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The Time Since Yasemin Took Her Life

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There was a time before my daughter Yasemin took her life, and a time after.
 

Today marks the start of Week Eight without her.

Yasemin Deborah “YaYa” Yaman died at her home in Kingston, Jamaica, on Sunday, February 16, 2020.
 

She’d been living there the past few years because she and her son could more easily get by in a foreign country on U.S. military disability funds from a 2005 wartime injury than they could here in the country she thought she’d fought for.
 

Twelve-year-old Hasan found his mother’s body Sunday morning, February 16. He picked up the phone from where his mother crouched on her bedroom floor amidst bits of drying vomit that contained some of the hundreds of ibuprofen pills she mixed with alcohol to escape her pain. 
 

“Nana,” he said through the phone that showed me my daughter’s Caller ID. “It’s me, it’s Hasan. My mom died. She died of stress. She won’t wake up again, Nana.”

Since her discharge from the navy in 2005, Yasemin attempted suicide or made suicidal gestures many times, eight times in the first year after she came home to North Carolina. My younger daughter and I estimate that Yasemin was hospitalized for PTSD-triggered suicidal thoughts or actual attempts somewhere between 25 and 30 times since 2005. 

This time, though, her body just said no, it couldn’t recover. Not this time. Not again. 
 

Despite our having two daughters and two grandchildren together, my ex-husband ended all contact with me when he remarried in 2006. While in Jamaica with our younger daughter Sibel to oversee all the necessary processes, he unilaterally chose to have Yasemin buried in his homeland of Turkey, where all his military family members made their final rest. He did not want me there. 
 

Over his objections, Yasemin’s 17-year-old daughter and I made plans to join Hasan and my younger daughter Sibel in Antalya, Turkey, for the funeral and burial. It was the first time my ex-husband and I were to be in the same place in 15 years. There was a lot of tension in this, perplexing and searing pain on top of soul-crushing grief.
 

At first he would not permit me to be at Yasemin’s gravesite at all. After Sibel pleaded my case, he stipulated through a family member that if I did attend, I should not speak to him or his wife, I was not to look at them, and I shouldn’t cry out loud, because that would cause him and his wife to explain who I was and why I was there.

Two dear friends visited me the day before I left for Turkey. I was distraught and didn’t know how I was going to get through all of melodrama that effectively de-parented me from my firstborn, my spicy child, my troubled but courageous daughter whom I shared life with for nearly 39 years. “Look for Yasemin in the breezes through the trees, in the sky, in birds who bring memories of her,” said one friend. “Don’t look for her in the place your ex tells you not to be; she won’t be there. She has gone beyond that place and will find you where you are.”

When our plane was about to land in Antalya, Yasemin’s presence came in a glorious sunset. 

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The day after the funeral (which was a cruel and traumatic affair that ripped at our hearts and causes regular nightmares), I was walking with Hasan through Old Town bazaar in Antalya to buy him a ring or other piece of jewelry that would remind him of his mom. We looked up and saw a directional sign at the road: “YAYA’ya Yol Ver.” YaYa was Yasemin’s nickname, for YAsemin YAman. The connotative meaning of “YAYA’ya yol ver” is “Pedestrian crossing,” but the literal meaning is “There’s a path to YaYa here.”

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In the faraway city where my daughter Yasemin is buried, Yasemin left this sign for her grieving son and mom that “The path to YaYa is here.” 

We stopped at the little vintage jewelry shop near the sign, and Hasan was immediately drawn to a silver dragon’s talon ring. That road sign led to finding a symbol of strength and protection for the little boy who found his mother’s body.

Yasemin found us, not at her gravesite that I was physically prevented from approaching but on a random road that led us to a promise of the strength, protection, and never-ending care of a mother toward her grieving son and a daughter to her grieving mother.

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or are in pain because of the loss of someone you care about, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255. At the prompt, you can press “1” to talk with someone at The Veterans’ Crisis Line.

You matter. So much.


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