July 31, 2021, was a milestone for our family. It marked the opening of our son Ben's first major art installation to be purchased and permanently installed in a magnificent setting. For my husband Bryan and me, it was a day of pure joy and pride in Ben's accomplishment and perseverance, a complete immersion in his life and work. Why am I featuring it on this blog? Because it was also a day without a thought about Noah, our younger son who died by suicide in 2013. Arriving at total presence in the moment with one's living child is no small matter for parent survivors of suicide loss. I want to honor that moment here as part of healing and post-traumatic growth.
Stone 27 by Benjamin Langholz, first seen at Burning Man in 2019,
now sits atop a windy hill in Marin County, California, overlooking bay and
sea. Ben calls it a pathway of “floating stones”— an elliptical stairway of 27 boulders
suspended up to 20 feet high by miles of steel cable and towering poles. Ben
wants people to immerse themselves in the structure and “experience a moment of complete presence” —which I didn’t realize was what we did until now.
Bryan and I had seen Stone 27 at Burning Man, where we were awed by its imposing presence in the desert and delighted by the thousands of happy people clambering over it. Seeing the piece the other day in its new setting,
presiding over a wide expanse of rolling grassland and tranquil bay, made my heart swell. I could have wandered through its rigging for hours, rubbing the rough boulders and admiring the young folks who scampered effortlessly to the top. (I made it to the fifth stone – those boulders are wobbly!) A dear friend who was with us said that walking into the footprint of Stone 27 felt like walking into the weightlessness of a Gothic cathedral.
We were amazed at the monumental effort it took to get
all the heavy materials and construction equipment up a two-mile dirt track and
to anchor the structure underground with 36 2,800-pound concrete blocks. We
were even more dumbstruck that a small team of artists, engineers, Burners and assorted
friends—none of them professional builders--could make this happen under Ben’s
direction.
Who dreams up such a structure, then dares to think
it can be built in a place like this and clears each engineering and logistical
hurdle? Who keeps the team motivated and happy with abundant music, dancing, food, and thanks? Who
documents the whole project with an artist’s eye and makes sure there’s a shady
canopy at the opening with cold refreshments and chairs on a warm summer day?
Wow – it’s our kid! Bryan and I were shepping naches, a Yiddish term for feeling immense pride and joy in one’s children’s or grandchildren’s accomplishments, as well as satisfaction in them growing up to be a mensch (Yiddish for a good person).
Thanks, readers, for letting me kvell
(burst with expressions of pride and joy) about this!
Because here’s the thing: naches can be
elusive or hard won for parents who lose children to suicide. After the
suicide, we may struggle with guilt, diminished self-worth, envy of families
who can celebrate ordinary milestones. Of course we took pride and joy in our
kids in the years we had with them--but we miss out on the gratification of seeing
them become their full adult selves. That lost chance for naches is but
one of the pleasures of parenting that, in cutting their lives short, our
children took from us.
Survivors deserve to recover our capacity for happiness
after traumatic loss. If we have living children, we should be able, eventually,
to feel naches with them. Kids who lose siblings go through their own grief
and survivor’s guilt and maybe frustration and hurt if their parents are too
engulfed in grief to give them their full attention. Our living children need their
own days to shine without always being in the shadow of the dead sibling. My
husband thinks if Ben’s opening had happened a few years ago, it might have still
been clouded by Noah’s death; it was a blessing that this year, the day was “all
about Ben.”
My friend who was at the opening sent me the photo at the top of this post and wrote: “Noah is missing, yet the three of you look complete in this moment. You appear as deeply connected, valiant triumphant survivors.” It didn’t occur to me until she said it that Noah was absent from the photo and the day. Two weeks later, another friend marveled at Ben’s creativity and can-do persistence with Stone 27 and said he “came by it honestly” from his parents. This floored me as I’ve been focused on giving Ben full credit for his work—but this friend was also affirming connections within our family.
My friends’ remarks, along with some beautiful music at a Shabbat service, must have released sadness that had been building since our peak experience at the opening. At the service I was suddenly in tears, thinking of how far Ben has come as an artist, how Noah wasn’t around to see it, what Noah might have done had he lived. And how far we’ve come as a family. I still can’t explain the tears, maybe just that after all the excitement and Ben’s departure, capping a long visit home, my grieving self was back.
To my fellow survivors: How are things with you and your living children or other loved ones? Have you had moments of joy and pride with them since the suicide—or other moments that make you think you can be happy and whole again? If it’s too soon for that, what do you imagine for the future?
