ART OF SURVIVAL
Suicide victims don’t just hurt themselves
By Deon J Hampton
World Staff Writer
Suicide doesn’t just affect the person who takes his or her own life.
It devastates family members and friends left to carry the emotional and psychological scars.
Parents may relive their child’s baby steps, while a brother may reminiscence about the final days of a once promising life.
Lauren Lunsford, of Tulsa, has spent her entire adulthood coming to grips with losing a loved one to suicide. In fact, the tragic incident largely shaped her.
 |
The 33-year-old environmentalist and advocate of suicide prevention has been involved in coordinating the second annual “Out of Darkness Walk,” scheduled for Oct. 10. The event aims to deter people from killing themselves.
In 2008, 578 people killed themselves across Oklahoma. The deaths involved teenagers to those over 80 years old. During a five-year period, suicide deaths in Oklahoma have risen 12 percent.
“This walk will bring people together who have lost (loved ones) through suicide,” Luns-
ford said.
More than 100 people attended the inaugural 3k walk and $9,000 was raised last year. This year, Lunsford wants double the participation and fundraising.
Half of the money — minus the production costs for T-shirts, etc. — will go toward the Out of Darkness Walk. The rest of the money will go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which helps oversee the organization.
The suicide awareness walks have increased dramatically from just 20 walks in 2003 to almost 200 walks this fall, said Robert Gebbia, executive director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
“When we began, we weren’t sure if people would come out for it,” Gebbia said. “But this year, we will have about 50,000 people walking for suicide prevention and awareness.”
The walk means a lot for Lunsford, who says she spent years wandering in the dark before returning to the light.
In 1993, her father, Larry, who was known for igniting homemade bombs, shot and killed her 2-year-old stepsister before fatally shooting himself.
“It left a level of darkness with me. Like when someone gets raped,” Lunsford said. “It changed my demeanor. I had anger, I didn’t care, and I didn’t take anything from anyone.”
The night before the shooting, a 17-year-old Lunsford and her friends frequented a popular Tulsa nightclub where light-hearted fun reigned supreme. That’s all Lunsford remembers from the outing on Oct. 24, 1993, she said from her Brookside studio.
“I don’t think he was thinking about it,” she said of her father’s act of murder and suicide. “It was probably done in the moment.”
She said, “Had I been there, he would have thought about everything.”
But she wasn’t.
Feeling abandoned, Lunsford managed the deaths of her father and younger sister as best she could over the next 18 months.
She enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, maintained a part-time job as a pharmacy technician and put the tragedy in the far reaches of her mind.
At least, she did until the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which rekindled those deleterious memories she was unaware still existed.
Walk to save lives
Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention, Oct. 10.
3k walk starts at 10 a.m. Registration starts at 8:30 a.m. at Veterans Park near 21st Street and Boulder Avenue.
Sponsors include Panera Bread, Reasor’s Foods, Starbucks.
For information, contact Lauren Lunsford at 346-2131. |
|
 |
More than 160 people were killed and nearly 700 injured in the attacks after Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols conspired to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Innocent victims — including children — died, and Lunsford became painfully aware of the fragile nature of existence.
“I had a mental breakdown,” she said.
“At that moment, life became worthless.”
What came next was a years-long dark period where her priorities list weren’t in order.
This type of plunge frequently happens with many people who are coping with losing a loved one to suicide.
Lunsford’s university grades dropped, and she quit working. Sometime later, she eagerly became an exotic dancer and began experimenting with drugs.
}
Dancing “was a relief and a release,” said Lunsford, who said she doesn’t regret her past.
Eventually, Lunsford, a short, brown-haired woman with blonde highlights, moved in the direction she felt most comfortable.
She made friends with a drug dealer who gave her free meth in exchange for playing chess.
Lunsford later befriended another drug dealer who became her boyfriend, giving her unlimited access to drugs. She dumped him for a more attractive woman who was also a meth addict, she said.
It was shortly before this when she contemplated suicide for the first time.
“They were only thoughts in my head,” Lunsford said, adding she didn’t want to hurt her younger brother.
At his request, she moved to Austin, Texas, where he lived. In 1997, she headed to San Francisco, and then back to Tulsa.
From 2001 to 2004, Lunsford lived in Harlem, N.Y., and realized her ambition for artistry, which has helped her cope with the death of her relatives.
Even as she found a more constructive outlet for her grief and anger, more pain was coming.
On a December day in 2004, Lunsford received news that her cousin, Julie, had died — possibly by having committed suicide.
“I didn’t go to the funeral,” she said.
While Lunsford believes Julie committed suicide, the state Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it an accidental death from a combination of drugs including cocaine.
But Lunsford said that Julie’s husband gave her a suicide note he said Julie wrote the day of her death.
Lunsford has advice for people contemplating suicide.
“Hold on. Fight the thoughts. There’s always another way,” she said.
If that doesn’t work, she says, then turn to art.
“That was my healing and therapy. That’s how I figured it out. I put art in my hands.”
And while she wasn’t able to halt her father from the murder and suicide, if given the chance to see her dad: “I’d tell him that I love him and miss him,” she said. “And I would hope he wasn’t tormented anymore.”
She said, “He helped me create who I am, and who I am hasn’t even been tapped into.”
|
