“Beat Still My Heart”: A Mother’s Elegy for My Son

“Beat Still My Heart”: A Mother’s Elegy for My Son

By Beth Brown · My Forever Son

“Some grief does not speak in ordinary language. It breaks the body, floods the mind, and leaves the heart calling into a darkness that will not answer.”

Content note: This essay speaks directly from the lived experience of losing an only child to suicide and includes references to suicide loss and its immediate aftermath.

Introduction: Where the Sea First Broke

Some poems are written from memory. This one was written from impact. “Beat Still My Heart” rose out of the wreckage of losing my son and only child, Dylan, to suicide. It came not as explanation but as cry: the raw grief of a mother whose world had been torn open, whose love had nowhere left to go but into language.

The poem and the story that follows belong together. One is the surge; the other, the undertow. One speaks in image and incantation; the other walks through the lived terrain beneath those lines. Read together, they are not a poem with commentary attached, but one continuous elegy—grief as it broke me, and grief as I learned to carry it.

The Poem: A Heart Calling Through the Storm

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 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
"Beat Still My Heart"
The Emotional Depth of 'Beat Still My Heart': A Powerful Elegy

An Artistic Portrayal of the Poem “Beat Still My Heart”

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 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
"Beat Still My Heart"

The Story Beneath the Poem

I am awash in grief, alive in my life’s greatest tragedy. The waves of sorrow crash over me, relentlessly, violently, shoving me down beneath the dark ocean’s stormy seas. I fall to depths I’ve never known, struggling to rise to the surface of my grief. Shallow breaths sustain me.

Frantic I search wildly

Frantic, I search wildly, scanning the surging waves driving me down, down, down. I cannot find my son.

I can’t find anything to hold onto

My life is only this: being plunged down and battered by the vehemence of the ocean’s dark storm. I can’t find anything to hold onto. Not a piece of shipwreck, not a life preserver, not floating debris. Was the middle of the ocean always like this?

No stars. No light. No color save absence of color. Just darkness. Bleak. Hopeless. Disorienting.

Violent, angry seas heave. No stars. No light. No color save absence of color. Just darkness. Bleak. Hopeless. Disorienting. And desperately searching for a glimpse of my son. But no sign of life anywhere. And struggling to sustain my own.

Desperately searching for a glimpse of my son. And struggling to sustain my own

“Nothing worse will (or can) happen to me,” I tell myself.

I have just been informed, in the most matter-of -fact way by a deputy sheriff and two officers, that my twenty-year-old only child, my son Dylan, had some convulsions and didn’t make it.

It is 4:08 a.m.

It is Monday morning.

Dylan has a dentist appointment at noon.

These will be the only facts I remember from this day.

My life does not move forward

I am plunged into an existence I struggle to navigate. My life does not move forward; time does not go forward; for all that I hold closest, all that I love most, has been ripped from my life.

“There’s no need to identify the body. The ID’s been made,” stated the deputy sheriff as he handed me a Ziplock bag with Dylan’s cell phone and wallet.

A Sense of the Surreal–Is This Even Real?

Submersed in an ocean of despair, grappling with unanswered questions and an overwhelming sense of helplessness, I feel suspended. A sense of the surreal–is this even real?

In shock, yet sobbing. Standing, but falling into the chair where I grade essays

I am in shock, yet sobbing. Standing, but falling into the living room chair where I grade papers, weeping, yet calling in a monotone, flat-line voice unlike my own voice: “Dylan’s dead.”

Over and over I called–Dylan’s friends, my family, my friends, my work to say I wouldn’t be in for the day. Everybody came to my house, as though gathering together in the wee hours of the morning could somehow bring Dylan back.

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

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.

I couldn’t hear, see, be, hold, reach for, grasp, touch, feel anything familiar, loved, or comforting.

I couldn’t find my son, yet searched for him for days, weeks, and months. My heart ached in his absence, a profound sorrow that swept over every moment of my life.

Darkness descended. Questions haunted me relentlessly.

Why couldn’t I save him?
What could I have done differently?

These thoughts spiraled endlessly, and despair engulfed me. I lost track of days. Of nights. Of what used to be my life.

Against grief, I wept. Against God, I rallied. Against myself, I screamed sounds I didn’t recognize as my own.

Struggling against darkness, I searched for a way to navigate my grief. I knew only that I couldn’t do it alone.

I lived in the paralysis of my deep grief 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.

I cried out to God, to Dylan, to life, but in the end, it changed nothing. And in this hopelessness, I found release for my pain in writing.

Closing: Love, Still

I wrote “Beat Still My Heart” from the place where language nearly fails—the place where a mother’s love outlives what the world could hold. The poem does not resolve grief because grief of this magnitude does not resolve. It changes shape. It learns to breathe in broken measure. It carries the child forward in memory, in love, in the ache that remains sacred because it remains love.

Dylan was my son and my only child. The pain of losing him to suicide has no parallel in my life. Yet love has endured what the body could not bear. If this poem reaches readers so deeply, I believe it is because it was written from that most terrible truth: when a child dies, the heart does not stop loving. It goes on beating, even shattered. It goes on carrying.

Related Reads

• If Only a Mother’s Love: A Poem on Loss
• “He Left Too Soon” Poem: A Mother’s Deep Sorrow
• “On Baby’s Breath and Angel Wings” Poem: Grieving a Child’s Suicide
• Carrying Ache and Love: Healing Longterm Grief After Suicide Loss
• Haunted by Guilt in Grief Poem: “Still from Sky I’m Falling”

About the Author

Beth Brown is a writer, educator, musician, and the voice behind My Forever Son, where she writes about grief, love, and the long life of remembrance after losing her only child, Dylan, to suicide. Her work joins poetry and personal essay in a literary practice of witness—naming sorrow without turning away from it, and honoring the enduring bond between parent and child.

If You Need Immediate Support

Online Directory for Coping with Grief, Trauma, and Distress

After A Suicide Resource Directory: Coping with Grief, Trauma, and Distress
http://www.personalgriefcoach.net
This online directory links people who are grieving after a suicide death to resources and information.

Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors
http://www.allianceofhope.org
This organization for survivors of suicide loss provides information sheets, a blog, and a community forum through which survivors can share with each other.

Friends for Survival
http://www.friendsforsurvival.org
This organization is for suicide loss survivors and professionals who work with them. It produces a monthly newsletter and runs the Suicide Loss Helpline (1-800-646-7322). It also published Pathways to Purpose and Hope, a guide to building a community-based suicide survivor support program.

HEARTBEAT: Grief Support Following Suicide
http://heartbeatsurvivorsaftersuicide.org
This organization has chapters providing support groups for survivors of suicide loss in Colorado and some other states. Its website provides information sheets for survivors and a leader’s guide on how to start a new chapter of HEARTBEAT.

Professional Organizations

American Association of Suicidology
suicidology.org • (202) 237-2280
Promotes public awareness, education and training for professionals, and sponsors an annual Healing After Suicide conference for suicide loss survivors. In addition to the conference, they offer a coping with suicide grief handbook by Jeffrey Jackson. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

The Compassionate Friends
compassionatefriends.org • (877) 969-0010
Offers resources for families after the death of a child. They sponsor support groups, newsletters and online support groups throughout the country, as well as an annual national conference for bereaved families.

The Dougy Center
The National Center for Grieving Children & Families
dougy.org • (503) 775-5683
Publishes extensive resources for helping children and teens who are grieving a death including death by suicide. Resources include the “Children, Teens and Suicide Loss” booklet created in partnership with AFSP. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention and Aftercare
thelink.org/nrc-for-suicide-prevention-aftercar • 404-256-2919
Dedicated to reaching out to those whose lives have been impacted by suicide and connecting them to available resources.

Tragedy Assistance Programs for Survivors (TAPS)
taps.org/suicide • (800) 959-TAPS (8277)
Provides comfort, care and resources to all those grieving the death of a military loved one through a national peer support network and connection to grief resources, all at no cost to surviving families and loved ones.

LOSS
losscs.org
Offers support groups, remembrance events, companioning, suicide postvention and prevention education, and training to other communities interested in developing or enhancing their suicide postvention and prevention efforts.

Crisis Services

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
988lifeline.org
Call or text 988 (press 1 for Veterans, 2 for Spanish, 3 for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults) or chat 988lifeline.org
A 24-hour, toll-free suicide prevention service available to anyone in suicidal crisis. You will be routed to the closest possible crisis center in your area. With crisis centers across the country, their mission is to provide immediate assistance to anyone seeking mental health services. Call for yourself, or someone you care about. Your call is free and confidential.

Crisis Text Line
crisistextline.org
Text TALK to 741-741 for English
Text AYUDA to 741-741 for Spanish
Provides free, text-based mental health support and crisis intervention by empowering a community of trained volunteers to support people in their moments of need, 24/7.

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