With the turn of 2023, it will be nearly 10 years since my son Noah died. Notice I didn’t say “died by suicide,” as I felt compelled to do for most of those years. Earlier it felt necessary to signal that it was not only the tragic death of a young person but a traumatic death. And it felt urgent to talk openly of suicide and mental illness to dispel stigma and face what had happened. When I meet newer survivors, I see the same compulsion to name the death as suicide: this is our truth and we need to tell it.
Lately
I find myself saying that I lost my younger son or my son died—full stop. Now it
is the enduring fact of his death that I live with more than the nightmare of
the suicide itself. The shock of how he died had me in its grip, body and soul,
for the first few years, along with intense grief, guilt, and the dogged search
for answers. Those reactions have since subsided, though I will always be a
survivor of suicide loss. I still have occasional crying fits with the wail of
a wounded animal. I still have moments when I can’t believe that this happened
to my child and our family. Guilt still rears up, usually in the shape of
regret, sometimes in its more primal wrenching form. Mostly there is the pang
of simply missing my child.
What
I am left with now, like other long-term survivors, is a grievous absence and a
memory. How do you love and cherish a memory? What private grief rituals help you
tend a shrine, hold memory close? With each stage of grief, I grapple anew with
these questions.
Some
loss survivors greet their lost one every morning, light a candle for them
every evening, sit or take a walk with their spirit in a special place. Some welcome
their loved one’s visitations regularly in the form of a bird, a melody, a dream.
I did all that for a while but couldn’t sustain it. I still get a lift on the
rare occasions that I see a rainbow in the sky or prism light on the wall. I
still write Noah’s name on nearly every beach I visit, as I vowed to do in my book --but I’m not often at the beach and when I am, sometimes I forget.
As
time goes on, for me and maybe for some of you, remembering takes work. It
takes commitment, vigilance, and care to fold acts of remembrance into our
lives. We have to remember to remember, a task I find is made easier by pausing
to breathe, meditate, or pray. We have to be ready to open our grieving heart
again and again—not just to remember but to feel. And I have to be
compassionate with myself if I do not remember Noah often enough or with enough
clarity.
To
remember Noah in 2023 and beyond, I want to turn away from his death
anniversary in March and toward his birthday in June. To make sure I never miss
his birthday and he gets all the celebrations he should have had as long as I’m
alive to mark them. To seek joy on his birthday as he surely would have done
had he stuck around. To sing the refrain of a French folk song I never learned
but feel like I’ve always known, so perfect in its simplicity: Il y a
longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai (I have loved you a long
time, I will never forget you).
To
my fellow survivors: Wishing you comfort and joy in remembrance in the new
year.
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