Pink ground roses with yellow centers surrounded by green leaves photographed for My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Suicide Loss of My Son, for poem "I Send All the Love My Heart Can Hold" and "Beat Still My Heart"
Pink Ground Roses, My Forever Son

Beat Still My Heart: A Poem About Losing My Son to Suicide

Beat Still My Heart

Beat still my heart,
Beat still my mind,
Weary though thou art,
Carry his love along with thine,
Though heavy on thy shoulders
Crost fields throughout all time.

In the deepest dark of the bleakest night, 
If light there be, then dark shuts it out. 
Around you all is swirling, 
Hurtling backwards now through time, 
A hellish hue stricken each his years 
When here on earth 'twas mine.
 
Deeply within that starless darkest night, 
Go deeper yet still darker, 
Oceans depth to oceans wide. 
Galaxies wide careening, 
Spilling insides outside in,
To release thy soul still screaming, 
Clasping hands and heart to his.    

Body, mind, soul, rough and ragged, 
Weeping tears falling still throughout time, 
Carrying weight of mourning and grieving 
Falling broken when thou wert mine. 

© Beth Brown, 2022

Red Rose in June, My Forever Son, Beat Still My Heart: A Poem About Losing My Son to Suicide
Red Rose in June, My Forever Son

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Suicide Changes Everything: Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

Beat Still My Heart

Suicide changes everything. And the deep, deep soul ache never goes away. Learning to live again is the hardest work I’ve ever done.

I have been awash in grief, alive in my life’s greatest tragedy. Nothing worse will or can happen to me. My son died by suicide.

Suicide Changes Everything

Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

Suicide changes everything. It rests in the margins of my life, an undertow beneath all else concurrent and elsewhere.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, Suicide Changes Everything: Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

I rose and drowned a million deaths at sea, being forced under by tidal waves, shoved down deep past violent destruction and floating and sinking debris, my life as I knew it, rising only momentarily to gasp, choke, scream only to be plunged forcibly down again.

I lived in exile from everything–my own breath, eating, sleeping, moving. I couldn’t do anything I’d always done–work, listen to music, play music, cook, shop, take care of myself, shower, get food in my body, exercise, smile, laugh, be present, be there for any of my family or friends, drive, walk, live. I had to be reminded to breathe.

A Great and Terrible Tsunami

I had finally surfaced from the ferocity of the storm and there I was, alone without my son. I didn’t want to live without him.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, Suicide Changes Everything: Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

I am Beth, Dylan’s Mom. I am in my third year of learning to keep on keeping on after losing my only child, my beloved 20-year-old son, to suicide on June 25, 2012. My life forever changed that day, and who I was died too.

A great and terrible Tsunami swept in and through everything I knew and loved and cared about in life, and all that I was and loved and cared about was swept out into a violent, retching ocean, infinite fathoms deep, defying any earthly description here, blacker than a starless night.

Tidal Waves of Grief

I couldn’t hear, see, be, hold, reach for, grasp, touch, feel anything familiar, loved or comforting. I couldn’t find my son and reached, grasped, searched for him for days, weeks, months on end. When I came to, I realized that somehow, I was still alive and that Dylan had been washed out to sea. I had finally surfaced from the ferocity of the storm and there I was, alone without my son. I didn’t want to live without him. Suicide Changes Everything.

Beat Still My Heart

I lived this way for as long as it took to come to, the tidal waves to come less frequently, for me to be enough above the surface of the deep water to catch my breath. When I did, I couldn’t speak. I had no words, and for the first time ever, learned what keening really means. I cried out to God, to Dylan, to life, but in the end, it changed nothing.

My son and I had been washed out to sea and in coming to, I moved into what will now be the forever season of my life–living without Dylan, being forever a bereaved mother, living outside the realm of “normal” for most people, having to travel a grief and life journey for which I had no equipping, no guide, no preparation, no direction. It will be 3 years come June since Dylan died and I am only just now beginning to get my bearings.

"Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere" photo shows gray storm clouds and tall pines framing the photo, My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide, Beat Still My Heart: A Poem About Losing My Son to Suicide
A Poem About Losing My Son-Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere, My Forever Son

Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

Getting to a Safe Shore

And so it is, slowly, in a stretch of days, weeks, months, years, I have somehow found the strength to get to a safe shore. But my world is small and I find I am on an island set apart from how most people live. I am learning to integrate Dylan’s death into my life, and on my best days, know, sense, feel, and understand that he lives yet still and is right there with me in everything I think, say, speak, and do.

But I am on a journey and truth be told, some days are just impossible. Holidays, Dylan’s birthday in March, his memorial day in June, Mother’s Day, seasons of the year, summer as a whole because in what used to be one of my favorite months of the year, my son took his life.

I struggle still moving from January through June because Dylan attempted suicide 4 times (January, February, March, and May) before he died by suicide in June. Each suicide attempt was worse than the last: an endless stream of critical care units; emergency rooms; psych wards; antidepressants; counseling; treatment centers; lock-down units; and suicide watches. I was filled with infinite love for my son as well as the madness of not being able to make my son want to live.

Suicide Changes Everything: Struggling to Survive Grief After the Suicide of My Son

If Love Could Have Saved Him

If love could have saved him, Dylan would have lived forever. And actually, because I have faith and hope in seeing Dylan again, in being able to spend forever with him, I believe Dylan does live on, just not here in this realm where I can see, touch, hear, feel him–his love, his laugh, his quick wit, his beautiful original music.

I miss him everywhere, all at once, all the years, 19 years, 3 months, and 6 days, and I am gradually growing to understand I will never know why Dylan couldn’t stay. I hear him (in my mind) say, “I had to go.”

I saw Dylan for the last time on Sunday, June 24th, 2012 when I brought him what he had asked me to get for him–Taco Bell, a Volcano burrito with extra fire sauce. I told Dylan I loved him, stood up on my tip-toes to hug him, and Dylan said, “I love you, too.” These are my son’s last words to me.

Beat still my heart ,
Beat still my mind,
Weary though thou art,
Carry his love along with thine,
Though heavy on thy shoulders,
Crost fields throughout all time.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, Beat Still My Heart: A Poem About Losing My Son to Suicide

Photo of 18 year old young man, Dylan, My Forever Son
Dylan, My Forever Son

I have struggled, I struggle still, but I am at my best and most at peace when I realize Dylan really did–and still does–love me deeply. 


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