When Hans and Ruthie Lehmann lost their beautiful 15-year-old daughter to suicide on April 7, 2018, they had two very different roads they could have traveled in their grief journey.
Let the pain swallow them. Or do something in Kayla’s memory that could help other families dealing with mental illness.
About six months after their oldest child’s overdose death, the St. Charles couple and their surviving daughter Hannah launched Kayla’s Hope, a foundation that, administered through the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley, has raised over $300,000 to do just that.
According to the couple, nearly half this funding goes to assist those who can’t afford counseling, with more than a third directed toward mental health awareness and school support and the remainder earmarked for college scholarships for those studying music, literature or psychology.
Much of the money comes from its annual Hope Blooms Gala, which will take place April 12 at Eagle Brook Country Club in Geneva. As always, it will feature an auction, dinner and dance. And this year’s guest speaker is Emma Fagon from NAMI Illinois, whose powerful presentation recounts her own near fatal experiences with depression.
Ruthie Lehmann admits she’s a little more nervous about this upcoming gala. In its first couple of years, “it was mostly friends of ours who attended,” she said. But as the foundation has grown, so also has this fundraiser. And that means more people are attending she does not know.
That also means they did not know her daughter.
That’s why the couple – in partnership with the foundation’s 13-member team – decided to make this year’s theme “Kayla’s Story,” which will not only highlight the talented, compassionate young woman she was becoming, it will delve into the teen’s struggles that started in middle school when her world suddenly grew dark and that, despite Herculean efforts by her parents, became an insurmountable battle.
There’s no question we have come a long way in the three decades since I’ve been covering suicide prevention in the Fox Valley. Depression and other mental health struggles don’t seem as stigmatized as was once the case. And young people are learning that “it’s OK to not be OK,” the mantra this foundation and the Lehmanns want to promote.
Unfortunately, we have a long way to go.
The foundation’s mission, said Hans Lehmann, is to put an end to teen suicides. A lofty goal, of course, particularly when it’s the second leading cause of death among those aged 10-14. But if the work of this nonprofit can save even one life, if it can keep one family from going through the grief they experienced, then “it is worth it,” he insists.
And so, nearly seven years after her death, Kayla’s parents hope that by highlighting their daughter’s story, others can learn from it.
Kayla would have been a senior in college now, they tell me, perhaps studying music, as she was an accomplished violinist who played in multiple ensembles, including the Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra. She was also an athlete, a voracious reader and excellent writer, who wanted to be an editor one day.
Unfortunately, when depression takes over, none of that can matter. In Kayla’s case, she began cutting. She walled herself up, refusing to “tell us what she was thinking,” said her dad, even shutting out the little sister she adored.
Kayla not only fooled her counselor, she fooled her parents, pretending thing were better, pretending to take her medication in front of them but pushing it off to the side of her mouth. “She hid so much stuff,” said Ruthie, noting that it was only after her death “we found all of her meds inside her book bag.”
And, as badly as her mother wanted to read her daughter’s writing that might have put a voice to the pain she was feeling, “she purged her room before she died.”
Kayla overdosed two days after her 15th birthday, a week after the family had just returned from a memorable vacation in Hawaii. Not surprisingly, the tragedy left some wondering how a child who had so much love in her heart and in her life would make such a fatal choice.
“Our answer,” said Ruthie, “she was sick … something was not going right in her brain.”
The Lehmanns’ journey is, course, heartbreaking, one no parent (or grandparent) wants to go through. Yet we know more kids are struggling today than ever. Younger kids, too. Just ask teachers or counselors who are all too familiar with the statistics that indicate one in six youth ages 6-17 in this country experience a mental health illness each year.
One thing the Lehmanns quickly found after starting this foundation: there are very few people this issue does not touch. All the more reason Hans and Ruthie want to let others know about the April fundraiser, about the foundation and about their daughter.
“She was,” said Kayla’s dad, “an amazing kid.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
