About the Fund

For one family, 'October will never be the same'

Sunday, October 16, 2005, BY MICHAEL P. McKINNEY, Journal Staff Writer

BARRINGTON -- Kathy Luther says some in her family would rather she not talk about the suicide and just sell bouquets.

But she can't stop, not after the year she's had since she first sold pumpkins in memory of her brother Peter DeSisto, who took his life in the family's backyard 20 years ago. A dollar from each pumpkin sold this month at her Wild Flower Florist store goes to suicide prevention efforts by the Samaritans of Rhode Island.

Kathy Luther is selling Peter's Pumpkins to honor her brother who committed suicide 20 years ago, and to help others deal with their experience.

"Everybody who bought a pumpkin had a story. It was like somebody just opened a gate."

KATHY LUTHER, owner of Wild Flower Florist

Last October, as Luther sold an unexpected 1,200 Peter's Pumpkins, her store became a safe house for people to talk about losing someone to suicide or their own attempts to end their lives.

Luther has since joined the Samaritans' board of directors. She speaks to crowds. She has penned an opinion piece.

And along with pumpkins this year, Luther and her daughter, who grappled with depression in high school, are selling pins to enlighten people about mental illness. The pin proceeds go to the Samaritans as well.

Luther dreams of posting the pin's message, "Don't Stop Believing," named after her brother's favorite Journey song, on a billboard on the Mount Hope Bridge, the site of more than one suicide attempt over the years.

"I'm just a florist," Luther begins, but quickly moves on to her message like a seasoned advocate.

"For years," Luther says, "I feel like I've been screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one heard, and no one answers. So through Samaritans, I've had a voice."

Meanwhile, the calls keep coming in to the Samaritans, says interim director Denise Panichas.

Besides the calls to the organization's listening line, she says, there were 81 suicide-related emergency calls to 911 this September, up from 60 in the same month last year. The call sheet reads this way:

Sept. 2: One call from Pawtucket, one call from Cumberland.

Sept. 3: One from Exeter, one from Providence.

There are more on Sept. 4, Sept. 5, Sept. 6, and on and on, with at least one for every day of the month.

Luther's message: end the stigma, the myths, the misplaced shame, the silence.

PEBBLES CRUNCH underfoot as Luther swings open the wooden gate behind her Waseca Avenue flower store.

Through the gate is the house where her big family grew up. Through the gate is the backyard where they found her brother.

Upstairs her father, Joseph DeSisto, sits in a chair watching TV.

Nearby is the kitchen wall where time stops. On it are photos of the nine DeSisto children from the 1970s and 1980s, hairstyles longer or bushier, faces aglow. Peter is there.

Luther's mother, Mary DeSisto, sits in the living room and remembers what she first thought when her daughter planned last year's pumpkin sale: we're going to go through the events surrounding the suicide, and relive it.

"First is the initial shock of what it's going to be about. But you take a deep breath," Mary DeSisto says, "and you say, 'If you're able to help someone, you should.' "

Joseph DeSisto slips into the room quietly. At times, he says, it's been a little scary. His daughter sometimes "jumps in" to things such as Peter's Pumpkins and, now, the Samaritans.

"Oh, but to see people who come in that store," adds Mary DeSisto. "They go there to listen."

Yes, Joseph DeSisto says, "They know they have an ear they can turn to."

He's not always certain all this discussion is good. He says some families are ready to talk it out and some may never be.

"They're better prepared to handle it than I think we were," Joseph DeSisto says of his children, who now have their own daughters and sons. "In my generation, you know what happened, but you just don't talk about it."

But it was never quite that simple.

"It's taken me 20 years," Luther says.

Her openness about Peter's suicide, at age 17, followed her efforts to help her daughter through her depression. Her daughter would call from a Barrington High School pay phone, sometimes once an hour. "She said, 'Mom, I don't feel safe with myself.' "

Luther remembers her father's words: "Lock the store up -- and go and get your daughter."

The family got an education about mental illness. For example, "bipolar is not different than diabetes," Luther says. "You need to take insulin for diabetes. For bipolar disorder, you need to take medicine."

They got through it, drew closer as a family, and her daughter wanted to do something to enlighten people about suicide, depression and other mental illness.

Peter's Pumpkin Sale was born.

But Luther never expected those who came through her store last year. A woman who tried to take her life, but survived. Someone whose mother jumped in front of a train. Others who went to school with her brother and wanted to reconnect with his memory. The sheer number of people, and all those pumpkins out the door.

Letters began to pour in. One woman who saw The Journal article about last year's pumpkin sale wrote about her boyfriend losing a friend who hanged himself. The letter reads, in part:

I have seen how it had a huge effect on his life. It caused him a lot of pain to go through, so I understand how it feels to want to help out. I want to say I am sorry for your family's loss, and I hope God blesses you all.

The letter is wrapped around a bill the woman sent.

"Everybody who bought a pumpkin had a story," Luther says. "It was like somebody just opened a gate."

"NOT EVERYBODY agrees," Luther says of some of her siblings. "Not everybody sees this Peter Pumpkin in the light that I see it.

"And that's OK."

On both sides of the gate between the flower store and the house, autumn shares the air. But the smell of falling leaves, the start of school and the cold wind all conspire to remind the family that this is when Peter left them.

"October," Joseph DeSisto says, "will never be the same. Let's face it."

Some may not want reminding, no matter the noble intentions.

Mary DeSisto sees it this way: "I think each one handled it in their own way. . . . They each had their own relationship with their brother."

Joseph DeSisto taught at Barrington High School at the time. After Peter's death, he quickly went back to teaching. His work could get him through it, he thought. There were all those other young faces around him.

And the students did help, he says.

His wife is strong in her Catholic faith. If someone asks her, do you need counseling? she replies that she has God, so why would she need counseling?

"We've spent the last 20 years wondering where we went wrong," Joseph DeSisto says.

But the toughest thing may be that answers elude them -- or that there is no real answer.

They learned from a classmate who had contemplating killing himself in high school that Peter came up to him and said everything would be all right. It may have saved the boy's life.

A week later, Peter took his own life.

"I did not know that Peter was depressed," Mary DeSisto says. Had someone asked if he was depressed, "No, that would have been my answer."

After that, when their other children would go anywhere or just leave the room, Joseph DeSisto says, "you tended to ask a lot more questions."

SIX MONTHS after the pumpkin sale, Luther walked into a classroom in the First Unitarian Church of Providence.

She sat on the desk in front, facing 40 to 50 members of Safe Place, a Samaritans program for adults who have lost someone to suicide.

"It was the first time I ever spoke to anyone about suicide and depression," she recalls. This from someone who "failed public speaking. I don't do this in front of a crowd."

She was scheduled to speak last night at a Samaritans fundraiser at the Hope Club, Providence, at which 150 people were expected.

On Saturday, Luther will host a pumpkin-painting festival for children and adults in Barrington.

So much for not talking about it.