Finding My Voice

This Is the Season

The past month and the next few weeks are always the hardest time of the year for me. After all, it has only been 57 years since the suicide. Yes, I now have another avenue of escape, I can sit down and write about it now. Yes, I’m definitely coming out in the open more. Since deciding to publish the book I’ve started using the term that “I’m an open book”. But this has been a long journey.

Decades of Silence

So many years this story has been hidden. Decades after I wrote about it, it remained hidden. In a drawer and a file cabinet, don’t talk about it, it’s uncomfortable, for you and to others. Keep your mouth shut and suck it up, you are stronger than that. Those thoughts are wrong, if you don’t share it, you alone own it. It sits there inside of you and eats you up.

You don’t get better with time because you were strong enough to bring your feelings into the open. Instead, you kept hiding the way you truly felt. You kept it to yourself while you were looking forward to the months of August and September. Not looking forward to those good summer months because they were going to be fun times at the beach, but looking forward to them because of the devastation you knew you were going to feel near the anniversary date and have to hide again.

Why didn’t I learn early in life that it would have been much better to talk about it at that time. Would it still be haunting me today. I don’t really know.

The Power of Writing

But I do know that during the eight to ten years I spent writing the book, it always helped me to let those emotions out. I must have cried a million tears during those years. But even then, I cried them alone, I didn’t share them with anyone. My wife would catch me crying from time to time and ask what is wrong, and then other times she would see me crying and would not bother asking the reason, because she already knew it too well.

So, this is my first blog of any kind, and I am ready to spill my guts.

The Taboo of Suicide

In 1968 suicide was a taboo subject. Back then if you had a suicide in your family, it was because your entire family was messed up. Truth is that if it wasn’t screwed up before, it most certainly would be after the suicide. You just would not want to tell people about it.

If you didn’t want to tell people about it, obviously you weren’t talking about it. So those feelings, loss, grief, fright, even anticipation of what devastation comes next, they all stayed locked up inside of you. There were not near the mental health outlets that we have now. My problems were mine; I owned them and would have to deal with it alone.

Why Now?

So why now, why bring all of this into the open now. In December 2020 I went through my second major open-heart surgery to replace my aortic valve. They expected complications and had told me that I was not a good candidate for open-heart surgery, but because of other complications they were unable to replace the valve using a new method called TAVR. I had to be opened again.

The surgery went very badly for me and I was left in a medically induced coma for a couple of weeks. When they were able to wake me up I was on kidney dialysis, I had a trach in my throat, I had a dual chamber pacemaker and I was dependent on insulin and supplemental oxygen, along with a feeding tube for nutrition. My wife had not been allowed to visit because it was in the height of the new Covid era when only patients were allowed in, no visitors, except for the two days they had called her and asked her to come say her goodbyes to me. None of the doctors expected me to live.

A New Life Expectancy

Which brings me back around to why now. The general feeling after pulling through almost three months of hospital and in-patient rehab was that I had a new life expectancy of approximately ten years. I have nearly used up five of those to this point, so the book needs to be now or the story dies with me. I have kept him alive in my heart and mind for the last 57 years.

The only way his story lives on from here is through this book. And for my last years in life, I want to spend my entire waking hours getting that story out there.

Beyond One Story

Not really to tell the story of Richard Dale Sanders, but to tell the story of the devastation that happens in all families that have a suicide in them. To give some pointers that may help you cope if you are dealing with the aftermath of a suicide. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a counselor, licensed or otherwise. I am just a man, that started a new life as a 12-year-old boy learning to deal with suicide by doing all of the wrong things.

I’ve always heard experience is what you get, when you don’t get what you wanted. If that is correct, I have a world of experience on the subject.

A Mission to Save Lives

But the most important mission within this book is to find that one person, that is on the fence about suicide, that one person that just needs a little more of a reason to not commit suicide and I pray that person will choose to be a hero in other’s lives by not taking their own. From that point we can go on together and find all of those people on the fence and make heroes of them all.

I am sure I can only make a very tiny dent in the suicide rate, I’m hoping together we can make a large change.

Onward and Upward

From my side of the fence, my wife and I will be doing everything we can to get this book into the right hands along with my editor and digital creators’ team, Kelley (Kel) and Greg Majors.

We will be donating 25% of our net profits to non-profit organizations connected to suicide and veteran PTSD awareness programs.

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Bonded: A Brother’s Love : One Bullet. A Thousand Echoes. This book is more than my story. It is a voice for every family devastated by suicide and a lifeline for those standing at the edge of despair. My hope is that it reaches the one who needs it most. If even one person chooses life because of it, then every tear and every word will have been worth it.

📖Order your copy today and join me in breaking the silence. Together we can spread hope, honor the lost, and change the future.