Aid Finny's Family in Their Time of Need

My heart has been shattered by tragedy. I’m here to provide what aid I can, and I ask you to join me.

At the end of May, my dear younger cousin, Finny, ended her life at the point of gun. She left behind a husband and two young children. Finny was the breadwinner for her family, leaving a stay-at-home dad and two kids suddenly without not only their much-loved mom and spouse, but without the means to fund their most basic needs. They need rent, food, utilities, car repair, phone and internet, and my beloved friends, they need counseling. I hope you’ll join me and lend the struggling survivors a tangible hand during a tremendously difficult time of grief and transition.

I first met Finny at a large family re-union when I was in my late thirties and Finny was just a baby. She had just come into foster care for the second time with my dad’s youngest sister (my aunt) and her longtime closest friend. Finny was sporting the physical signs of SA as well as a broken arm. Her infant brother accompanied her, nursing a skull fracture. Finny and her brother would become the permanent foster children of my aunts. My relationship with Finny and her brother over the years was more ‘auntie’ than cousin due to the difference in our ages. I watched the two of them grow and become beautiful people. But they also struggled. Early childhood trauma is no joke. It rewires brains, programs bodies toward stress responses, affects attachment.

Time passed, the kids grew up, I grew older. Last summer, I was doing a reading of my recent chapbook in Minneapolis. Finny had just moved there from St. Louis with her husband and children to take a job as an EMT. She wanted to come to the reading, and I asked if we could meet another time as well. Her response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, the first of several signs showing me she had a strong longing for belonging. We met for breakfast, and I anticipated a nice but sort of surface catch-up between cousins of different generations.

What I got instead was an amazing new friend. We talked for hours about writing (she’d been writing for years) and healing, about trauma and recovery, about telling the truth, about the longing for belonging. Finny was working on becoming a paramedic, something she would accomplish within the year. She came to my book reading the following night. She brought her entire family to visit us in our Portland home last summer/fall. As a cousin/auntie, I was smitten. I looked forward to many more meetings with Finny and her family. I looked forward to the essays, and perhaps even the book, she would write.

Finny worked hard to manage her mental health challenges, to gain schooling, abandon the temptations of substance abuse, be a kind and loving parent to her two children. She faced a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. She pursued her license as an EMT, then a Paramedic. In late February, Finny made a Facebook post in which she railed at the cuts being made to health and health research by the current regime. She ended, “I’m not hopeless, but I’m about there …”

On May 27th, she fatally shot herself.

In a more perfect world, the greater community would embrace this young family devastated by loss and surround them with well-funded social programs providing housing, food, counseling, and a period to rest, cry, heal, and recover from the shock, trauma, and loss they’ve just endured. Instead, Finny’s husband finds himself suddenly the single, unemployed father of two at a time and in a country rapidly reducing services to those who need them most. When he went to investigate social security, he found the office shuttered. The phone lines were overwhelmed. He’s been told it’s time for him to “buck up and be a man.” While the time has undeniably come for pulling himself up, I’d like to think we can at least make sure this young man has bootstraps to pull on.

My friends, I realize that you don’t even know these young people. But we all know where we’re at. We know the playing field isn’t level. We know life is hard. Please join me and pitch in whatever you can to help with food, rent, utilities, car repairs, and my personal pie-in-the-sky for these three tender survivors: grief counseling.

Suicide survival is a bear; I’ve been there. Statistics show that close-up survivors are three to four times more likely to attempt suicide than if they’d not lost a loved one to suicide. This wounded family is at risk. Money has been contributed by others for Finny’s cremation and memorial service and there are funds to pay the deposit on a new apartment, back in St. Louis.

Please join me in making love tangible to this young family by providing assistance for a transition period while young dad finds his feet. We can turn the emotions of love and compassion into housing, food, transportation, and counseling.

Let’s do our best to turn our love into their survival.