Dawn Marie Article

Your Honour,

             Dawn-Marie was my daughter, I was her mother, but that all ended a few years ago. My daughter committed suicide because she was getting bullied. The last time I saw her, alive, was on November 10, 2000. She had a very short life, had only lived 14 years before she ended it. We lived in mission, B.C. without any problems for years because before any of this, they were great friends; they had spent every Halloween together, had sleepovers. The girl who, mainly, bullied my daughter was one of her best friends. Then the rumours started and so did the problems...

            The problems made a huge difference in our life, my life, everyone who knew her and loved her. None of us expected her to act so harshly about the situation. That she was suffering that much, enough to kill herself. It kills me knowing that I could have done something about it and that if I would have she would still be alive, in our house with our family. I would have done everything I could have done to make the bullying stop, to make her feel safe and not have her worry about getting beat up. Sometimes I even blame myself for her dying sometimes, but I know that is not what she would have wanted me to think. She would want me to think that she did this for her own sake. The pain is undescribable; it’s like losing part of yourself, because she was my daughter, she was part of my life, and I would have rather died than her. There were so many mother-daughter activities we never got to do, so many things she will never experience. A lot of things I wish we could have done, but now there’s no way it’s going to happen. We all know she’s gone forever, permanently, that she’s never coming back and that’s the worst part of it all.

           There are a lot of punishments that are deserved for what happened. The girls bullied my daughter enough for her to kill herself, and that definitely does deserve punishment. It’s not their fault my daughter killed herself, because it may not be entirely. Of course it is some of their fault, so I think that they should get a punishment that teaches them that death is not easy, and that it is changing. I’m not saying that we should kill someone in their life, but teach them, talk to them, about what it’s like having to go through loosing someone that meant so much to many people. It would be life-changing for them to know how much would be changed, how much pain there would be with loosing that one person. I want them to know what I’m going through, what they caused, what they shouldn’t have done. They should know the things they did that seemed so little to them, could mean so much to someone else. So much that they would do something life-threating. So that they will all think before they bully someone again, so they won’t do it again.

          My life will never be the same, ever again. My daughter was part of my universe, and now she’s gone. She chose to solve her problems without thinking about what anyone would be do or feel. I am glad she solved her issues, but I still wish she could have solved it without killing herself. Our lives will never be the same because she’ll never graduate high school, get married, or have children. I don’t blame anyone for her committing suicide, but I blame people for what they did to her. I blame myself for not doing more about the issue, not helping her go through it and then just watching her end her life right in front of me. I’ll always remember her coming home, without any problems, laughing and talking about her days. All 14 years of her life will always be in my mind, in my heart.