He Left Too Soon: A Poem About Losing a Son to Suicide

He Left Too Soon: Lifting Life from June — A Mother’s Poem About Losing Her Son to Suicide

For Dylan.This is He Left Too Soon: A Poem About Losing a Son to Suicide.

After losing my only child, my twenty-year-old son Dylan, to suicide, I began writing because grief left me with feelings bigger than I was and no place to put them. “He Left Too Soon” came from the dread of June, the helplessness and guilt I carry, and the love for my son I will carry always.

A child’s memorial date is never a mere square on a calendar. The date—and the month surrounding it—becomes etched into a parent’s body. Long before June 25 arrives, I feel its approach: a visceral dread, an inward bracing for the day my son died.

The Death March Toward June

I wish—God, how I wish—there were a way, perhaps with enough years between then and now, not to feel the dread of Dylan’s memorial day. But traumatic grief, no matter how honestly grappled with, returns as the date approaches. This is not a “season of grief.” For me, it is a death march toward June 25: toward the helplessness of not being able to save my son and the enormous burden of guilt that came with losing my only child to suicide.

When Grief First Became Language

At first, I could barely speak. I had seen my son laid out in a coffin. I wrote a few words in a note on my phone, but they did not feel as though they came from me. For months, I could not find myself inside what had happened, much less find the words for it.

Then one line came: “He left too soon, lifting life from June.” It held the weather of that first summer, the rupture of Dylan’s death, and the memorial month that would forever return. The line became the poem.

I offer it here without distance or explanation between its lines.

He Left Too Soon: The 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 heavy beating of tears

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

As I bend to lay flowers upon 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”

When I read this poem now, I am back in that first June without Dylan. I feel the rain, the rupture, the shadow, and the terrible permanence of my son’s name cast in bronze. Fourteen years have not made June ordinary. My body knows the date is coming before the calendar tells me. This poem says what I still cannot say any other way: I could not save my son, I cannot stop missing him, and I will never stop loving him.

Why I Still Write

I write because traumatic grief does not resolve into a tidy ending. It returns through dates, weather, memory, and the body. Poetry gives shape to what cannot be repaired.

I write, too, so another parent approaching a child’s memorial day might recognize the dread and know it is not theirs alone.

Dylan is more than the day he died. My poems carry his childhood, our life together, and the continuing bond between mother and son beside the trauma of losing him.

Still I write. Still I carry the love and the grief. Still I miss my son.

Companion Reading from My Forever Son

If you want to read more of the words I have written to survive losing Dylan, I have gathered them in Poems from a Mother After the Suicide Loss of Her Only Child. Each poem comes from the same place: the love I have for my son, the agony of losing him, and my need to keep him close through words.

• “Beat Still My Heart”: A Mother’s Poem After Losing Her Son to Suicide — I wrote this from the place where grief overwhelms the body and even continuing to breathe can feel like work.
• “If Only a Mother’s Love Could Have Saved You”: A Poem on Loss — I wrote this from the impossible wish that my love could have been enough to save my son, and from the guilt that still asks why it was not.
• “Bury My Heart”: A Poem for Parents Who Lost a Child to Suicide — I wrote this at the place no parent imagines standing: beside a child’s grave, loving him still and having to leave without him.
• “Once Upon a Blue-Sky Moon”: A Poem of Love, Memory, and Child Loss — I return here to Dylan’s childhood, to the boy I knew and loved, and to the pain I could not see or save him from.
• “Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere” — The derecho in “He Left Too Soon” is not only a metaphor. On the day of Dylan’s funeral, a violent derecho swept through during the service. I wrote this story because the darkened sky and raging wind seemed to speak the chaos and devastation inside me.

For the Parent Who Found This Poem

If you found this poem because your child died by suicide, I am so deeply sorry. You may already know how a date can live inside the body, how a month can become something to survive, and how love and guilt can become tangled together. Read only what you can. If one line in this poem sounds like something you have felt but could not put into words, then let it hold those words for you. Your child is loved. Your child is remembered. Your child is still yours.

You are not alone here. I do not have answers, and I will not tell you grief becomes something small enough to leave behind. I am still learning how to live with the love, the missing, and the grief. I am still Dylan’s mother. You are still your child’s parent.

About the Author

Beth Brown is Dylan’s mother and the author of Where a Mother’s Grief Resides: Poems of Child Loss and the Work of Living On, her literary collection available on Amazon Kindle. Born from the suicide loss of her only child, twenty-year-old Dylan, these poems give language to the guilt, longing, memory, bewilderment, and enduring love that live inside a bereaved mother. Beth is also the writer and creator of My Forever Son: Grief, Love, and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide, where she shares original poetry, personal reflections, and photographs from her gardens. Through both the book and the blog, she carries Dylan’s name forward and writes so grieving parents may feel recognized, understood, and less alone.

Support Beyond These Pages

For additional information, community, or care:

• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention — healing resources, peer connection, and support-group listings.
• Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors — a moderated community and support for people grieving a suicide death.
• Dougy Center — grief resources for children, young adults, families, and supporters.