Losing a child to suicide
Insanity reigns when grieving the loss of a child.
Almost twenty years ago I lost my beautiful son, Emile, to suicide. Twenty years I have survived. During those early days, I thought I would die from the devastating pain. I didn’t know losing a child would drive me completely insane.
He took his own life by hanging himself in a weepy willow tree, in a park near our home. He was almost 21 years old. I don’t fall apart every time I say it now. There were days when I wept for hours, lying on the floor, screaming like a lunatic. Why did he leave me in such a horrible way? The household had to run by itself, I was absent. My mind was busy with all the hateful questions.
I should have seen something wasn’t right. A mother knows when her boy is struggling. I didn’t know about the demons he was fighting. That made me a failure as a mother. Right? I spoke to hundreds of mothers who lost a child to suicide and they all feel somehow responsible. The truth is, when someone decides they are leaving by suicide, they usually don’t tell anyone. They hide it so well. They look happy, and they act completely normal. I saw no signs of his suicidal ideation.
He never left a note explaining his irrational decision, so I searched high and low for answers. Some of the parents I spoke to over the years told me the note their child left, did nothing to help them. I still have no idea why, but I have made peace with it.
For the longest time, I hated myself because I wasn’t there to save him. I couldn’t take him in my arms and tell him it would all work out alright. Time and lots of tears made me realize that there was nothing I could have done to save him.
I had to crawl out of that dark black abyss to live again. It took me five years to accept it. He wasn’t coming back. He won’t get married and have a family. There was no future with him in it. He is always in my heart and my thoughts and memories. One day I will see him again, hugging him tight and telling him how much I missed him.
In future posts I will share some of the crazy things I did during those awful years of grief.
Namaste
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I'm so sorry. Although my loss is not the same, this resonates with me tremendously. Thank you for sharing your writing. It's powerful.
I have only learned in this past year about some of the struggles my daughter had and still has after being sexually assaulted. We talked about it at the time after it happened but I didn’t get her the help she needed and didn’t know how much it affected her life until this day. We have talked a lot about a lot of the struggles and problems she encountered in her life. I blame myself because I wasn’t there for her more at the time. We never want our children to suffer but we are often unaware of their experiences if they don’t tell us about it.
I am so sorry for your loss and I am sure you would have done all in your power to help your son if you had known what he was going through.