When Memorial Day Becomes a Threshold: A Mother’s Story of Suicide Loss and Enduring Love

For bereaved parents, Memorial Day can reopen the deepest ache—summoning trauma, memory, and love that does not end. This reflection offers companionship, witness, and a tender path toward remembrance.

When Memorial Day Becomes a Threshold: A Mother’s Story of Suicide Loss and Enduring Love

Some losses do not ask to be understood. They ask to be witnessed with tenderness, carried in truth, and spoken aloud in the company of those who know this kind of love.

Preface

There are dates that do not simply return; they gather on the horizon and come for us. Memorial Day has become, for me, one of those thresholds—a season of air and light and blooming things through which sorrow moves with its own rhythm. In its approach, I feel again the old collision of love and dread, memory and helplessness, a mother’s fierce devotion standing in the shadow of what could not be mended.

What follows is not only remembrance, but reverberation: the way trauma lives on in the body, the way love outlives devastation, the way one moment can keep sounding through the chambers of a life. If you, too, are a parent living after the suicide of a child, you may know this language without words. I offer these pages in the hope that your sorrow might feel less solitary here—that in the witnessing of mine, something in you may be gently met.

Memorial Day Weekend: Echoes that Haunt

A Poignant Reminder of His Memorial Date: Here Comes the 25th

Most days, I cannot imagine my life without my son. Perhaps this is why starting my day is so difficult. It isn’t always like this, and after two years and almost 11 months, I am sometimes able to greet my day with gratitude and balance, a sense of being centered that defies my tragic loss. But today? This week? Last week? I’ve fallen–long, far, deep, and I seem unable to rise from the thrust of what’s got me so incredibly far down.

Flashback of Love

Memorial Day: A Mother’s Reflection–Dylan died on June 25th, and try as I may, I’ve never been able to get past the heaviness that bears tangible weight within me passing through the 25th of every month. And today, today I realized we have come upon Memorial Day weekend. Ugh. Blindly unaware of date and time, I live best suspended in my life now, as is, as now.

“Hello?”

” Beth, it’s (my roommate).”

“The police were just here (my house) and said Dylan overdosed again, and that he’s at Mt. Carmel East hospital.”

“Okay.”

I hung up. Suspended. Scared. Holding my breath.

Hoping, praying, desperate.

This was Dylan’s 5^th suicide attempt in five months, one attempt per month, January 2012-May 2012.

Horror does not begin to describe my life, his life, this time suspended, hovering between breath and death.

This was to be the worst attempt yet. I got the pizza to go, drove across town, and found Dylan tethered to an ER bed. He was unconscious. Breathing tube. IV’s. Beeping of monitors. Nurses in and out. Doctor. Noise. Someone was talking to me, telling me there’s nothing I can do.

Best to go home, get some sleep, a nurse will call me. Leaving, not knowing whether breath or death in my son, paralyzed, numb, screaming in my head but no voice, my not breathing fully. Hoping, praying, desperate.

At 6:00 a.m., a nurse called: “The best we can hope is that he open his eyes.”

I cannot even tell you where I was when she told me this.

Physically, I was up getting ready for work, but emotionally, pulse-wise, I didn’t even feel I was in my own body.

I felt shock, fear, and terror, and I wanted someone, somewhere, to fix this, to make it better, to save my son. I prayed, “God, save my son.”

By His Side: Losing My Son

I flew to the hospital that morning. Called work. Told them I’d be late, if at all. Critical care. Huge room. Lots of machines. Sound of rhythmic breathing–the machine breathing for my son.  

Always two nurses. More IV’s, tubes, beeps, clicks, a nurse whose name I don’t remember telling me her son’s name is Dylan.

Dylan was in critical care for 4 days. He did come to, ripped out the breathing tube, went into convulsions. I lived at the hospital in the mornings and evenings. I spent more time there than I did at work or at home. I was falling apart. And I lacked support. I could not have been more alone.

Dylan was stepped down from critical care to a 24-hour suicide watch.

I’d never even heard of this.

There was an older woman, stocky, knitting—or crocheting—or something, in a rocking chair in the corner of Dylan’s darkened hospital room. The 24-hour suicide watch room.

Dylan wouldn’t even look at me.

I brought him Reese’s peanut butter cups. His favorite. No acknowledgment. He didn’t want to be here. He wolfed down the candy, then turned away.

My life would never be the same. Dylan’s eyes were vacant. Washed out. Distant. No light. No life. I was losing my son.

Memorial Day Reflections: A Mother’s Hope in the Midst of Unbearable Grief

Today is Tuesday. Memorial Day is next Monday. All over again. And I didn’t even make plans for this weekend.

I know this is because I didn’t want to face up to the fact that it really is nearing the end of May, that we really are on the cusp of June, that the cottonwoods are blowing here, and if the cottonwoods are blowing, then it must be June.

Oh God, no, not June. Please God, no, not my child. Take me. Let him live. Please God, please—not my son.

Looking for Hope in Grief

June 25^th 2012 is the day my world stopped spinning. The unbearable tragedy of losing my son to suicide changed everything in my life. I lost who I was. And it would take a long time to learn to carry love with the ache of loss.

Today, June 25, 2015, marks 3 years out from my son’s suicide. For me, everything feels like it just happened yesterday. In fact, it is happening all over again inside me today. Post Traumatic Stress. Hell on earth. The constant reliving of my life’s tragedy–losing my son, my only child, to suicide.

How to fathom the hope to go on? Will this pain ever end?

The color of hope, in many shades.

Where and How to Find Hope

“To those of you that still feel you aren’t even sure you want to be here and you can’t imagine ever being happy again:”

“The pain does change, it softens. You will want to live again and be able to enjoy life again. It will never be like before but the crushing, all consuming pain you feel right now will soften. You will be able to live with it. It just becomes part of you.”

A Bereaved Mother Who Lost Her Son to Suicide

How I Found Hope and Support After Losing My Son to Suicide

Memorial Day: A Mother’s Reflection–Three years out from losing my son to suicide, I have learned to find hope along the way. Even in the smallest of ways. Even in the unexpected moments. But I didn’t (and couldn’t) have done this on my own.

What and Who Helped Me Find Hope in the Midst of My Grief?

In early grief, finding support was paramount for me to make it day-to-day. Support groups, both local and online, reading about grief and suicide, working with a counselor, and receiving help and support from my family and friends moved me through this impossible passage in my life.

My Forever Son: My Journey Through Healing focuses on finding support, hope, and healing.

A Compassionate Online Community for Parents Mourning the Loss of a Child to Suicide

My strongest source of hope and support came from other parents who had lost a child to suicide. You can learn more about support groups here: Finding Immediate Support Resources for Suicide Loss Survivors and Find a Support Group.

Does the Pain of Losing Your Child to Suicide Ever Change?

I learned over time that my pain won’t always be as intense; that the piercing despair and utter hopelessness I felt in early grief will gradually change shape as I move forward in grief. Another mother who had lost a son to suicide shared with me:

The Pain Does Change, It Softens

To those of you that still feel you aren’t even sure you want to be here and you can’t imagine ever being happy again. The pain does change, it softens. You will want to live again and be able to enjoy life again. It will never be like before but the crushing, all consuming pain you feel right now will soften. You will be able to live with it. It just becomes part of you.

Bereaved Mother Who Lost a Child to Suicide, Surviving Suicide Grief: Does the Pain Ever End?, My Forever Son

In Mindfulness I Find Relief

In mindfulness, I find relief. The sun is shining. It is in the high 60’s. The sky is blue. The keys beneath my fingers feel silky and smooth. I am wearing a blue lightweight sweater with a summer white sweater thrown over it. I brushed my teeth. Life goes on—sadly, life goes on and so must I along with it.

Thank God. Gratitude. The tears bubbled up this morning when I found, in the midst of some paperwork, a Mother’s Day card Dylan had given to me. He signed it “I’ll love you forever mom. Love, Dylan.”

Let the Tears Fall

When I can get my head around knowing that I will see Dylan again, be with him again, that the agony and hell for me now is this separation and distance, then I’ll be able to breathe again.

I think the tears will have to fall first, the opening of the floodgates within that which used to be called my heart. My world is cloudy black and threatening severe storms because I know the pain of living without what sustains me, nourishes me, and gives me life.

I will smile even though my heart is spilling over in tears

I know others can’t see this and don’t get this about me. Tonight, I’m due to meet a few of my close friends for a birthday dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Great food. Homemade pasta. Homemade marinara. We will laugh, share lives (theirs, not mine, or at least not the real me on the inside), toast our friend’s birthday.

I will smile even though my heart is spilling over in tears. I will celebrate my friends because in the end, that is why we’re here—to love, both give and receive, love, and I will wear bright colors even though my world is earth-shattering gray right now.

I will celebrate my friends because in the end, that is why we’re here—to love, to give and to receive, love.

God grant me strength. Oh how I miss my son.

Dylan, my forever son.

A Poem for the Sacred Heartbreak of Service, Love, and Loss: “Travel On My Brave Soldier”

For some parents, Memorial Day carries still another ache: the grief of a child who served our country and later died by suicide. I’ve included below a poem for those families—for the sacred heartbreak of service, love, and loss, and for the tender remembering this weekend can ask of us.

Travel On My Brave Soldier 

Travel on my brave soldier
Travel on wild one
Take heart winged warrior
Unencumbered take great strides.

Ride dragon’s wings forever
Stay free here evermore
Follow infinity to the heavens
Travel on to safer shores.

That might I find here right behind you
Wings that span the breadth of time, 
May I follow without ceasing, 
The way you gave your love to life.

Might I hold your hope forever
Where your light will always shine,
Glory be to stars that keep you
The way I kept you when you were mine.


©Beth Brown, 2025
"Travel On My Brave Soldier"




Read more poems here: Find Hope Here: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Healing, a deeply inspiring collection of poems that explores the journey of love and remembrance following the loss of my son to suicide at the young age of 20 on June 25, 2012. Each poem on love and loss reflects the complexities of a parent’s grief after such a profound loss, revealing the cherished memories and lessons that persist in his absence while celebrating the hope and meaning that can emerge from even the most challenging experiences.

Related Reads

You Are Not Alone

This Memorial Day story is singular in its details, but not in its ache. So many parents who have lost a child to suicide know what it is to be overtaken by a date, a room, a remembered sound, a look in their child’s eyes—and to feel the whole body return there before the mind can speak. If that is where this piece finds you, may you feel accompanied here.

May there be room enough for the tears, the silence, the remembering, and even for the faintest thread of breath. There is, I believe, a greater tenderness that can hold what we cannot resolve. And when another grieving parent bears witness to our sorrow without turning away, something sacred in our humanity is restored: we remember that even this pain does not have to be carried alone.

Share Your Story

Where do you find hope in the midst of grief?

What support groups and resources have helped you with your grief?

Leave a Comment Below

For readers who find a home in poetry, my collection Where a Mother’s Grief Resides is available on Amazon—a gathering of poems written from the sacred and shattered ground of child loss.

About the Author

Beth Brown is the creator of My Forever Son, a literary grief blog written from the lived experience of losing her only child, Dylan, to suicide. Through reflective essays, poems, and deeply personal meditations on trauma, remembrance, and enduring love, she writes to accompany bereaved parents through the unimaginable terrain of child loss. Her work offers witness, language, and hope to those living in the aftermath of suicide loss—especially on the hardest days, when memory and grief rise together.

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.

• Surviving a Loss: Resource and Healing Guide, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
• Living with Grief for Suicide Loss Survivors, American Association of Suicidology
• Suicide: How Do We Say It? The Compassionate Friends
• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (Get Help)

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