My daddy was a us navy veteran who brutually killed himself on September 27, 2017 at the age of 51.

My Daddy had become really emotionally sick in recent years. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Which of course he didn't believe because he thought that was the Va trying to control him. He became really hard to be around as he has these crazy conspiracy theories and he heard and saw things that didn't exist that proved to him he was right. Then he started believing people were out to kill him. I was at the store with him once and he lost it in middle of the store because some man was chasing him with a weapon... Only that man didn't exist outside of his mind. He became angry and occasionally violent. He started having outbursts regardless of where he was, ie in middle of a restaurant we were at for my sons 10th birthday.

Then came the suicide notes. He sent many of them to both my brothers and I. To his brother and his best friend. We tried so hard to get him help over the past five years but it proved difficult. Somehow he never quite fit the criteria to be forced into getting help and he wouldn't go on his own. He became irate at us. He thought we were trying to lock him away. He said some very, very hurtful things to me that under normal circumstances he would never say.

I started getting irrational nonsensical letters that were on average between forty and a hundred pages of gibberish. Then he started doing it on facebook. One of his postings reads this "Roger Roy booms Ring of Fire for a redbox seven ate another Click to Graceland thee pink Hello Kitty This Elvis dress under House arrest. She riff a rafter can to grow cotton Maryland. A bending snap chipper from a block of Swiss cheese Tina Turner molds for Pokemon. Wink Suzie 12 times five. You feeling ME? If not, send the Coast Guard to hear ME. This Elvis can't keep it all IN." I couldn't understand what he was trying to say and he grew frustrated that we couldnt because it made sense to him.

After 14 year sober, he started drinking again very heavily. He told me he was either going to go to rehab or kill himself. He promised me he would go to rehab.

He went on a trip for 5 months visiting people on the east coast that he hadn't seen in many many years. When he was there... He told people he was dying of cancer and wanted to say his goodbyes. He didnt have cancer.

3 weeks before his death he asked me to come over. He wanted my husband to have his truck or he was going to donate it. When we were there he wasn't the same. He was rational and level headed. Back to the Daddy-o I remembered from childhood. He was apologizing for things he did and said during the past 5 years. Then he gave me his dog tags and said i would need them for after he jumped off a bridge. He said this in front of my child. He made my son tell his papa goodbye because papa was "going to jump off a bridge and die."

He started calling me daily begging me to leave work and come be with him. I live 2.5 hours away. I work as a cna in a nursing hime and abandoning the residents can get me in alot of legal trouble so i couldnt.

2 weeks later... He tried to od on a med thats not fatal in high doses. There is a recording on the va crisis line of him saying what he did. The va sent the police out and they came out. No one called me. I didn't know. If i had... I would have found a way to be there. They were checking on him frequently after that.

A week after that he cut his wrists, walkes around his houae for a while, and then cut his neck which caused him to bleed out fast. The house had blood everywhere. There was even a piece of his skin from hus wrist on the kitchen floor

My youngest brother... Who is autistic... Lived with my dad. He came home from work and found him like that. My sister doesnt believe my dad would do this and is accusing the whole family of sitting around and watching my autistic brother kill my dad. She says we all are lazy and dont work and just wanted a handout from my dad and were going to get it by any means necessary. She is the only one out of the 4 of us kids not working or paying her own bills.

The investigators said based on the wounds and the way he bleed out it isnt possible anyone else could have inflicted them.

This whole thing is a nightmare. Everything makes me cry.

Does this ever get better?

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I really don't know what to say Ashley.  I'm so sorry.  There is some kind of weirdness in this universe that seems to have its way with us when we are not at all prepared for how to handle it.  Death by any means is hard to reconcile but your father seems to have had a hard time finding a way to go without a lot of pain (for everyone).  

When we have to face the aftermath we question everything that went on before.  The whys are the biggest unanswered tortured part of our souls.  Before death we don't seem to have the same questions.  We look at life as a challenge that we manage.  But so many things are really unmanageable.  Your father sounds as though his mind ran away and as his daughter you wanted to help him find it.  No reasons are given why we don't always succeed.  

I think crying is the bodys natural mechanism to release us from insufferable pain.  Our minds try to make sense of something that we cant and if held in will make us crazy.   Crying for me is cathartic but I have suffered from the crying although I still prefer it over the reverse.  

Does it get better?  Hard to answer if I would call it better but it does change.  After the shock wears down some you will look at things through a different lens.  How and what else we have in our lives will effect our understanding but we are all forever changed.

Your father was suffering and you may be asking the same question he asked himself.  Our hope here on this site is we try to do what we can to support each other because we all feel the pain.  May you find some moments where you can try to understand that we aren't meant to understand it all.  

I’m so sorry Ashley, your situation sounds truly horrendous, life seems so unfair. My husband died from suicide on 29/30 September 2016; I have the uncertainty because he disappeared for a night and wasn’t found until the next day, so I’ll never really know when he died. I feel so much anger and guilt, I cry every day, the world seems empty, tainted almost, and I feel like I’m just existing most days. I think any loss is devastating, but it is particularly difficult to cope with when the person you love did it to themselves. It is like a nightmare you can’t wake up from. I can tell you a year on that I have learnt to cope with things a bit better, but it still hurts, I don’t think that will ever go away. I try to keep myself busy, days are divided up into sections and I plan what I will do in each one. That seems to help a bit, but I think one of the most important things to do and what I have really struggled with is giving myself permission to feel whatever I need to and telling myself again and again that it is ok to feel a particular way. I think part of you wants to rush through it, to feel better and it’s hard to accept that it takes time. It’s hard for me to accept it, I just want it to be over and to feel better, but I don’t think it works that way. I don’t know if that helps. Wishing you strength and hope you find some peace.

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