Derecho: The Storm on the Day of My Son’s Funeral

Derecho: The Storm on the Day of My Son’s Funeral

• Post author By Beth Brown
• Post date July 9, 2021
• 28 Comments on Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere

Dramatic storm clouds framed by silhouetted trees, “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere

A mother’s grief. A funeral. A sky breaking open. Derecho.

The Day the Sky Broke Open

My son Dylan was twenty years old. My only child. When he died by suicide, the world’s order broke apart. Insides outside. Outsides inside. Nothing where it had always been. Nothing making sense. I was no longer the mother I had been, no longer the woman I had been. I carried Dylan with me then. I carry him now. But the hole in my soul is infinite and vast.

On June 29, 2012, the day of my son Dylan’s funeral, a historic derecho tore through the Midwest. Violent winds. Falling trees. Power lines down. The midday sky gone dark. A storm out of nowhere on a day already torn from the world’s order. It felt as though the sky had broken open with me. As though God was grieving my son, too.

Then the Wind Came

The storm passed through. Grief did not. Fourteen years later, I remain in the place where time stopped. Suicide still makes no sense. Confusion remains. Guilt remains. June remains catastrophic. The month my son died. The month I buried him. The month the sky came down.

A Note from the Author

I wrote this from inside the storm. From inside the week I lost Dylan. From inside a grief that covered my all—insides outside, outsides inside. The broken syntax is intentional. The repetition is intentional. Grief did not arrive in orderly paragraphs. It came pell-mell. Uprooting. Shaking loose all grounding. These words bear witness to my son, to the mother I was, and to the mother I became after suicide tore the world in two.

On the Chaos of Grief After Losing a Child to Suicide

I didn’t know how heavy grief feels. How losing a child pulls breath and life from you. How the suicide of your child enters every room of the body. Most parents are not the same person afterward. How could we be? My only child was gone. Dylan was gone. And I was still here, carrying his life, his death, his name, his absence.

Experiencing the loss of a child to suicide feels like a storm out of nowhere

A storm out of nowhere. That is what losing Dylan was. That is what the derecho became on the day of his funeral—not an explanation, not a symbol I went looking for, but grief made visible. Wind screaming. Trees breaking. The world tearing loose from itself. My child gone. The sky grieving with me.

“He Left Too Soon” Poem

The lines that came after Dylan’s funeral became “He Left Too Soon.” This is the story behind the poem. Rain and tears. Rupture and burial. Violent wind. My son’s absence made permanent.

Photographs of the Historic Derecho Gathering Strength

A Satellite’s View of a Derecho

Storm clouds gather below in a satellite view of the Northeastern United States capturing the beginnings of the historic Derecho on June 29, 2012 in the Midwest.

A broad spiral cloud system stretches across eastern North America and the Atlantic Ocean, “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

Photograph of a Derecho Looking Up

Fast-moving storm clouds gather to form a horizontal front of powerful, high-intensity winds in the beginning of a Derecho.

A dramatic storm cloud formation signaling the arrival of a Derecho, depicted near a gas station, reflecting the chaos of an impending tempest, “Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

The Storm Out of Nowhere Begins

Heart heaving, this beating of tears
Breaking loose—
All hell in earth’s upturned rupture

Beth Brown, “He Left Too Soon,” My Forever Son

Funeral for My Son

June 29, 2012—the day of my son’s funeral. The temperature fell from 101 degrees to 73 in minutes. Wind whirled, whipped, snapped. Dark skies and clotted clouds swallowed the midday sun. We hurried toward the car before the rain came as papers tore across the parking lot and the light went out. Light extinguished. He left too soon.

Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere: Darkness on the wings of violent winds. 60-80 m.p.h. Trees cracking. Branches breaking. Traffic lights swaying to and fro. As if in a dream I couldn’t break. A nightmare I’d have to live out the rest of my life.

June 29, 2012–My son’s funeral was on a day heaving itself pell-mell, uprooting itself, shaking loose all grounding, breaking all that held it dear, all that called it life, all that depended upon it to be as it had always been.

A day rupturing earth in a storm violent and of epic proportion. Derecho. Unpredictable. Violent. Sudden. Never knowing we were in the path of such a storm. Having never seen let alone been through a storm capable of damaging this much to so many.

The Noise of The Wind. As If It Were Screaming.

The noise of the wind. As if it were screaming. Over and over, rising and hissing, falling and rising, screaming and moaning, cracking and casting itself broken. Falling down. Tumbling down. The sudden downing of it all. Power down. Wires down. Caught in the catastrophic exhale of sky, earth, trees, and now, even light extinguished.

Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere. Bringing It All Down. Breaking Things. Destructive nightmare of high, flat winds. A Dark Sky. A Dark Day. That week you took your life. That week you took me with you.

A Poem Borne From the Historic Derecho, June 29, 2012: “He Left Too Soon”

He Left Too Soon

He left too soon,
Lifting life from June,
Casting torrents of rain.
 
His absence,
Breath of pain whose exhale can only bring
Heart heaving, this heavy beating of tears.

Breaking loose,
All hell in earth’s upturned rupture,
Death shoveling shadows over me.

As I bend to lay flowers on his name,
Inscribed and bronzed,
A permanence come to stay.
 
My love laced now with pain,
Standing over my son’s grave,
Death’s Derecho come to stay in my shadow.

©Beth Brown, 2021, “He Left Too Soon”

“He Left Too Soon” is a poem inspired by the rare Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere on the day of his funeral.

What is a Derecho?

Derecho comes from the Spanish word for straight or direct. It is a fast-moving, long-lived line of thunderstorms whose straight-line winds can reach hurricane force—violent, sudden, and devastating.

Chicago Tribune, By Russ Schumacher, The Conversation
Associated Press

Dramatic storm clouds framed by silhouetted trees, “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

The Historic Derecho of June 29, 2012

On June 29, 2012, the derecho raced from Indiana toward the Mid-Atlantic at nearly sixty miles per hour. Its path crossed Ohio and surrounding states, leaving widespread damage and darkness behind.

The Historic Derecho of June 29, 2012
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service

The radar imagery of the historic Derecho event on June 29, 2012, illustrating the storm’s path and intensity across several states, U.S. Department of Commerce Weather “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere-A Poem on Loss,” My Forever Son

Purple Phlox in Spring By Water Pond’s Edge, “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

“He Left Too Soon”: A Grief Poem Borne From A Storm Out of Nowhere

“He Left Too Soon” was one of the first poems I wrote after Dylan died. Born from the derecho on the day of his funeral. My heart wept then. It weeps still. My career. My teaching. My art. My music. My voice. My writing. Gone with him.

A great and terrible silence 

A great and terrible silence came over me. I could speak only a few words; shock and grief consumed everything else. I wrote brief notes on my phone about seeing my son in a coffin and about how that day was the second-worst day of my life, yet the words felt as though someone else had written them. I could not find myself—my voice, my reflections, my meaning—inside them. Months would pass before I could begin to return.

That profound grief, the spilling over of all I held precious and dear, the endless tears I wept, the way all of me went away the day my son died, sought expression in a way that had always reached into my deepest feelings. 

Lifting Life from June

“He left too soon, lifting life from June” began so small, yet slowly took shape as the poem it is today. My first season of grief, summer and my son’s memorial date, expressed in poetic language. My deepest sorrow laid bare in the starkness of language befitting of grief. 

Words drenched in loss. Cemetery words. Burial words. Words blunt with the finality of death. I had known sadness. I had never known grief this heavy. Grief that takes breath. Grief that lives everywhere inside the body after your child dies by suicide.

Deep crimson roses bloom among lush green leaves against a softly blurred garden backdrop, “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere,” My Forever Son

Casting Torrents of Tears

The wallop of grief, the distortion of time and place, the feelings of shock and horror, the feeling of disbelief and the hideous reality of my son’s suicide. It is the first time I would write about losing my son, but it is not the last. 

I had so few words. For one who’s read so much, I could find only the solemnity of language. A few sparse words that felt as heavy and weighted as the intense pain in my heart. Words of mourning. Echoes of late June when I lost my son. 

Truth in “casting torrents of rain” because we were having drenching rains that week. Poetic because metaphorically, my grief was casting torrents of tears everywhere in my life. 

“He Left Too Soon:” Poem

My love laced now with pain,

Standing over my son’s grave,

Death’s Derecho come to stay in my shadow.

— from “He Left Too Soon”

Companion Reads: Grief, Memory, and Love

These pieces belong beside Derecho. Each returns to Dylan from a different distance: the poem itself, the date the body remembers, the cold of another season, the questions that outlive every answer.

• Loving Him Past His Pain: A Mother’s Heartfelt Journey — Loving Dylan beyond the pain that took him. Carrying the questions. Carrying His Love.
• A Deluge of Feelings: Year 8 Memorial Date — Years move forward. The body remembers the date. June returns, and grief rises with it.
• “He Left Too Soon” Poem: A Mother’s Deep Sorrow — The poem at the heart of this storm, standing where language first returned to me after Dylan died.
• Too Soon, Too Cold: The Wind Doth Blow — Winter, birds, beauty, and devastation arriving together.

About Beth Brown

I am Beth Brown. Dylan’s mother. He was twenty, my only child, and his suicide divided my life into before and after. I write to speak his name. To give language to the questions that do not leave. To companion parents who know this terrible loss.

Where a Mother’s Grief Resides

Where a Mother’s Grief Resides: Poems of Child Loss and the Work of Living On gathers nineteen poems written after Dylan’s suicide. Poems of burial, memory, guilt, breath, love, and the unfinished work of living after the death of a child.

Read Where a Mother’s Grief Resides on Amazon Kindle

← From Sorrow to Joy: How Pain Colors Loss in Grief → Exploring the Impact of Suicide on Families: Finding Light in Darkness

28 replies on “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere”

Ann Woodlysays:

July 10, 2021 at 3:27 pm • Edit

This was so powerfully, painfully beautiful, Beth, Your moving expressions describing this grief transported me in time to my own loss and moved me to tears. I will definitely be following this blog. Thank you for so eloquently speaking for all of us. Sending you and Dylan hugs and love, always.
Ann,
Forever Justin’s Mother

Loading…

Carol Brown Dodson says:

July 22, 2021 at 7:09 pm • Edit

You took the horrible storm and wove it into Dylan’s life and your grief. I can almost feel the derecho through the tears. Thanks for sharing!

Thomas Reedsays:

May 31, 2026 at 3:39 pm • Edit

Beth, your poem captures the violence and suddenness of grief so powerfully – like a derecho that arrives out of nowhere and tears everything apart. The storm imagery mirrors that moment when life divides into before and after. Reading Farid Jafarli’s “After the Storm” gave me a similar language for my own loss. He treats grief as a landscape to explore rather than something to fix, and his chapters on shock and silence, triggers and landmines, love that outlives the body, and the quiet return of joy reminded me that the chaos can eventually settle. Thank you for honoring your son and offering such vivid words for those of us learning to navigate our own storms.

Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere

Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere skillfully intertwines the sorrow stemming from the loss of the author’s son to suicide with the tumult wrought by a powerful Derecho storm that occurred on the day of his funeral. A powerful narrative and a poignant poem by the author born from a storm out of nowhere on June 29, 2012. Where a mother’s grief and nature’s historic storm collide.

A Note from the Author

Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere features “He Left Too Soon,” a grief poem borne from the depth of my grief on my son’s funeral, alongside the poignant story that inspired it, details the deep and abiding sorrow of losing my beloved son to suicide during the unexpected storm known as Derecho.

On the Chaos of Grief After Losing a Child to Suicide

I didn’t know how heavy grief feels. How losing a child can pull breath and life from you. How grief lives everywhere inside you when you lose a child to suicide.

Experiencing the loss of a child to suicide feels like a storm out of nowhere

Experiencing the loss of a child to suicide feels like a storm out of nowhere, both in a metaphorical sense and, for me, quite literally, as Derecho swept through on the very day of my son’s funeral, shrouding the moment in a chaotic blend of grief and nature’s fury. The ominous winds mirrored my inner turmoil, encapsulating a heartbreak that was overwhelming and profound.

“He Left Too Soon” Poem

I’ve included the definition and explanation of Derecho to give the poem further context and resonance, allowing readers to grasp not just the tumultuous weather, but also the emotional tempest that accompanies such a tragic loss. “He Left Too Soon” is ultimately the name of the poem I wrote that day of my son’s funeral when the powerful Derecho swept through the Midwest.

Photographs of the Historic Derecho Gathering Strength

A Satellite’s View of a Derecho

Storm clouds gather below in a satellite view of the Northeastern United States capturing the beginnings of the historic Derecho on June 29, 2012 in the Midwest.

Photograph of a Derecho Looking Up

Fast-moving storm clouds gather to form a horizontal front of powerful, high-intensity winds in the beginning of a Derecho.

The Storm Out of Nowhere Begins

Heart heaving, this beating of tears
Breaking loose—
All hell in earth’s upturned rupture

Beth Brown, “He Left Too Soon,” My Forever Son

Funeral for My Son

June 29, 2012–Funeral for my son. 101 degrees dropping to 73 degrees in a matter of minutes. Whirling wind. Gusts of whipping wind. Snapping wind. Dark skies. Clotted clouds. Midday sun going away–suddenly. A piercing dark. A turbulent sky. Trying to get to the car before the rains came. Things blowing. Paper across parking lots. Light going out. Light extinguished. He Left Too Soon.

Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere: Darkness on the wings of violent winds. 60-80 m.p.h. Trees cracking. Branches breaking. Traffic lights swaying to and fro. As if in a dream I couldn’t break. A nightmare I’d have to live out the rest of my life.

June 29, 2012–My son’s funeral was on a day heaving itself pell-mell, uprooting itself, shaking loose all grounding, breaking all that held it dear, all that called it life, all that depended upon it to be as it had always been.

A day rupturing earth in a storm violent and of epic proportion. Derecho. Unpredictable. Violent. Sudden. Never knowing we were in the path of such a storm. Having never seen let alone been through a storm capable of damaging this much to so many.

The Noise of The Wind. As If It Were Screaming.

The noise of the wind. As if it were screaming. Over and over, rising and hissing, falling and rising, screaming and moaning, cracking and casting itself broken. Falling down. Tumbling down. The sudden downing of it all. Power down. Wires down. Caught in the catastrophic exhale of sky, earth, trees, and now, even light extinguished.

Derecho–A Storm Out of Nowhere. Bringing It All Down. Breaking Things. Destructive nightmare of high, flat winds. A Dark Sky. A Dark Day. That week you took your life. That week you took me with you.

A Poem Borne From the Historic Derecho, June 29, 2012: “He Left Too Soon”

He Left Too Soon 

He left too soon,
Lifting life from June,
Casting torrents of rain.
 
His absence,
Breath of pain whose exhale can only bring
Heart heaving, this heavy beating of tears.

Breaking loose,
All hell in earth's upturned rupture, 
Death shoveling shadows over me.

As I bend to lay flowers on his name,
Inscribed and bronzed, 
A permanence come to stay.
 
My love laced now with pain,
Standing over my son's grave,
Death's Derecho come to stay in my shadow.

©Beth Brown, 2021, "He Left Too Soon"

"He Left Too Soon" is a poem inspired by the rare Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere on the day of his funeral.

What is a Derecho?

Derecho is derived from the Spanish adjective for “straight” or “direct.” A Derecho is a fast-moving (60-80 mph winds) storm seeming to come out of nowhere. A violent storm bent on destruction, a Derecho is a

(Derecho is a) widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms. . . Derechos can cause hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.

Chicago Tribune, By Russ Schumacher, The Conversation
Associated Press

The Historic Derecho of June 29, 2012

On June 29, 2012, a devastating line of thunderstorms known as a Derecho (deh REY cho) moved east-southeast at 60 miles per hour (mph) from Indiana in the early afternoon to the Mid-Atlantic region around midnight. The states most significantly impacted were Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, and North Carolina, as well as Washington, D.C. Nearly every county impacted by this convective system suffered damages and power outages.

Winds were commonly above 60 mph with numerous reports of winds exceeding 80 mph. Some areas reported isolated pockets of winds greater than 100 mph. The storm resulted in 13 deaths, mainly a result of falling trees. One major impact from the derecho was widespread power outages. More than 4 million customers were without power, some for more than a week after the storms moved through. To make matters worse, the area affected was in the midst of a prolonged heat wave.

The Historic Derecho of June 29, 2012
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service

“He Left Too Soon”: A Grief Poem Borne From A Storm Out of Nowhere

One of the earliest poems I ever wrote about the great gulf of sorrow that swept over me when I lost my son Dylan to suicide was “He Left Too Soon,” a poem borne of the Derecho, a storm out of nowhere, on the day of my son’s funeral. My heart wept (it still does, though I’ve learned to carry love and ache together). Who I was fled my existence. My career. My teaching. My art. My music. My voice. My writing.

A great and terrible silence 

A great and terrible silence came over me. I couldn’t speak more than a few words. I was lost in the rush and consumption of shock and grief. I wrote a few words as a note on my phone, about seeing my son laid out in a coffin, about how that day was the second worst day of my life. But it’s as though someone else was writing the words. I couldn’t find me, my words, my reflections, in my writing. It would be months before I could.

That profound grief, the spilling over of all I held precious and dear, the endless tears I wept, the way all of me went away the day my son died, sought expression in a way that had always reached into my deepest feelings. 

Lifting Life from June

“He left too soon, lifting life from June” began so small, yet slowly took shape as the poem it is today. My first season of grief, summer and my son’s memorial date, expressed in poetic language. My deepest sorrow laid bare in the starkness of language befitting of grief. 

“He Left Too Soon” is cloaked in language that was once foreign to me. Words drenched in loss and ache. Words belonging to cemeteries and the burying of the dead. Words that express only pain and hurt. Words that state bluntly the finality of life. I have known sadness my entire life, but I didn’t know how heavy grief feels. How losing a child can pull breath and life from you. How grief lives everywhere inside you when you lose a child to suicide.

Casting Torrents of Tears

The wallop of grief, the distortion of time and place, the feelings of shock and horror, the feeling of disbelief and the hideous reality of my son’s suicide. It is the first time I would write about losing my son, but it is not the last. 

I had so few words. For one who’s read so much, I could find only the solemnity of language. A few sparse words that felt as heavy and weighted as the intense pain in my heart. Words of mourning. Echoes of late June when I lost my son. 

Truth in “casting torrents of rain” because we were having drenching rains that week. Poetic because metaphorically, my grief was casting torrents of tears everywhere in my life. 

“He Left Too Soon:” Poem

He Left Too Soon

He left too soon— 
Lifting life from June,
Casting torrents of rain
 
His absence—
Breath of pain whose exhale can only bring
Heart heaving, this beating of tears

Breaking loose—
All hell in earth's upturned rupture, 
Death shoveling shadows over me

As I bend to lay flowers on his name—
Inscribed and bronzed, 
A permanence come to stay
 
My love laced now with pain—
Standing over my son's grave,
Death's Derecho come to stay in my shadow.


©Beth Brown, 2021, "He Left Too Soon" 
     

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