Working through the pain

(Photo by Kris Todd) Sarah Breyette, 18, smiles as she holds a picture of her sister, Kristina Breyette, who committed suicide seven years ago this October as a 12-year-old.

Daily Reporter Staff

This is the second of a two-part series about suicide. Today, Sarah Breyette, 18, shares how her sister's unexpected taking of her life has shaped hers over the last seven years. Warning signs, services offered and how to assess the risk were outlined in yesterday's article.

Kristina Breyette answered to "Kris," "Tina" and "Kristina."

Her younger sister, Sarah Breyette, describes her as a "really happy person," a devoted "The X-Files" watcher and a passionate seventh grade football team member.

While the youngest of the Breyette family can recall a time when her family - which included father Roger Breyette, mother Sharon Lyman, sister Kristina Breyette, grandfather Samuel Lyman, grandmother Marjorie Lyman and aunt Debbie Dawson - had fun and would gather together for holiday get-togethers, she most vividly recalls when such happy times began to turn dark and dysfunctional.

First, her "Auntie Daw" succumbed to a brain tumor. Sarah's grandmother suffered a stroke and passed away a few years later. This was followed by her grandfather's moving away and remarrying, and her parents divorcing.

"That's when my family fell apart," Sarah stated matter-of-factly.

In turn, she, her sister and mother moved from Lonsdale to Worthington, Minn. Sarah remembered moving to an apartment and then renting a house in Sibley from her grandfather on her 11th birthday in March 2000.

After their move to northwest Iowa, Sharon Lyman noticed that she seemed to be arguing with her oldest daughter more than usual. The mother responded by seeking counseling and, in turn, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When Lyman was informed that her insurance plan would not cover group counseling sessions for her family, she pursued individual sessions for herself and each of her daughters.

That fateful day

It was during these sessions that Kristina was diagnosed with depression, a diagnosis her mother still disagrees with. The 12-year-old was prescribed and placed on the antidepressant Paxil approximately one month before her 13th birthday, which was scheduled to occur on Nov. 5, 2000.

A $65 million class action settlement against GlaxoSmithKline was approved in late 2006 on behalf of consumers, insurers and some "third party payors" who paid for the prescription drug. Although the Breyette family's statute of limitations had expired by this time, making them not eligible to receive compensation from the settlement, family members still have strong feelings about their daughter being prescribed this medication.

"We found out later that you had to be 18 to be on it (Paxil), and she was 12. There was that six-year gap where mentally she hadn't matured yet," Sarah explained. "...Money will never bring my sister back, but they (GlaxoSmithKline) took away the most important thing to my family, which was family. We didn't have cable TV. We didn't have a lot of stuff. We just had each other. And by taking that away, I find the equivalent being taking money away from them, since the most important thing to them was money."

But the anger in Sarah's eyes quickly switched to sadness as she told how the Breyette sisters' maternal grandparents had come over to visit their family on Oct. 7, 2000 in their Sibley apartment. The youngest sibling, then 11, recalled her grandmother getting up to leave but being rerouted as she realized they were experiencing the first snow of the season, an event the sisters always made into "a big deal."

She entered Kristina's room to tell her the news.

"I couldn't see her anywhere. There were these huge cabinets up above, so I opened the cabinets thinking she'd be up there. I closed it, looked down and saw her arm in the closet."

Sarah began crying as she recalled approaching the closet and finding her sister's toes barely touching the floor.

"I let out a really loud scream and fell backwards," she said. "My mom came running in. It's kind of blurred together, but I remember her sitting there and saying, 'My baby. My baby.' And she said, 'Help me get her down. Help me get her down.' So I had to lift her up off this post."

As Sharon Lyman attempted to resuscitate her eldest daughter with CPR, the girls' grandfather, Samuel Lyman, ran to the neighbors' house to call 911. Sarah remembers the distraught state her grandfather was in as he repeated, "Debbie's done something," in reference to his daughter who had died previously.

Although Sarah admitted she has tried to repress the traumatic memory of her sister's death and that the timeline of events following it has become somewhat blurred for her, she does remember an ambulance arriving at their home and following it to the hospital.

"We thought they had said that there was a heartbeat, so we were all thinking, 'There's a chance,'" she said. "...We were at the hospital for about an hour when the doctor came in and said that she didn't make it. It's kind of all blurred together after that, but the funeral was three or four days after that."

Blocking it out

The day of Kristina's funeral also marked her football team's last game of the season.

"They dedicated the game to her, which was really cool because they won the game," Sarah recalled of their 5-0 season.

Teammates signed the game ball and an extra football and presented them to Kristina and Sarah's parents, Sharon Lyman and Roger Breyette. A picture taken that same day following the victorious football game shows Sarah with her back turned to the camera, yet smiling.

"It was because I'd already started blocking it out," she explained. "After Tina had passed away and I found that out, I was in total shock about what was going on. It's not really a blur, but it feels as though I've seen it in a movie. It's a movie that I play over and over again."

The then-sixth grade student also responded to her sister's suicide by acting as if nothing had happened.

"Eventually, it ate me alive and I started using drugs and hanging out with the wrong people," she confided. "That's how I ended up in foster care."

The downward spiral

Although Sarah's seventh and eighth grade years tend to blur together for her yet, the young woman can pinpoint how her last junior high school year became an "all-for-fun" time where she hung out with "people who were good, but were smoking pot and drinking."

"When I say they were doing drugs and all that stuff, it makes them seem like really bad people," she said, "but these were some of the people who helped me through some really hard times."

Sarah first met a "bad boy who had been sent away to Eldora" the winter of her eighth grade year. They began an on again, off again relationship that quickly turned sour.

While she eventually tried out and was accepted as a high school cheerleader, Sarah became more involved in drinking and smoking marijuana the summer leading up to her freshman year.

"Even when I wasn't on a substance, I wanted to be," she recollected.

By her ninth grade year, the then-14-year-old began hanging out with her boyfriend's friends, who ranged in age from 18 to 26. Although their relationship had started to deteriorate, Sarah found herself wanting to hold onto it.

"I felt like this was the only person that I had," she said, "because my mom and I were fighting all the time about everything. ... I consider him like an addiction like the drugs were, because I always found myself going back to him."

Sarah also remembers starting methamphetamine the January of her freshman year, dropping down to 120 pounds and skipping school a lot. With her drug and alcohol problem growing, and encountering a specifically alarming incident with her boyfriend, the teenager's mother, who knew she was rapidly losing her other daughter, called the Department of Human Services. Sarah was told she could either choose to go to the Cherokee Boys and Girls Home for one month or go to court.

After spending May 21 through June 23, 2004 in Cherokee, she was encouraged to enter the state's foster care system, which brought her to the Spencer home of Randy and Judy Van Dyke.

The upward spin

"I had stopped doing meth by that point, but I still had cravings for it after that. But smoking pot and drinking, I was still doing that," a now-clean-and-sober Sarah reminisced. "...I've had all these little incidents where I've messed up along the way since I've lived here, but Randy and Judy are incredible. I don't know how they do it, but it seems like they make the right choice every time about what to do when something like that happens."

Sarah, who was also diagnosed with depression with psychotic features in 2004, has tried visiting with a couple of counselors over the past three years. She also underwent drug counseling at the Northwest Iowa Alcoholism and Drug Treatment Unit and attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings for a while. All three helped to equip her with "tools" that assist her in dealing with various situations today, especially those involving feelings.

"I'm not embarrassed about it. Everything has led me to where I am now - and I like where I'm at now," she said.

From her sophomore year on at Spencer High School, Sarah worked diligently to get her high school credits back to where they needed to be in order for her to become one of SHS's 2007 graduates.

Today the 18-year-old, who is eagerly looking forward to attending Buena Vista University this fall and pursuing prelaw and/or journalism, also has developed a strong support system and spiritual side. Sarah proudly notes that she took personal confirmation classes through Rev. Wendy Van Tassell and was baptized at First Congregational Church this past year.

"After everything that has happened to me and the way it's turned around, it's like coming from the deepest, darkest place that you can imagine and then turning it all around. I know that there has to be something out there," she said of her faith in a higher being. "Throughout the past three years that I've lived here, it was all a struggle to let go of the past in order to start with a new, fresh start."

Sarah continued, "I see where all of it stems back to when my sister passed away. All the breakdowns that I had at my mom's house with drugs and alcohol, I can see my trying to accept it, but not being able to. And since I've been here, I've learned … that I can have a bad day and cry about the fact that my sister's not here.

"I think a lot of the reason why everything has worked out so great is because she is watching over me. I also think that my grandma, my aunt and Kristina are all watching over me and have been saying, 'This is not the right direction. Go this way.' They're always there for me."