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Family Copes with Loss, Learns to Live with ‘New Normal’
November 7, 2003
By Liz Quirin
The Messenger
Complete shock. Loss. Extreme sadness. Those are he words Kevin Smith used to describe his feelings when he learned his 26-year-old twin sister had committed suicide Jan 13. 2003
Losing a loved one, a family member, a friend, can be devastating, but losing that person because she couldn’t bear to spend another day, another hour on this earth and so sends her own life doubles the loss, the pain, the tremendous sadness.
The Smith family – Tom and Fran, Karla’s parents, and her twin brother, Kevin – have struggled for the past 10 months to deal with Karla’s death and go on with their own lives.
“Losing a child puts all of life in a different perspective,” Fran said. “What’s really important, what maybe we thought was important –isn’t. It’s different.”
Karla was a bright adventuresome child, always looking for that “road less traveled.” She grew into a beautiful woman – inside and out – as her care for the less fortunate, for those who would excluded from different strata of society evidenced.
Karla was talented in English, poetry and drama, someone who wanted to write about bipolar illness as a way her life until 1998 when the manic phase kicked in.
“It was severe,” Tome said.
Fran agreed. “We were on a roller coaster for four of the (last) seven years.” During her illness, Karla was hospitalized “at least six times,” Fran added.
Family members stood by her, holding her to this earth with love and encouragement, with their presence and reassurance throughout her illness.
From August through October of 2002 – a particularly difficult time for Karla and her family – Kevin kept a journal of what Karla said and did, the treatment that was initiated and the people who loved her through it. He gave her the journal. “She was really grateful for it,” Kevin said.
Tom describes that August in 202 as a time when he “spent the hardest 10 days of m life.” Karla was cycling into a manic phase which would eventually lead to a depressive phase and another hospitalization.
Kevin said there were times when the family thought they “had turned the corner” and Karla was better. Other times when her illness consumed them, sapping their strength as they tried to reassure Karla of her beauty, her gifts and their love.
“Saying it was exhausting is an understatement,” Kevin said. “I wanted to help those living with it and those who love them deal with the illness
And she was three classes short of finishing her degree in English literature at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. She was preparing to register for those remaining classes. College had become a struggler after she was diagnosed with depressing in 1996. Then, in 1998 the manic side of her illness surfaced, and the beautiful talented co-ed was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a manic-depressive mental illness which reportedly affects some 2.6 million or more people in this country.
Dealing with the Illness
People with bipolar disorder can live relatively normal lives if they receive proper treatment and medications, the Smiths said.
Living and loving someone with bipolar disorder consumes enormous energy and patience. Karla’s depression manifested itself first and dominated her to make it, to get through it. “It took over my life for awhile.”
In the end, “I realized I could only do so much,” Kevin said. “I was doing everything I could; the rest was in God’s hands.”
Fran was in Tulsa when Kara was admitted o the hospital Jan. 1 of this year.
“Some people believe because of her illness and her history that her ultimate suicide was inevitable,” Tom said. “I totally disagree with that.” Periods of stability during the last three years led Tom to believe if she had been stabilized on medication, Karla “could have led a relatively normal life.”
Part of the problem with bipolar is that during the manic phase, patients believe they no longer need the medication.
In Karla’s case, the reality of life on medication and living with the illness became overwhelming. About three weeks before she died, she talked to her father about her illness. “The voiced in her head were so loud telling her that everyone would be better off if she killer herself,” Tom said. “She could not silence the demons in her head.”
By the time she took her life, Karla, and her parents and her brother had become students of bipolar disorder, each of them researching the disease and approaching Karla in different ways to offer her support.. Their grief and their healing has also taken different forms.
Dealing with Loss
At first, Tom said his instinct was to withdraw, retreat to the basement study, to read what Karla had written and begin writing a book about Karla and her illness as a way to deal with his grief and raise awareness about bipolar disorder.
“Karla was very open about her illness,” Tom said. “One of my missions is to make her story and her life helpful to others.”
Fran said she could not dwell on the loss by spending time with Karla’s writings. “That would make me more sad. I end to use distractions. I also have a need to talk with people who understand.”
Fran’s family has been tremendously supportive, she said. One of nine children, Fran said every one of her brothers and sisters gathered in southern Illinois for Karla’s wake and funeral, coming across the United States. “I was deeply touched by that,” she said.
Friends and co-workers have continued to rally around them, and the couple said the tragedy of Karla’s death has given them a deep admiration for their son, Kevin. During the first few days after her death, Kevin wrote a eulogy for Karla’s wake and a letter to her which he read at her funeral.
Karla’s death has also brought them closer together as a couple.
“I feel very grateful to have a husband to share my pain, somebody who understands and is hurting as much as I am.” Fran said.
Over the past 10 months the family has begun to heal.
“I feel myself at different points being more accepting and able to talk about it more freely, and at other times, I break down in tears,” Tom said. “At times, I just feel weary.”
Even now, Tom sometimes finds it difficult to accept that he will never see or talk to his daughter again.
Fran said she sometimes experiences all the so-called stages of grief – loss, denial, anger, acceptance, peace – and not in any particular order.
The day Fran and Tom bought a new floral piece for Karla’s grave, Fran climbed aboard an emotional roller coaster.
First, she felt sad and after purchasing the floral arrangement, she became angry. “This is what I’m buying my daughter – flowers for her grave. When we got to the cemetery, that sadness retuned, and we cried. We stayed for awhile and eventually I felt peaceful because I really do believe Karla is at peace after a very, very long struggle with her illness.” Fran said.
Both Tom and Fran returned to their work – Tom to directing the diocesan office of Pastoral Services and Fran of Queen of Peach School in Belleville where she is the principal – two weeks after Karla died.
“I think that’s the healthiest thing we could have done. Even though Karla is dead, we know life goes on,” Fran said.
While Tom knew that life would go on, he wasn’t sure he would go on with it, he said. “there was a period of time when putting one foot in front of the other because you have something you have to do was the only thing that motivated me,” he said.
Tome thought the grieving process would not take this long, that he would have reached some sense of “peace and acceptance” by now. “I thought it was going to be a little shorter journey.”
Part of that journey to peace and acceptance has pulled Tom and Fran into a new role –speaking at a bipolar support group about Karla’s illness.
Fran not only misses Karla but reflects on those important events in Karla’s life that they will all miss: her graduation from college, watching her establish a career, her wedding day and grandchildren they will never have.
Dealing with the ‘New Normal’
Kevin is also dealing with Karla’s death by joining a bipolar alliance and family support group and speaking about Karla’s illness.
“I share Karla’s story, give them some of Karla’s writing about depression and what it means to be bipolar,” Kevin said. “I’ve seen changes in people – how they look at the illness and how they look at their bipolar loved one.”
Kevin will also be a speaker at a mental health conference Jam 17, 2004 at Shiloh’s United Methodist Church.
While Karla wanted to educate people about the illness, Kevin said, “it’s so important not to let the illness define who that person is. I don’t want people to hear ‘Karla Smith’ and think ‘bipolar.’ I want them to hear ‘Karla Smith’ and remember how she cared so much for others and had such an amazing grasp of writing and analyzing and listening.”
“Bipolar was a part of her, but it wasn’t her,” he said.
Kevin is also responsible for creating a web site in Karla’s memory. Kevin’s eulogy and letter to Karla, family photos and links to sites on bipolar illness are also on the web site at www.inmemoryofkarlasmith.com. Each of the Smiths said they visit the web site every day. “I don’t spend more than a minute or two,” Tom said. “I greet her every day and pray for her every day.”
In their healing, they reach out to others, sharing Karla’s words and her message.
They find comfort in each other, in books and columns they have found helpful and in Scripture.
Fran remembers Psalm 145: “The father is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.” That helps me realize that God is not going to turn his back on Karla.”
One of the last messages Karla wrote to Kevin was to “be strong,” he said. “I’ll never move on from losing her, my twin, but I’m not going to let it stop me from living my life, being grateful for everything she gave me and gave the world I her 26 years.”
The family deals with the pain, the loss daily. They pray about it, and they go on.
“We have to learn to live with a new normal,” Tom said. “You never get over it, but you might get through it.”
For Further Reading
“Andrew You Died Too Soon, a Family Experience of Grieving and Living Again” by Corinne Chilstrom, a Lutheran minister’s wife who lost their college-age son to suicide. “The Noonday Demon, an Atlas of Depression by Nicholas Solomon.”
(Tom and Fran Smith found those books among the most helpful to them during this time.)
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