Simply Complicated: A Story of Suicide Loss

Written by: Niki Russo on September 7, 2025

“I promise I would never do that to you …”

A phrase that I heard from my dad countless times throughout my life. That was suicide…a word I was well-acquainted with from a young age. My dad’s father took his own life when my dad was 16, and dad’s brother followed suit in 2006. Depression embedded itself in the fabric of my family, a silent killer. And unfortunately, it made sure that my dad could not keep his promise.

But here’s the thing… I know my dad meant it when he made that promise to me, my brother, and sister. And I truly believe he had every intention of sticking around.

But, life is anything but fair and depression is anything but discriminatory.

When I think back on my life, sometimes I genuinely feel like the outside observer, and I find my story hard to believe. Did that actually happen? Is this real? Will I wake up from this?

My story is as real as it gets. Almost 13 years ago, August 18, 2012, my dad took his own life. The ending of his story on Earth is not the totality of his life, and certainly, not the end of the story…though, for awhile, I thought it was. But 13 years of living, growing, facing the fire in the wake of trauma, I’ve learned a lot.

One thing that feels important to say… my dad is NOT how he died.

That’s one facet of losing someone to suicide that I have discovered throughout these years… it becomes easy to hyper-fixate on the way they passed. Granted, suicidal loss is a very nuanced experienced… it’s gruesome, it’s lonely, it’s excruciating. And, it is not the whole story.

Rickie Dean Jenson had 53 years physically on this Earth… and those years included immense amounts of laughter, joy, beautiful memories, music, fun, all the bright colors that this existence provides. He was light. He was darkness. He was grey. He was simple. He was complicated. He was my dad.

I knew him for 21 of those 53 years, and during that time, our relationship took all the forms – everything from Daddy’s girl growing up to resentful teenager when my parents divorced. As previously mentioned, depression runs rampant in my family and my dad was no exception. Often coupled with that is addiction. My dad was an alcoholic.

I saw alcohol as one of the culprits in my family’s demise.

When my parents split up, I was 14. For the next 7 years, I watched my dad age at a rapid pace. His depression and addictions got worse and he literally looked like he had aged 20 years in this small timeframe. It was… depressing. And I was… angry. I didn’t understand him – didn’t understand how he could always choose booze over us. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t be the present, loving father that I deserved. He tried, in his own way. He would call me to catch up. Those calls typically lasted no more than 2 minutes because I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted him to change and couldn’t stomach this version of himself that he morphed into.

Eventually, once I got to college, I started to drop my resentful walls. I started to accept him as he was. I decided I wanted dad in my life, no matter the form. It wasn’t easy, and our relationship was less than optimal, but we had one. And at the time, that was enough for me. It gave us time we wouldn’t have otherwise had, more memories, more laughter (even if his eyes didn’t sparkle like they used to), just more…

Until eventually, his fight here on Earth ended.

I wrote this 7 years ago, recounting the last time I saw him: “I dropped him off at his apartment. I hugged and kissed him for the last time. I told him I would see him soon. I got in my jeep and began to drive off, seeing him standing there in the rear view, watching his form become smaller. And I felt such a twinge of sadness for the man I left behind… He left me 2 weeks to the day, at his own hand.”

I still have that image burned in my brain, alone with the phone-call I received from my mom, telling me of his death. Her words still echo in my ears like a permanent recording… the moment I knew life would never be the same. The moment I knew the finality of what had happened.

The moment I knew I would never see my dad again in this lifetime.

I was 21 when he died. I’m 34 writing this. 13 years. I have felt every bit of those years. I’ve evolved… grief has shaped me into someone I am proud to be. To encapsulate that journey into this post I find to be an impossible task, much like trying to encapsulate who he was…

But I think what is important for you all to know is that there is life after grief. There is purpose in the gut-wrenching, ‘bring you to your knees’, excruciating moments we experience, if you seek it. I believe it’s a choice… a choice to move forward, to face the fire of our grief, to simply… keep going. Simple, not easy. Grief has excavated parts of my soul like a river carving its way through a vast canyon. I feel deeper than I ever have these days. I cry harder, laugh heartier, I see and am present to what’s in front of me with fresher eyes.

Life has a vibrancy it didn’t before in every shade, and that continues to expand the more it comes at me.

I don’t say all this to give that cliche of “it gets better”. The truth is, it will get harder. We are not impervious to pain, loss, grief… all that life has to offer. But we are also not impervious to love and joy – transmuting that grief into light that can touch others and make us all the more connected.