Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Introduction

ABOUT THIS POST: Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide has a profound and emotional narrative that sheds light on the struggle of losing a child to suicide. The personal experiences shared provide an authentic and raw look into the journey of grief and healing. The author emphasizes the importance of staying true to one’s narrative and finding support.

Resources and Support Groups

The inclusion of relevant resources and support groups adds practical value to the content, offering a sense of hope and guidance to those who have experienced similar loss. The introduction of the book “Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide” adds an authentic touch of a mother writing her way through grief after losing her son to suicide. My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide is a companion blog to this post.

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Change My Narrative

Sometimes others want you to be who it is that you’ve always been. They see your pain and search for ways to help ease your burden. Someone suggested I “change my narrative.” They wanted me to find a way to lighten my life enough to feel happy (again). To feel a lightness of being.

I thought deeply about that idea for a long time. Could I change my narrative? Write a different ending for Dylan’s story (and mine)? How would a different narrative look?

Resilience is Living in the Glare of My Son’s Suicide

But in the end and after much reflection, I came only to this conclusion: I live in the glare of my son’s suicide because this is where he ended his story. To stay true to this narrative is to embrace the truth of this life, such as it is, and to remember the truth of my son’s life. His death and his birth bookend his life, and while I never wanted to know his death date, it is part of his life as well.

(Read More: Resilience Is Living in the Glare of My Son’s Suicide)

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Grief doesn’t end when you’ve lost a child to suicide, but love shines through the darkness enough to ease your burden of constant pain.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide

Listen to Your Narrative

It isn’t wrong, this narrative of yours. Isn’t something to be fixed. Adjusted. Changed. Rewritten.

God knows you’d rewrite your narrative if you could.

Consider the whole thing a tumultuous, torrid first draft. A rough sketch ill-constructed. The consequence lacking intention. Not giving words, shapes, ideas, even context, enough thought. A hapless quick free-write in the middle of the night. Rushed. Out of character, both for him and for you.

“It just isn’t right,” say some.

“Maybe it wasn’t suicide,” say others.

“Didn’t that happen a long time ago?” asks your friend.

“He wouldn’t want to see you so sad” says your community.

So Much Pressure to Change Your Life’s Story

So much pressure to revise your narrative. Erase the version of the narrative you’ve lived. Revise. Rewrite. Omit. Delete.

Change your life’s story, the way everything changed that day he ended his own. His narrative just started. Only a few chapters in. A promising start. Having left so much unsaid, unwritten. His chasm, your darkness. His absence, dark ache your heart.

As if you could undo what was done. As if you could live past the pain and not feel the whole of you disappearing in your life’s tragic moment. Its fatal eclipse. Your narrative forever changed.

His chasm, your darkness.         His absence, dark ache your heart.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, Resilience Is Living in the Glare of My Son’s Suicide

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Suicide Shocks

And it sends shock-waves out that reverberate far and wide to all who knew the child who took their life. A young man or woman who dies by suicide changes the lives of all who knew them. Loved them. Went to high school with them. Played sports with them. Marched in band and laughed with them. Stayed up late nights in college with them. Their childhood friend. Their best friend. Their families. A young person who takes his life leaves everybody behind. Even his mother.

Navigating grief after losing a child to suicide can feel impossible. Navigating Grief: Finding Solace After Losing a Child to Suicide can help.

If You’ve Lost a Child to Suicide

If you’ve lost a child to suicide, Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope can help. I made it through the thicket of grief by seeking support and resources. You are not alone. Here are two good places to start to find help, hope, and support resources:

• Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope
• Help, Hope, Healing After Suicide Loss: Support, Books, Resources

Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope

Help, Hope, Healing After Suicide Loss: Support, Books, Resources

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Walking through Shadows, Talking in Tears

I have wept infinite tears, carried the weight of mourning and grieving, fallen apart, kept on keeping on only because of my family and friends’ carrying me when I could not take a single step forward. I have been awash in grief, alive in my life’s greatest tragedy.

Talking in Endless Tears

In my first few hours, days, weeks, months, and years, I felt my grief would swallow me whole. I wasn’t sure I could make it through the never-ending pain and tears. I wanted so much to have loved my son past his pain (Loving Him Past His Pain).

Parents of Suicides Online Support Group

Joining support groups, especially the online support group, Parents of Suicides, helped me see that even though I felt alone, I wasn’t alone. I talked to parents who had more time out from the suicide of their child than I did. I wanted to know how they (other parents who lost a child to suicide) made it through the shadows:

“Just breathe” they (other parents who lost a child to suicide) shared.

“Tell your story”

“Talk about your child. Talk to your child.”

“There’s no way around the grief, but going through the grief means learning to carry the weight of the ache along with enormity of your love for your child.“

11 Years Out

As I write, I am 11 years out from losing Dylan to suicide. I am not in the same place as I was in early grief. See Beyond Surviving: Suggestions for Survivors.

Hope means hold on, pain eases.

Grief doesn’t end when you’ve lost a child to suicide, but love shines through the darkness enough to ease your burden of constant pain.

“How I Survived the Suicide of My Son: 15 Tips for Grieving Parents,” written by Marcia Gelman Resnick, can help parents navigate their grief.

“How I Survived the Suicide of My Son: 15 Tips for Grieving Parents”

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Surviving the Unthinkable

Finding Help, Hope, and Support

When my son died by suicide 11 years ago, I knew I needed help, hope, and support to make it through those first few hours, days, months, and years of early grief.

Parents of Suicides Online Support Group

I read everything I could find about suicide; joined a local support group for survivors of suicide loss; and found an online support group for Parents of Suicides (PoS).

I used all of these resources plus sought a therapist’s help to make it through acute grief. Throughout these years, I’ve learned to carry both ache and love in suicide loss.

Help, Hope, and Healing After Suicide Loss: Support, Books, Resources

Help, Hope, Healing After Suicide Loss: Support, Books, Resources

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Walking through Shadows: Surviving the Unthinkable Loss of a Child to Suicide

Surviving Losing My Only Child to Suicide

Losing a child to suicide defies description. And losing an only child to suicide is beyond measure. I live that my son might live too.

To live past the enormous pain, however, has meant seeking out resources and support on a continuing basis.

Dylan always was my heart’s song, my love’s greatest expression and joy, my peace and my happiness. He still is.

Carrying Ache and Love

I now know laughter–sometimes, and smiling–sometimes, but sigh-I also know now that my life will always know this expression of the bittersweet. It is is my eyes, my private weeping, the way my smile now lifts only on one side of my mouth, my having to pull out of hearing about others’ children and grandchildren, of my having to live life differently, of having to shop at different stores. It just goes on and on.

And so it is, as is, that I write this blog 2 years, 9 months into my grieving, into my now, as is life, into learning to live with only part of me here, for a great deal of who I am walks and lives with Dylan.

I trust I will see him again.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide is a collection of deeply emotional poems that explore the painful experience of losing a child to suicide. The book is divided into five sections, each delving into different aspects of grief and the journey towards healing.

1. A Deep Sorrow: In this section, the poems express the profound sorrow and anguish that accompanies the loss of a child. They delve into the initial shock and overwhelming emotions that consume the grieving parent.
2. Earth, Sky, Moon, and Stars: Poems here explores the natural world as a backdrop for grief. The poems draw parallels between the vastness of the universe and the deep void left by the absence of a beloved child. Nature becomes a companion in the process of grieving and finding solace.
3. Why?: The poems in this section confront the incomprehensible question of “why” – why did this tragedy happen? The parent grapples with the need for answers and tries to make sense of the inexplicable loss.
4. In Losing You, I Lost Me Too: Reflecting on the profound impact that the loss of a child has on one’s own identity and sense of self. The poems delve into the complex emotions of guilt, self-blame, and the struggle to rebuild a shattered sense of self.
5. That My Love Be With You Always: The final section of the book focuses on finding hope and strength to carry on after the devastating loss. The poems speak of love that transcends death, the ability to honor the memory of the lost child, and the resilience to continue living while keeping their spirit alive.

Throughout Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide, the poems offer a poignant exploration of the heart-wrenching experience of losing a child to suicide. They capture the raw emotions, the search for understanding, and the gradual journey towards healing and finding new ways to remember and cherish the love that will forever remain.

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