help. Not once.”
Fortunately, I have overcome many of my issues, mainly through getting sober and going to therapy. I am more honest with people now, and I’m grateful I didn’t take my own life.
Life After Suicide Loss
I will never be able to fully understand my stepfather’s state of mind before he died. He left a suicide note, but I’ve never been able to read it. I’m not even sure if I was mentioned in it. Maybe I’ll never know. My inability to read the note exacerbates my disappointment that I can’t recall our last interaction. My mother and I weren’t mentioned in the obituary his family wrote.
To the suicidal individual, ending their own life seems a reasonable alternative to persevering through a black depression. Something I remember from my stepdad’s funeral was his sister-in-law telling me, “I think he’s finally found peace.” I had to agree with her, but I acknowledged that his loved ones hadn’t.
There hasn’t been a single day since my stepfather passed that I don’t think about him. His death still makes me sad, but I have grown to accept it and even understand his motives.
In the prologue of her book, Dr. Jamison says of those who have died by suicide:
“Most…suffered from mental illness; all left behind a wake of unimaginable pain and unresolvable guilt.”
I view that statement as universally true for those who have lost someone to suicide.
As I said, the pain caused in the wake of my stepfather’s death discourages me from ever taking my own life. His suicide showed me the devastating results of avoiding talking to others and of not dealing with life’s tribulations in a healthy way.
I used to be jealous that my stepdad died and I didn’t. Now, I have persevered and found beauty and serenity in this life, despite its dark times. In my experience, life is worth living; its struggles change, and grief tends to ease over time.
Until now, I haven’t opened up to many people about my grief over my stepfather’s death. I find him on my mind often. I’m sharing now because I want people to know there is no person on the planet who is immune to life’s challenges, not even cowboys. I want people to know there is hope.
Sometimes I listen to “Big Green Tractor,” a country song by Jason Aldean. The song reminds me of my stepdad. I wish he were still here, singing along to country music, catching trout, and cooking burgers on the grill. I’ll always miss him, but I’ve reached a point where I can smile at the times we shared. It’s an excellent reason to choose life.
© 2026 Culley Emborg. All Rights Reserved. Written for Speaking of Suicide.
