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32 | Desert
Companion | January 2013
issues angry at her only son. “I didn’t go out of my bedroom for a week,” she says. “The first time I went to the grocery store, I can remember standing in front of the Ragú spaghetti sauce and having a panic attack.” Like many adult children are prone to do when they’re young and broke, Paul used to come to her house and leave with her Ragú. “You feel so fragile, initially. I felt like I would break if anyone bumped up against me and that I’d fall apart.” There were red flags — the warning signs — she felt she overlooked. “I wasn’t educated enough to recognize them,” says Flatt. For instance, after some girlfriend problems, Paul had threatened to kill himself. “I confronted him,” she says. “Twenty years later, I can almost hear him, ‘Ah, Mom, I was just kidding. You know I would never do that.’” She believed him — because she wanted to believe him. Eventually, her stalwart military upbringing kicked in, but her edges and boundaries were forever softened. It was not an easy process for someone with an emotional life shaped by military discipline. “The whole trajectory of my life changed,” says Flatt. “I learned in the aftermath of (my) divorce that I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed to start connecting. I needed to start trusting people. I needed to start opening up and letting people in and letting people help.” How do I s u rv i v e? “My M.O. after Paul died was to educate myself about how I was going to survive,” she says. She looked for a support group to help her deal with her son’s suicide — and found none. After three years of what she characterizes as “leaning into the grief,” she formed a survivors’ support group at her church. She attended out-of-state workshops and conferences to learn more and help the people in her group. In addition to the absence of resources near at hand, there were cultural and generational barriers to contend with as well. “My mother thought that I shouldn’t be ‘airing my dirty laundry’ in terms of my kid committing suicide,” she says. “There was such a stigma attached to suicide back then.” At a conference in Colorado Springs in 1997, the co-founder of an organization called Suicide Prevention Action Network USA spoke about the efforts taking place in Washington, D.C. to increase suicide prevention funding. Petitions were passing from hand to hand; people were becoming community organizers. They needed volunteers to go to Washington
to talk to their representatives and advocate for suicide prevention. Flatt had no intention of getting into the prevention arena. The very idea fueled her guilt. “I really didn’t want to hear it. In fact, I got angry because (they) said most suicides are preventable,” she says. She learned that research showed that 70 to 80 percent of people who commit suicide have given some kind of clue and have communicated their intent. The change came when she stopped clinging to the past and embraced the future. Flatt remembers thinking, “I didn’t prevent Paul’s suicide. Now there is nothing I can do for him, but there is something I can do for somebody else out there.” She became a community organizer for Suicide Prevention Action Network USA and made six trips to D.C., using her own money to finance what gradually became a passion — and a crusade. B r i ng i ng i t h o m e An early supporter of Flatt’s efforts was U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Because his father had committed suicide, he understood the issue from a very personal perspective. In May 1997, Reid sponsored a resolution in Congress to recognize suicide as a national problem and encouraged prevention and support. Reid became her champion at the federal level and he acknowledged her contributions to the effort. “Countless Nevadans have benefited from Linda’s important efforts over the years,” Reid writes in an email. “Linda has worked hard to ensure Nevadans receive the care they need, and our state and our communities are stronger because of her leadership, expertise, and dedication to suicide prevention.” But there was a complicating wrinkle to Reid’s support. With federal money earmarked for suicide prevention, Flatt knew that only states that had existing suicide prevention programs would receive the monies. “We (Nevada) had nothing — and I mean nothing — so I came back from D.C. and started working on Carson City,” she says. She found an ally in former state Sen. Ann O’Connell. Together they crafted a resolution that mirrored Reid’s federal proposal. In 1999, the Nevada Legislature passed a resolution “expressing support in the State of Nevada to develop more effective suicide prevention programs.” In the final days of the session, unexpected state funding went to the Crisis Call Center in Reno to manage a statewide suicide prevention hotline. The center still receives state and federal funding for managing the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255,