Surviving My Son’s Suicide
They say it was never intended for a child to go before a parent, and she thinks that is because when they do, a part of that parent goes with them. There’s a hole.
Children know their parents will go someday, and they anticipate it — not in an excited way, but in a knowing kind of way.
But you never anticipate the death of your child, not unless you are told it’s inevitable and beyond your control.
And she knows there are parents who have lost children to sickness and health reasons, but for those of us who had healthy children, who weren’t expecting or anticipating this, it has taken something from us. No, she is not saying that her grief is any worse than theirs, or yours. It is and was nearly the destroying factor of her life, and this is what she is writing about.
Only those who choose to resist the destruction can survive.
She saw him lying there, white, cold, hands in his lap, feet crossed. Like he posed before he did it. Mouth open, eyes closed, breathless. Although there was blood, the only thing she could see was the lifeless body of her baby.
Her baby was hoisted on a stretcher and wheeled up a rocky hill into an ambulance with no need for the siren. Only lights for this ride to the morgue.
Everyone asked her if she needed an ambulance. She wondered why they kept asking her that. She was still standing, but she was only existing in their reality. For she was living a different one. The reality she was experiencing was different from theirs. Her reality was a vortex sucking her down into a dark abyss.
She looked for a note. She searched. Where is it? There has to be something. Some explanation. Some goodbye. Some why. But there was nothing. Just his body and the silence.
When the coroner said he found one, she didn’t believe him. She thought maybe he was just being kind, trying to give her something to hold onto. Trying to make it easier. As if anything could make this easier. As if a note could explain why her son was cold and white and gone.
Later, she realized he was right. There had been a note. But in that moment, standing there, her reality splitting in two, she couldn’t trust anything. Not even mercy.
She could feel her body sob. She remembered the other mom on the other side of town who lost two sons the night before. Then she, not wanting to feel sorry for herself, felt sorry for the other mom, as if maybe this sympathy could hold her in place, keep her tethered to this world, keep her from the descent into hell.
“Sir, do you think she needs an ambulance?”
Why do they keep saying this? She is not crazy. She only just seen the cold, white body of her son. She only wants the comfort of her own bed, not the bright lights of a hospital room. What did they think taking her to the hospital was going to fix? Was it because she couldn’t stop sobbing?
Her sobs are uncontained. She didn’t care. She didn’t even try to stop. This was too painful to hold in. After all the things she had been through, this was the very straw trying to break the camel’s back. This is the thing that was going to take her under, the thing that tried the hardest to destroy her.
And she knew that.
So she did not try to contain the pain. She felt it. Every painful second of it. Every painful memory of it. Every bit of it.
The coroner gave her the name of a therapist, someone to talk to.
Okay, she says, being nice. Polite. As if politeness mattered when your child is dead. She took the paper with the number on it. She never called. The paper sat somewhere — a drawer, a purse, a void. She was numb. Too numb to reach out, too numb to ask for help, too numb to do anything but survive each day as it came.
The coroner tried to explain it away. He tried to say her child was troubled, but it didn’t matter what he said. It was still her child, and he was gone.
Time moved. Life went on, as it does, indifferent to grief. She started therapy 3 years later. Grandbabies were born. Relationships ended. New ones began. The world kept turning, kept demanding she turn with it. And somehow, she did. She survived each day, then the next, then the next.
It’s been five and a half years since that day, and pain stops by to visit sometimes. And she still entertains him. She pulls his chair up next to grief, and they all have a cup of coffee together. They remember that day. They remember her son’s childhood times, the way he laughed, the things he loved. They reminisce about many things they are thankful for.
But they also talk about the other parents — the ones still in the early days, the ones who can’t breathe, the ones who think they won’t survive this. They talk about how to reach them, what to say, and what not to say. They talk about turning this unbearable thing into something that might help someone else make it through.
She sits with Pain and Grief. She doesn’t turn them away. And she’s glad. Even though she never really invites them, she’s always glad they come, thankful for their visits. For the way they’ve taught her that pain doesn’t have to destroy, that grief can become purpose.
Mostly, she’s thankful that pain showed mercy and didn’t destroy her, but instead became her friend, her teacher. Guiding her toward helping others find their way through the dark.
The Mercy of Pain was originally published in Women Write on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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