Graveside Valentine

Who knew Valentine’s Day would be so hard? I’m not a sentimental person but since my sons were little, I always made sure to give them little hand-cut hearts, candies and other silly trifles. This year, I had a nice visit with my living son a week before and texted him a virtual valentine. I realized I would need to go to the cemetery to give Noah his. 

I thought the cemetery would be full of mourners bringing valentines on February 14, but it was empty. I had only been there once since the gravestone was installed and had marveled at the little things left at its edges: a bronze Class of 2009 decal, half-smoked cigarettes with lighter, seashells, a child’s inked stamp, a pair of plastic solar-powered flowers moving up and down, a set of earbuds. It was comforting to see signs that others had been there. I was still getting used to that little square of earth as our family’s place to commune with Noah. This time, I brought an envelope of pink paper hearts with “Mom” on the back, which I staked out around the edges of the gravestone with toothpicks to prevent their blowing away. Thus festooned, the marker looked suddenly festive.

I wanted to shower Noah with love--the love I should have showered him with in his time of need, when the will to live was slipping from him. Since leaving home, he had walled himself off from me and I didn’t know how to get through to him; I was waiting for an opening, not realizing I needed to open my heart. In his last, low weeks at home after leaving college, I should have told him every day that I loved him, that I wanted to help him, that it gets better with help and time. Instead, I stole an occasional kiss to his head or squeeze of his hard shoulders and showed my love by pushing him (in vain) to see a psychiatrist. Thank God I blew him a kiss the night before he killed himself. Yet I am left with the crushing sense that my son died without a mother’s love.

Suicide makes those of us left behind doubt our love. Over and over, we retrace the missed chances to show our love, to fling it out as a lifeline. Over and over, we realize that our love wasn’t enough to save our loved ones or keep them close. We wonder whether they felt our love or truly loved us. 

When a child is terminally ill with physical illness, parents keep vigil at the bedside, declare their love and try to mend old hurts as they prepare to say goodbye. When a child is in psychic distress or mentally ill and secretly planning to end their life, there is no chance for loving vigils and farewells. Loved today, gone tomorrow. How differently we parents might have loved had we only known. 

My boys never acknowledged the valentines I gave them over the years. I could only hope that they received them and felt my love. I can only hope that if not at the end, then at some point in his suffering, Noah felt or at least remembered my love.

Grief Poems 1

I’ve been searching for grief poems that feel true to read at Noah’s one-year memorial. There is a lot out there to appeal to a range of tastes and feelings. Some grief-related web sites have made a point of collecting their favorites; I will start doing the same here. 

Here are two that speak to me, one from utter despair and one rising toward hope. I’d be grateful to know what grief poems you have found and treasured—please share!

 Funeral Blues by WH Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.  

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum  

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,

I thought that love would last forever: 'I was wrong.'

 

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"I can't imagine what you are going through."

How often suicide survivors hear well-meaning friends say that they can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child. They are trying to convey sympathy, sensitivity and respect for the enormity of our loss. They don’t want to presume what it’s like, in part because it’s too painful or uncomfortable to try to imagine. And so they stop themselves from imagining, without realizing that their statement can stop conversation and make survivors feel even more isolated and alone as the ‘other’ that no one can truly understand. 

It’s similar to when people say that “there are no words” for this experience; they want to show caring and their sense that words are inadequate to the situation. But the effect can also be silencing.

I was reminded of this recently in an essay by Phil Klay* on how veterans hear the same lines from non-veterans about their combat experience. “If we fetishize trauma as incommunicable, then survivors are trapped—unable to feel truly known by their nonmilitary friends and family,” he writes. “You don’t honor someone by telling them, ‘I can never imagine what you’ve been through.’ Instead, listen to their story and try to imagine being in it, no matter how hard or uncomfortable that feels.”

I believe people who say they cannot imagine my experience as a survivor. But I, too, would rather that they follow up with a question or a request to hear about whatever I feel able to share. Just as Klay says Americans need to hear veterans’ stories to gain a fuller understanding of war, people need to hear survivors’ stories to better grasp suicide and its relatives of mental illness, substance abuse, grief, and existential despair. These are not somebody else’s problems; even if they have not directly affected someone’s life, that could change in a moment.

I started this blog for these very reasons: so others could begin to imagine the experience of suicide loss and to break the silence when words feel inadequate. So I could speak and be heard and connect to fellow survivors. I still urgently need to make this experience understandable to myself and to others, including those far from it. I still often struggle to find the words. Right now, that search for words and meaning helps give me courage on the mourner’s path.

*Klay, P. (2014, Feburary 9.) After war, a failure of the imagination. New York Times, SR 4.

Naming Our Grief

We give our children life and we give them a name; those are our first acts as parents. When a child takes his or her life, they rob us of everything precious for a time. We are left to contemplate what they gave us and what we gave them, including their name.

What’s in a name? When we called our younger son Noah, we were looking for an N-name to honor my husband’s grandfather, Nathan. We liked the sound of Noah, thinking only vaguely of the character of his biblical namesake. Also, as we would find out, there were lots of cute ark-related toys, ritual objects, and photo ops.

Since Noah’s death, I’ve thought more about his name than I ever did before. Like so many things these days, his name has become a lens through which to refract his life and this loss, in the hope of seeing another dimension.

Like the biblical Noah, our Noah was drawn to animals, loved his wine, and spent a lot of time in the water—in his case, surfing, sailing, swimming, kayaking, and playing water polo, not to mention relaxing in the hot tub. Like his namesake, our Noah was a traveler, often storm-tossed and far from home. Tragically, our Noah was not a survivor. The journey was too long and terrifying, the promise of green land too dim and distant. He was swept away in a flood of emotion and confusion, unable to imagine any olive branch or rainbow appearing after the deluge. 

We who loved Noah may think he didn’t seek shelter soon enough or take heed to build a vessel strong enough to withstand disaster. We may lament his lack of foresight or fortitude or faith. But unless we have ourselves been caught up in such a storm, we cannot know how hard it was for him to weather it as long as he did. We cannot know how painfully fear, shame, and despair twist the mind. 

In another cruel twist, Noah’s middle name was Chayim, Hebrew for life. As parents, it’s hard not to feel that in dying by suicide, Noah rejected life, aborted the journey before takeoff. Yet for most of his 21 years, he embraced life with gusto, curiosity, and love; his life was full of adventure and rich with friends and family. As he struggled to grasp what was happening to his mind, maybe he sensed—and could not accept--the prospect of illness constraining that life.

Noah Chayim: always in our hearts . . .

To my fellow survivors: What’s in your lost child’s name? How do you mourn through it? How do you name your grief?