listen to them and then forecast in ourselves things that might be ahead. It gave me understanding of my own thoughts and feelings and tools to measure by. “It’s only through talking about it that we start to understand,” he said. “In this society there is so much, ‘keep your chin up,’ ‘pull yourself up by your boot straps,’ but that’s not how life is. We all hurt terribly.” Pat said the pain of grief from suicide is a different kind of grief than when someone you love dies in other ways. “The broken heart hurts so much in this grief and you wonder if you’re going to come out the other side,” Pat said. “Not that I thought I wouldn’t be alive but, more that, I wouldn’t be me–that I might be something I don’t want to be.” As with all types of grief, Jan said, you realize you can’t put time limits on your feelings. “You have to keep working at it. You have to remember to be compassionate to yourself spiritually, physically, emotionally and it won’t happen overnight. It could take years,” Jan said. “When I look back at our 90-day plan, I realize how little we understood.” Sam is the Garritys’ only child. He was adopted from Seoul, Korea in 1992 when he was 5 months old. As Sam was growing up, the family ran a business near Mission Hill and Sam was a huge part of it. “He loved being part of the orchard,” Jan said. “He was very smart, he went to Sacred Heart School and graduated from SDSU We Can ll the ze to see a li Stop in ys to persona g wa ool gear! excitin our sch y cum laude. He had a free ride to go to law school at USD.” Sam played in band, was an Eagle Scout and was very social, Pat said. “He had an internship at Daktronics, and they suggested he should go to law school and then come back and work for them,” he said. Jan said Sam’s first year of law school went great. He, along with a partner, won (law school) competitions and things seemed to be going well. “School came very easy to him, everything just seemed to stick to his head,” Pat said. “Then things just seemed to unravel last summer. He was questioning school but he didn’t express it much. The next thing we know he’s gone.” Jan said after the initial shock and devastation, the first year is hard. “There is the initial grief which is mind numbing, then there is the year of firsts,” Jan said. “The first holidays without him, the first birthdays, then you grieve for the things you’ll miss. Sam was a second-year law student and we were looking forward to his graduation and watching his career take off. We weren’t planning on being bereaved parents. It’s like the last 23 years were just gone.” Guilt is a common factor of grief after a suicide, and Pat said he has struggled with his feeling responsible for not seeing the vSUICIDE continued on page 10 Everything! TOTALLY TWISTED T’S Yankton Mall 260-8362 Bistro & Emporium 215 W. 3rd | Downtown Yankton | 605.660.2865 •Bistro featuring culinary creations made with fresh, local ingredients • Emporium showcasing all mediums of regional art HERVOICEvSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016v9