If I Could Find My Way: A Song About Losing My Son to Suicide

If I Could Find My Way: A Song About Losing My Son to Suicide

ABOUT THIS POST: If I Could Find My Way is an intimate song I wrote about the intense longing and ache I felt after losing my son to suicide. I sat down with my guitar, hit “play” on my recorder (which was my iPad), and began composing.

The version that follows is my rough draft of this song where the words and haunting melody tumbled out from the depths of my grief.

You can find more songs about losing a child to suicide here: Songs for Child Loss.

Losing My Identity

When I lost my son to suicide, I lost my identity. Without Dylan, I no longer knew who I was. There is a confusion of identity when you lose a child to suicide. I lost who I was June 25, 2012 when I lost my 20-year-old son to suicide.

Everything changed. My world changed. And who I was and had always been vanished.

Writing to Make Sense of My World

It’s been 11 years since Dylan’s suicide, but I still write.

I write the blog, My Forever Son; plus poems, some of which are included in this blog and some that I publish as books; plus music-songs and lyrics for child loss-that appears here on this blog; plus books about losing a child to suicide.

I write to make sense of my world, to process my grief, and to find my way in a world forever changed without my son.

Carrying Ache and Love

The song, “If I Could Find My Way,” is unfinished because I am unfinished. Hope and healing come after losing a child to suicide, but the grief becomes a part of you that you learn to carry along with the love you will always have for your child.

When you lose a child to suicide, asking “Why?” is part of the grief process. Suicide has no easy answers. And sadly, blaming yourself is part of the messy grief that suicide leaves behind.

Feeling Guilt and Self-Blame

If only. . . What if?, Why didn’t I? Why did I? What didn’t I see? What didn’t I do? What did I miss? Begging the question of Why? creates a loop of circular reasoning that can haunt parents.

Someone in a support group for parents who lose a child to suicide had a healing message for parents stuck in the self-blame and guilt-ridden loop: Change the What If? to Even Though.

Change the What If? to Even Though

Even though I loved Dylan with all that I am, even though I sought help for his depression, even though . . . means that if my love could have saved my son, he would have lived forever.

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If I Could Find My Way: A Song About Losing My Son to Suicide

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Song Lyrics: If I Could Find My Way

IF I COULD FIND MY WAY

If I could find my way    
Turn the night to day
Capture all the stars
Illuminate this broken heart
Then I might find my way
Back home to you

If I could hold you tight
I'd never let you fly away from me,
I'd break the skies apart that made it dark
Erase the pain that made you doubt 
Your love in me

If I could hold you tight
I'd never let you fly away from me
I'd break the skies apart that made it dark
Erase the pain that made you doubt
You could come back home

If I could hold you tight
I'd never let you fly away from me
I'd break the skies apart
I'd break the pain that made you doubt 
You were ever loved

If I keep holding on
Do I get to see you soon my son,
I want you now
If I keep holding on 
Will I find I'm holding you

All music/lyrics ©Beth Brown, 2023
"If I Could Find My Way"