Losing a Child to Suicide: A Sad Welcome if You've Found Me Here

If You Have Cause to Read this Now. . .

Please know my heart aches for you.  

I am so sorry for your loss.

There are no words.

After the Suicide of a Child: Anger, Guilt, Questioning, Depression, Disillusionment, Despair, Shock, Numbness, Hopelessness, Confusion, Exhaustion,Complicated Grief, Loss of Identity, Chaos, 

And A Grief that Never Lets Go

We have gone before where now you must travel. 

The journey is impossible. 

Sketch of sky with oceans black and violent as night without stars.

Your heart's broken breath. 
Only screams, whimpers, silence 
where once you held love dear.

And I wish,
--God how I wish,

something I could say or do
would alter the course
of this most unbearable 

 of life's journeys--

     losing your child to suicide.

"There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things NEVER get back to the way they were." Dwight D. Eisenhower

Suicide changes everything.

And to lose a child to suicide is to lose everything you once lived and breathed and loved.
 

I am well acquainted with grieving and loss. On June 25, 2012, I lost my 20-year-old son, my only child, Dylan Brown to suicide. All of me broke into a million pieces oceans wide and galaxies deep. I entered into darkness--and grieving. I tell the story of my ongoing grief journey and struggle to find and dwell in hope at myforeverson.com. 

Where to Go for Support After Losing a Child to Suicide:

The Compassionate Friends: To the Newly Bereaved

Parents of Suicides

"Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly." (Langston Hughes)

Love's invincible hold, even amidst the despair and tragedy of losing a child to suicide.

Here, where other parents of suicides 
have been, 
  hope hides   

beneath ravages  
of what remains

of who once

you were. 

You will not be able to see where you are going. 
And yet journey on you must. . .

For your child that breathed--

For your child that loved--

For your child who now lives through you

For as long as you have breath--and journey on--so does your child.

Insides feel like outsides and suddenly nothing is real. Or matters--

Desperate, your mind whirls around what makes sense.


This has all been a big mistake.

Surely this isn't--couldn't be true.

Not my child--

A film that covers you thick and rancid filters truth like shadows. 

Protects you for now. 

Suspended disbelief. A wicked nightmare. Hell on earth.

Dylan Andrew Brown, March 19, 1992-June 25, 2012, myforeverson.com

Dylan Brown, age 11, myforeverson.com

When you lose your child, 
there is nothingness, 
the descent into the abyss 
of losing not just your child, 
but also yourself

Forever dusk and fall of night after a child's bright joy: Losing a Child to Suicide, myforeverson.com

We,  --bereaved parents, moms, dads, grandparents, grieving siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, forever changed and grieving circles of friends of our sons and daughters.

A death by suicide is difficult to fathom, impossible to grasp and come to terms with, and begs, repeatedly and at times, most unexpectedly, an eternal choir of "why?!" "Dear God, why?"

Losing a Child to Suicide: An Impossible Journey

Unfortunately, there are no short cuts to "healing," to being able to even come to terms with wanting to keep on keeping on one day, one breath at a time. A list of "how-to's" or "10 ways to cope with losing a child to suicide" or even a litany of how others have coped would, at the very least, minimize the incredibly intense introspective nature of this grief journey. There are no wrong or right answers or ways to "do" this kind of grief, and any book, website, well-meaning friend, counselor, or doctor who tells you otherwise has, in all likelihood, never lost a child to suicide.

Know there are those of us who light the way for you. We hold candles in the blackest of nights, and though you may have to struggle and struggle (and then struggle some more), we will wait for you. When you stumble, and you will, we are there, beside you, wishing like anything we could save you, protect you, comfort you, "fix" your ache, your pain, your longing, your need, but knowing in the end that sometimes all we can do is hold on. And so know you are held, from here, half the world over, around the corner, in your city, town, neighborhood, home.

Losing a child to suicide and forever asking "why?"

We who have gone on ahead, we who have borne this unbearable and unfathomable pain, bear witness to the truth-laced hope that to keep on keeping on, if only in the beginning to breathe one second at a time, means to carry your own child's light to those who remember and to those who never had the joy or opportunity to know, to really know, all the wonders of your child.

You house your child everywhere. Everywhere! In your breath, in your coming undone when they die by suicide, and in your many memories, even if in the beginning (and the beginning is vague and nebulous which is, to say, a matter of days, months, years, impossible to define and completely unique to each of us).  I live that my child might live, too. I am here to say his name, share his memories, bring awareness that illness kills, that mental illness kills, too, that suicide is not a choice, but instead, just like any other illness, the end result of all that medicine knows about treating illness not working.

And I live now knowing I will see my son again--when it is time. I see now (after a long day's journey into the nightmare of what is now--and forever, my new way of life), that my son, Dylan, is happy, supremely happy, free and safe and protected, alive and well, not just in this realm and plane here.

I have been at this journey  over 1,000 days. In the beginning, I didn't even know how to survive the first week, month, year. I wanted to know what the first year is like, I wanted to hear from bereaved parents who have been there--and lived to tell. I have read volumes, volumes! of everything everywhere by anybody who's ever written and spoken out and about a parent's grief, a survivor of suicide's grief, the grieving process, suicide, bereavement. I have read (and continue to read) books, blogs, excerpts, whatever I can find, not just on suicide, but also on how to prevent it from happening to kids who still have a fighting chance. I know now that suicide takes a new life every 40 seconds. This is so, so sad.

I do not know if my son's suicide could have been prevented. My own jury in my own head, heart, heartbreak, and sorrow are still out on that debate. Dylan struggled with depression, manic depression, so inaptly named "bipolar" in today's jargon. He lived hell on earth battling demons in his head, and he fell into what so many young people fall into--self medicating with drugs and alcohol, in the end only fueling the enemies he so bravely fought against.

Those who knew Dylan loved him. Fully, completely. He was a son, a best friend, a brother, a boyfriend, an academic scholar, a creative and gifted musician, a rock guitarist, a jazz pianist, the sun, joy, light, and moon of my world. Dylan was beautiful and brilliant. Unfortunately, that does not stop anybody, even teenagers and cusp of adulthood young adults, from getting sick. Really, really sick. And even dying from that sickness.

My heart will always be missing its center. A large part of my heart is with my son.  I live in two worlds now: here, in this physical plane, earth, grounded, in this broken body, mind, heart, and spirit, and there, wherever heaven is, wherever there is, alive and well and healed rejoicing and celebrating "life" with my son. 

****************************************************
If you have lost someone to suicide--if you have lost a child to suicide--then here is where you will find a fellow sojourner. 

I write as I live now, post-suicide, life forever changed, always a mom, still a mom, forever Dylan's Mom, but as is, as now. I post my struggles, hopes, aspirations, insights, glimpses of "healing," memories, relevant articles, essays, blogs, and facts about suicide, especially about losing a child to suicide. A sad welcome from one who knows. Beth, Dylan's Mom