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When I was 5, I thought my dad lived in the sewer. A fan of the cartoon "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," I imagined him living in an underground world, estranged from my family but safe. Storm drains were mystic portals, and I would stop to peek in between the grates, hoping for a glimpse into his life.

But he had been dead for years.

"Sewer" was the closest match my young mind could find for "suicide," a word I had heard frequently in reference to my dad's absence. He killed himself when I was 3.

More than 30,000 people commit suicide in the United States each year, leaving behind at least 10,000 to 20,000 children and adolescents who are daughters, sons or siblings, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

For children, death is an abstract concept that can take years to understand. Suicide is especially difficult. Parents struggle with their own grief, which is often complicated by feelings of anger, shame, guilt, despair and betrayal. Why a loved one would take his life is difficult for adults to process, let alone explain to a child.

My mom didn't feel I was ready to handle my dad's suicide. She kept me home from the funeral, both for my sake and for her own. She told me he had gone to heaven to live with Jesus. But that did not appease my demands that my dad return immediately. I told her "I want to see Jesus right now and tell him to give me back my dad!"

I don't remember that exchange, but my mom does. She also remembers when two neighborhood boys told me on the street that my dad shot himself. I came inside and asked her if it was true, but it still didn't mean anything to me. She was upset because she didn't get to tell me herself.

The facts were pretty clear.

My father, Richard Keith Winters Jr., was the first of seven children. He suffered from severe depression for years, but hid it with varying degrees of success from most family and friends. One day he would seem invincible, challenging his friends to drive up boulder-strewn hillsides. At other times, he thought he was the lowest creature, unloved by God.

After he married my mom, he couldn't hide. During his final bout of depression, he quit his high-pressured job to deal with the stress and misery. But his frustration with his career only added to his depression.

On June 11, 1984, he left for a drive, promising to be back by 6 p.m. He drove to Bear Lake, where my grandmother - his mother - was raised and our family has a cabin. It was one of his favorite places. He took a gun from the closet and drove up a small canyon behind the house.

My mom and grandparents dispatched a local sheriff to go after him. Chasing him around the lake, the sheriff cut my dad off at a sharp turn to stop him. My dad didn't want to be saved. He shot himself on a little road my grandma called "blue bird lane" as a girl. He was only 29.

Now, 22 years later, he's an apparition who haunts my dreams, an absence so strong it's palpable. My family has always said they are willing to talk about my dad. But as a child I watched their eyes tear up at the mention of his name. I didn't want to make them sad by asking.

But I did want to know: Who was he? There weren't many photos of him in our house, nor mementos. Little by little, though, I assembled a portrait of him that came to feel familiar.

We have the same vein running down our forehead, just right of center. The thin blue line pops out when I laugh or yell.

Columbines were his favorite flowers.

As a teen, he was known for his hijinks, especially one time when he managed to high-center the family's 1963 Ford Falcon near the mouth of Emigration Canyon. He explained to his perplexed father that he had been "booney bashing."

His voice sounded like James Taylor's. And sometimes when I hear "Handy Man" or "How Sweet it is," I imagine it's my dad singing to me.

He loved to camp, hike and ski. He spent one summer as a river guide on the Colorado and later took my mom down Cataract Canyon, steering into the biggest rapids, despite my mom's attempts to paddle the opposite way.

One snowy day, he ran outside and wrote my name and my mother's in giant letters in the snow, stomping his moon boots around the yard.

He was good at carpentry and fixing things around the house. He liked to make my mom wooden boxes engraved with her name.

I can remember him carrying me on his shoulders.

When I was 12, my mom asked my dad's siblings and parents to write their favorite memories of him for me. She put the letters, my dad's resume (which noted he was 6 feet 2 inches tall and 165 pounds), and copies of her journal entries into a manila envelope for me. When I missed my dad, I would pull out the envelope and read through the papers.

Still, I wanted to have something of his, but my mom had kept nothing. His death was so painful, she quickly got rid of everything he owned in the house. But recently I discovered my grandma saved one box of all the remnants of his life. She gave me the contents.

I picked up his brown, leather wallet, and saw inside pictures of me. Some were unfamiliar, including one of me in footed Strawberry Shortcake pajamas and a matching hat sitting on a Big Wheel. There was also a cheap digital watch with a brittle metallic band. I put it on to see how big his wrist was. His day planner from 1984. A note card with all my mom's sizes on it for use in purchasing gifts.

I felt a connection to a life I was barely a part of.

Positive memories of him now replace the negative images I dwelt on in my adolescence.

Then I focused on his death and it made me anxious. If my father was capable of this, did this propensity also exist in me? Depression stalked me and I turned to greet it. It made me feel like I understood him. In English class I was drawn to poets such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I thought maybe I was the only student in class who could truly relate to them. Suicide was part of my identity.

That identity might also have been handed down to him. Before my dad was born, his grandfather committed suicide. In his teens, my dad told a brother that he, too, would some day take his life.

"I've always known that it was easier for him because my father did it. It opened the door," my grandmother said recently. "He could see that I wasn't angry [at my dad], because I wasn't angry. But he couldn't see the sadness. He couldn't see the heartbreak."

Suicides recur in families, studies say, not only because one suicide introduces the act into the realm of possibilities, but also because of genetic tendencies toward depression and impulsivity. Those with relatives who commit suicide may be more than twice as likely than others to do the same.

During my junior year in college, my best friend's dad took his life. I'd known her family since I was 8 and often envied the relationship she had with her dad. Later that summer my half-sister, then only 15, attempted suicide twice. Suicide no longer seemed like an isolated occurrence, a rare event that had happened to me alone. It was an epidemic. Most people I talk to know someone who has done it.

Utah, after all, has the 12th highest rate per capita in the nation. More than 300 people commit suicide in this state every year, and 80 percent are men.

That means a lot of the survivors are women, and many are mothers. Coping with their own grief can limit their abilities to help surviving children through the process.

With any death, children should be told what happened, advises grief counselor Lindy Burton. Attending a funeral can also help the child understand the deceased person is never coming back.

At The Sharing Place in Salt Lake City, parents and children age 3 1/2 to 17 meet twice a month for grief support groups, each in separate rooms so they can share without worrying about hurt feelings. The nonprofit program is at capacity with 180 children in 14 groups, including one devoted to kids bereaved by suicide.

Executive director Stephanie Steele says it's OK to tell a 3-year-old her father committed suicide.

"Suicide is kind of an obscure word. We'll say they shot themselves in the head. They hanged themselves. The kids know that," she said. "Before kids can get into a group, they have to know the truth."

At The Sharing Place, children talk about their grief, but more often they play it out. Children tend to be more expressive with behaviors than words, Steele said. They do art projects, dress up in costumes and put on puppet shows, which might be about an experience at a funeral.

In the volcano room, the walls and floor are padded with gray pillows. Kids can vent pent-up emotions, yelling, kicking, jumping, crying and wrestling.

The one thing every child wants to know is: why did they leave me?

Although I can't remember the day it happened, I can remember as a child wondering if my father's death was my fault. Didn't he love me? Was there something defective about me? I felt utterly abandoned. He'd chosen death rather than life with me.

"It wasn't whether he loved us or not. It was that he had a blind spot that didn't allow him to love himself," my mom explained recently. "That's the tragedy of suicide. He couldn't see that he was of value."

When I asked my grandfather about my dad's death, he shared advice a friend gave him at the time: "There are multiple victims of a suicide - one who [is dead], whom you can't do anything about. Your job is to take everyone else off the victim list and put them on the survivor list."

I asked my mom if she feels like a victim or a survivor. When my dad died, she felt like she had been cut in half. She was angry at him for stealing her dreams, including her plans to have more children. But two years later, she married again, gained four stepsons and had another daughter.

"It takes a while to become more of a survivor. To me, that means you are to a point where you accept that [suicide] is an irrational decision that totally changes your life," she said. "I've found through the years there are things that just make you cry. But you're a survivor because you know why you're crying."

A few years ago, my mom was driving to the Tetons with friends and they went through Montpelier, Idaho, the town north of Bear Lake where my dad was taken by an ambulance, the town on his death certificate. She had never been there, and she started to cry. But it was OK.

"You're not crying like a victim, you're crying because of something special that you lost that you still value," she said.

I only learned about last month's Suicide Prevention and Awareness Walk on the day it was happening. I went alone.

The Sugar House Park pavilion was overrun with people wearing white T-shirts. Printed on the back was "walking in memory of" with a space for someone's name. I registered for the walk and wrote "Rich" on the back of my shirt.

I sat underneath the trees and watched people mill around. I was struck by the number of children. One little girl with a blonde ponytail wandered by me, drowning in an adult-sized T-shirt with the word "DADDY" drawn on the back. My heart fell.

I felt part of a community I never knew existed. Some shared stories of a lost loved one or their own suicide attempts. The message was clear: No one should ever have to feel so bad that death is the only out.

Walking around the park, I remembered spending time there with my dad. The old playground had a slide that looked like an elephant and another one with a large circular platform on top. Both were terrifying. I remember holding onto the handles and refusing to let go. But my dad reached up and held onto me and I slid down.

The day was beautiful, sunny and warm. The Wasatch Mountains loomed. I put one foot after the other, breathing in and out. Sometimes I feel like a victim, but, that day, I knew was a survivor.

I am never going to stop missing my dad. I think of him when I'm driving or when I'm falling asleep. I long for him especially during the major events in my life. In September, I am getting married. I wish he would be there to walk me down the aisle, to shake the hands of our guests. I wish he could know my fiance and that my fiance could know him.

But I am going to weave Columbine into my bouquet. I am wearing the engagement ring he gave my mom nearly 30 years ago. She gave it to me, and it slipped perfectly onto my finger.

No longer a bewildered child, I'm learning to grieve as an adult. I know what death means. I know what suicide means. I know I could never do what he did.

I forgive him.

He's still a part of my life. I'm pleased when someone says they can see his face in mine. I know half of my DNA, my traits are his. He lives in me.

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