After Suffering in Silence for Years, My Beautiful Sister Took Her Own Life

My sister was classic California beautiful: tall, blonde and blue-eyed.

This is Roberta’s story as told by Jeanette Summers. Our “Opening our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief and ultimately aid them in their healing process. In this story, Roberta talks about the experience of losing her beautiful but secretly ill sister to suicide.

I was 16 years old when my 27-year-old sister shot herself in the head with a .38 caliber handgun in her own home.

Susan was classic California beautiful: tall, blonde and blue-eyed. She was the kind of woman who could get away with anything, and she knew it. All she had to do was flash an airport security guard that straight-toothed, luminous smile of hers, and he’d forego screening her luggage without question. She lived hard and fast: constant jet-setting, and dancing on tables at bars until night brightened into dawn.

But beneath Susan’s sunny, brazen exterior, a debilitating secret festered: she was living with, and dying from, a brain tumor. I was close with my sister. We went to belly dancing classes together and hung out constantly. I babysat her 5-year-old daughter, Tiffany, all the time. But I didn’t have the faintest idea she was sick. No one did.

“It’s Susan,” he said. “She got shot. She’s at the hospital. I have to go.” I insisted on coming with him

At 3 a.m. on the day my sister took her own life, the landline rang, jolting me out of a deep, teenage sleep. I bolted down the hall to my father’s bedroom. I could hear him muttering into the phone. “Oh, no,” he kept saying. “Oh, no. No.” I figured something was wrong with my mother, who was diagnosed schizophrenic and had been ill for years. When my father hung up and told me it was my sister, I was in disbelief. “It’s Susan,” he said. “She got shot. She’s at the hospital. I have to go.” I insisted on coming with him. 

I saved the newspaper article
in my scrapbook about my
sister taking her life

I’ll never forget that surreal half-hour drive to the hospital. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. It was springtime; the air was heavy and thick with moisture. By the time we pulled into the empty hospital parking lot at that early morning hour, it was still as desolate and black as the middle of the night outside. Almost as soon as we arrived, a doctor came to speak with us. 

“She’s gone,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “Do you want to see her?” 

Yes. Yes. I absolutely, positively did. I needed to.

 “Give us a minute,” he said. “We need to get her cleaned up.” 

When I walked into my sister’s hospital room, I saw her body sprawled on a gurney, a tube jammed into the corner of her mouth. Her gorgeous face was watercolor-black-and-blue. I could see holes in her head where the bullet that killed her entered and then exited. 

“Oh my god,” I thought. “My niece. My poor little niece.” All at once, I snapped into a state of lucidity. “We need to pull it together for her,” I thought.

I interlaced my fingers with Susan’s one final time. Her hand was still warm with residual life, which was draining out of her body more and more with every passing minute. My heart sunk — almost seemed to stop — in my chest. I was shaken, utterly disassociated from reality, until my father said, “We need to go pick Tiffany up from the police station.” “Oh my god,” I thought. “My niece. My poor little niece.” All at once, I snapped into a state of lucidity. “We need to pull it together for her,” I thought.

The boys naturally flocked to my sister, who fell head over heels in love with her first boyfriend in junior high.

By the time we reached the station, the sun had finally started to peek over the horizon. A new day had arrived; a new life had arrived — a life in which I’d never speak to my big sister again.

I wanted to go to school the next day. My father couldn’t believe it, but I was desperate for a distraction. All I wanted was to see my friends, my boyfriend — for something, anything in my life to feel normal. I remember asking my niece if she wanted to hop in the shower with me before I left for the day. As we were shampooing our hair, I asked her, “Did you hear anything last night?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Can you tell me what you heard, honey?” I asked.

Tiffany went wide-eyed and white in the face, swallowed hard, and then looked away. “Nothing,” she said. I didn’t press any further.  

Endless Tears

The immediate aftermath of my sister’s suicide was a flood of tears that seemed never-ending. I remember lying on the floor crying for literally days. I thought my eyes might swell shut.  

“My sister is in a box,” I remember thinking. “My sister is in a goddamn box.”

Susan’s funeral was nothing like I expected it to be. At that point in my short life, I’d only ever seen depictions of funerals in movies and on TV. I imagined that my sister would be all put-back-together-again, polished, and placed neatly and presentably in an open casket. I thought I’d be able to see her pretty face one last time. Instead, she’d already been cremated — turned to soot. “My sister is in a box,” I remember thinking. “My sister is in a goddamn box.”

The spot where I scattered Susan’s cremation ashes. I go back with my family
every year on her birthday to visit her. 

I wanted to scatter Susan’s ashes in a place overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where she’d always felt most at home. Right after the funeral — which took place on a grey, overcast day — I found a perfect spot and dug my hand into her remains. They were nothing like I thought they’d be. I was expecting the texture of sand — granular, but fine and smooth. Instead, they were chunky with bits of bone. My sister’s bones. I was horrified. 

I began to release Susan, fistful by fistful, into the ether, but eventually the process became too overwhelming for me to bear any longer. I dumped the rest out all at once, thinking the wind would gracefully carry them away to the sea. Instead, they blew back at me — pieces of my sister, a greyish powder, getting caught in my hair. Just as I’d finished shaking the last of my sister’s remains out of their urn, the sky broke open, and a single bird flew by. I knew it was a message from Susan. She was still with me. 

Among Susan’s belongings, I found this paragraph she wrote about the amazing beauty of the universe. She wrote it while secretly suffering from a brain tumor before she chose to take her own life.

After Susan died, I found her diary. There were entries upon entries chronicling the excruciating pain she was in — how deeply she was suffering. Susan kept it all to herself. She didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want to be perceived as weak. 

She chose to remove herself from this world before cancer robbed her of her vivacity, before anyone could pity her, before we could think of her as anything other than beautiful, bold, wild and invincible.

It’s been so very many years since my sister’s suicide. Every once in a while, I can still catch a phantom whiff of her hospital room on the day she died, but I can’t even recall the sound of her voice anymore. That said, my memory of Susan’s dazzling spirit remains very alive in my mind’s eye. She chose to remove herself from this world before cancer robbed her of her vivacity, before anyone could pity her, before we could think of her as anything other than beautiful, bold, wild and invincible. This is the way I’ll remember my big sister for the rest of my life.