When Suicide Takes a Child

For twenty-three years I have grappled with my identity as a mother of a son who took his own life. I am also a woman, a sister, a child, a writer, an activist. I have met many life challenges, yet the scars and weight of the loss of my son make other assaults on the body or soul insignificant in comparison.

As a long-term member and interim chapter leader for The Compassionate Friends of Marin County, California, I spoke recently with a woman who was beside herself trying to figure out what to do and where to go – "Wherever I go there I am!" syndrome I call it. Below are some of my thoughts about losing a child to suicide. The gist I shared with the caller and she said she felt better by the end of our conversation. I believe she is less stuck and recognizes she has choices she had not yet considered as well as support for reaching beyond the anguish for healing.

After speaking with the caller, I sent the following message to our steering committee who often speak with family and other loved ones who grieve:

It is very hard to listen to someone stuck in the anguish of losing a child and doubly so when there is insatiable anger and guilt at ourselves and others, and when we aren't yet reaching for peace because we think we have to do something about the anger and guilt in order to be worthy of healing. In my journey, I had to decide I want healing and peace and love even if I don't deserve it, because I cannot live in the vomit of my son's suicide.

All our losses are inhumanely cruel and suicide comes with an extra large bottle of guilt and anger which some of us feel obliged to drink again and again – it never does empty. Some of us have an insatiable need to see everything, talk about the loss, to examine each aspect, to learn every detail of our child's life we can. And, then many of us stay stuck in experiences of sorrow, disappointments, regrets, guilt and anger. We may move so slowly through the totality of our story that no one, including us, can see change.

When my son died, it was extremely important for me to see, hear, touch and feel what happened from all angles. I've done that now. I understand and know all I need to know of the circumstances. With work and self tolerance, I finally arrived at the point where even without every detail, I see the large picture and each snapshot available to me and let the rest go.

Not every parent of a child who suicides will feel this way, but when we do it is excruciating and so rare to find the support of someone who will stand on the shore as we trek through neck-high muck. In addition, some parents whose child did not die by suicide will go through similar angst. For each soul has its own challenges.

Now, I have put the memories of my son's death, linked with a part of my own death into a secret room for which I hold the key – to lock myself out as well as others. I may enter for moments, or I may crack open the door to remind myself of some item or to grab something in there and retreat. I enter with great caution and do not immerse myself in the totality of that room.

That room is polluted with toxicity and danger. The evils of suicide beckon. Our children were not evil, they were poisoned by real and imagined demons in the harshness of life. They were seduced by suicide.

Greg Furth, author of "The Secret World of Drawings: Healing through Art" said to me that my son did not commit suicide; suicide took him. My son became addicted to the idea and immersed himself in a romanticism of suicide. "Suicide ideation" professionals call it, but giving something a catchy idiom turns it into a cliché that doesn't do a suicide victim justice.

So much belongs here in between the beginning of my journey and where I am now but what I want to tell you is that there came a time when I could no longer willingly jump into the well of despair -- what a small word for what we feel. The climb out was killing me and nothing had changed when I reached the top. I was still in anguish and only more weary. I felt no relief. I felt no resolve.

In 1991 I wrote a note to my son that explains some of my journey:

Dear Son,

I won't come to your grave today

I won't do that to me.

If you have any kind of existence

you know the pain of my loss is always with me.

I don't need to hurt more today

Though I can't help it

My rational mind and my heart are not in sync

My subconscious won't let me forget that this is the day I lost you

Flashes of memory and dreams of horrors come unexpectedly.

But your grave doesn't offer solace

it only tempts me to follow

So if I'm going to live

In protest of the choice you made

If I'm going to see my life to its natural end

And fight my demons rather than lie down for them

I won't come today

I'll go somewhere that comforts and strengthens me.

In honor of you

The you that was music and beauty and genius and life

And in compassion for the beaten spirit who took your life

I will not condone your grievous error by following.

I will keep reaching for life

and seeking it's treasures with whatever strength I hold within.

All my love,

Mom

Diana deRegnier 2010