“Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand”

“Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand”

Epigraph

“I hope that someday we will have a better understanding – one that perhaps permits us to give grace to the one who took their life and see it as something that happened to them, rather than something they did to themselves and others.”

— Anonymous

Some poems do not seek to explain so much as to remain before what resists explanation, speaking with tenderness where judgment has too often spoken first. This piece is offered in that spirit: not as an answer, but as an articulation of grief, love, and hard-won understanding. It asks the reader to relinquish easy conclusions, to enter with humility, and to consider the grave complexity of psychic suffering with compassion. What follows is a meditation on love’s reach and its limits, on the ache borne by those left behind, and on the moral clarity grief exacts: that breaking the stigma of suicide begins when we refuse to reduce the dead to a verdict, and the living to blame.

Poem: “Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand”

Ode to Suicide

That we might understand:
All illness can be fatal.

That we might understand:
"Is suicide a choice?"
Swirls that still yet pervasive,
Stigma of suicide--

That somehow, losing a loved one,
--To suicide--
Can be controlled:

That losing a loved one could have,
Might have been,
Prevented,
Implying, of course,
That we missed something,

A fatal flaw in the way we loved;
That we somehow failed
At what is elemental to all love:
We failed to control death.

Oh that Death Could be Controlled!

That we might live past pain,
Past illness, past affliction, past disease,
Past accidents, past the constructs of the frailty of all life.

That we might understand all illnesses can be fatal.

That we might understand we cannot separate mental illness from physical illness.

That we might acknowledge no matter how great our love,
We cannot see inside another's pain.

That while advances in medicine, advocacy, and breaking the stigma serve all of us well,
No one of us can escape succumbing
To what we still don't understand:
Death in itself.

That we might understand:
We do not choose death,
Though death lives inside us all.

Life chooses fight, flight, freeze, fawn; but life does not choose death.

Death creeps in on silent stealth wings,
casting shadows of hope in our darkest despair,
the song of the siren in sweet serenade
meant to harness the instinct,
the will spirited and strong,
to live and to love to keep carrying on.

©Beth Brown, 2025

Let this ode stand, then, as a statement of understanding: a refusal of the old and damaging language that names suicide only as self-inflicted death and leaves the suffering of the mind outside the circle of mercy.

Let it speak instead for the truth grief learns at greatest cost—that anguish can become mortal, that love is not failure because it could not forestall the unfathomable, and that compassion is the only human response large enough for such loss.

For those who mourn a beloved dead by suicide, may these lines offer not conclusion, but companionship: a steadier way of bearing what cannot be mended, a language that honors both the one who died and the ones who remain. And may that honoring become, in time, a form of hope—altered, chastened, and hard-won, yet still capable of lifting its face toward light.

About the Author

Beth Brown is an award-winning poet and the creator of My Forever Son, a literary grief blog shaped by the enduring aftermath of losing her only child, Dylan, to suicide fourteen years ago. She studied with Pulitzer prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, and once wrote of orchards and farm life, of jazz and music, and of growing up among one hundred acres of orchards in the Midwest.

She never imagined that the central subject of her work would become the death of her son. After Dylan’s death, the ground of her life and writing was irrevocably altered. She now writes at the crossroads of remembrance, sorrow, and fierce maternal love, making of language a place where stigma is challenged, memory is kept close, and grief is granted its full human dignity. Her work moves among poem, essay, and reflection, bearing witness to loss with clarity, depth, and compassion. Her book of poems, Where a Mother’s Grief Resides, is available on Amazon.

Companion Essays and Poems

• Understanding Suicide: Grief and Healing Insights— a companion essay expanding the poem’s central plea for understanding and compassion.
• Understanding Suicide: It’s Not a Choice — a clear next step for readers seeking language that resists blame and deepens mercy.
• Breaking the Stigma Around Suicide: Facts, Compassion, and the Stories Behind the Statistics — an essay that joins human story to necessary truth-telling.
• Holding True to My Son’s Narrative: “Shaped by Love” Poem Analysis — a poem and reflection on grief, love, and refusing the distortions stigma imposes.
• “On Baby’s Breath and Angel Wings”: A Poem on Grieving a Child’s Suicide — for readers who wish to remain in the register of poetry and lament.

If you would like to keep reading through poetry, begin with the poetry pathways gathered at Healing Poems for Grieving Parents and Finding Hope in Grief: Poems for Healing After Loss. These pages gather poems, essays, and personal narratives that continue the work this ode begins: naming grief truthfully, resisting stigma, and making room for compassion.

Readers who wish to remain with these themes may next turn to several important companion pieces on My Forever Son:

• Exploring the Impact of Suicide on Families: Finding Light in Darkness
• Understanding Suicide: Grief and Healing Insights
• Understanding the Pain of Suicide Loss
• Breaking the Stigma Around Suicide: Facts, Compassion, and the Stories Behind the Statistics
• Finding Solace After Losing a Child to Suicide: “Build a Life of Love Around the Loss”
• “White Peonies in Bloom”: A Mother’s Heartbreak After Suicide Loss

Together, these essays, reflections, and poems widen the conversation this ode begins, guiding the reader further into the lived reality of suicide loss, the difficult labor of compassion, and the sustaining work of grief made speakable.

If this poem or reflection speaks to your own experience, I invite you to continue the conversation. You may wish to read further, share the piece with someone who may need its language, or leave a note of recognition and compassion for others walking the hard road of suicide loss. Every thoughtful reading, every shared word, and every act of mercy helps widen the space in which grief may be spoken truthfully and borne together.

Related Reads

• Understanding Suicide: It’s Not a Choice
• Find Hope Here: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Healing
• Understanding Suicide: Why the Pain Matters
• What to Say to Parents Who Lose a Child to Suicide
• Finding Immediate Support Resources for Suicide Loss Survivors

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