In Memoriam #12

Another March 19 has arrived. Like clockwork, the star jasmine has burst into bloom, ushering in the season. I breathe in its dizzying scent. What am I to do with this reminder of how sweet the flowers were when my son Noah took his life 12 years ago?

I make a rare trip to the cemetery with my husband, Bryan. Noah’s gravestone looks ancient now amid the many shiny newer ones, whose end dates jump up at me: 2017, 2019, 2023. Why couldn’t he have lived those extra years? How much he could have learned, loved, created; how much more we could have enjoyed him. Why wasn’t he in the midst of a long life, like the old Russians with graves nearby?

Bryan and I stand over the stone and catch Noah up on the news. The little blips of our lives: the ski trip we just had with his brother, the 70^th anniversary of his grandparents, how his best friend cooked dinner for us—all places he should have been. The Eaton wildfire that miraculously spared our house but destroyed his childhood neighborhood, leaving a wasteland he wouldn’t believe. The larger disasters swirling around our country and our world at this moment—also at a scale he wouldn’t have thought possible. How Noah might have helped us weather these storms.

I tell Noah about my new book of grief poems. For the first time, I read one of the poems aloud to him. It’s about how much I miss him and would gladly “go out to eat w you, anywhere./ Even yr favorite sopping lasts-all-day/chicken burrito at Lucky Boy. You/lucky so long, then not.” Maybe I'll come back to the grave one day and read him the whole book.

As is customary, we stop to rinse our hands with flowing water before leaving the cemetery. We’re getting back in the car when a tiny yellow finch alights on the fountain, a welcome flash of life.

I told myself a year or two ago that going forward, I would try to pay more attention to Noah’s birthday than his death day. But March 19 is carved into my consciousness. It tolls like a gong from my calendar: Beware. Take care. Leave this day free. So Bryan and I will do what we often do to remember Noah: Start the day at his favorite donut place. Bring a photo album to take on a walk at one of his surf spots. Write his name on the beach.

Recently, I heard the space-age sound of an incoming Skype call on the news and my mind immediately flew to Noah at 17, calling us from his host family’s home in France. How I missed him during his long senior year abroad; how I lived to hear the telltale ping of his Skype call. How little I knew how deeply depressed he was there after a break-up; might an intervention then have prevented his crisis at 21? Had I known how short his life would be, might I have pleaded with him to stay home?

I place camelias from the yard on Noah’s grave, leave kisses in all the O’s engraved on his stone.

To my fellow survivors: How are you moving through your grief and days of remembrance? What smells or sounds sparks memories of your loved one?

Gratitude for Those Who Receive Our Broken Hearts

The season of gratitude is often dreaded by those who’ve lost loved ones to suicide. It’s not just feeling out of step with the holiday mood. It’s that our capacity for gratitude and joy has been grievously wounded. After my son Noah’s suicide, I felt disconnected from prayers and daily gratitude practice; I simply didn’t have the heart for them. I went through the motions but it took at least a year or two to sincerely feel grateful again.

Tomorrow, November 23, many of us will take part in International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Over the years, I’ve been grateful to know there’s a place to gather with others who understand at this stressful time. We create space to step into each others’ stories and shared sorrow. It’s a time to feel grateful for community and for the the people we’ve lost. (Visit this site to find a gathering near you on Saturday, November 23.)

I’m also grateful for chance encounters with other grieving parents. Who knew I would find one of those moments at a ceramics exhibit? Massachusetts-based potter Steven Branfman lost his son Jared to brain cancer at age 23. As a form of Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) in memory of Jared, Branfman began making a chawan (Japanese tea bowl) every day for a year. It wasn’t until nine years later that he felt ready to glaze and fire the 365 bowls with his signature raku technique.

Though I didn’t get a chance to see the documentary film, “A Father’s Kaddish,” about Branfman’s project, I saw an exhibit of 80 of his small, round cups, each with its own texture and color palette, each marking another day’s meditation on loss. Immediately, I wanted to hold and own a chawan, to celebrate the creativity that bubbles up out of the morass of grief. I was drawn to a bowl with pale green and emerald glints that remind me of Noah’s eyes and the sea he loved, with rough edges evoking how unfinished Noah was at 21. I like how the bowl fits perfectly in the cup of my hands and how I can feel the hands of the potter in its ridges and indentations. To my amazement, when I bought the piece, the artist wanted to meet my husband and me to exchange stories, and we had a sweet phone call together about our sons. I’m so grateful to have this artwork that began as a container for another parent’s grief that now can hold my own.

Just as I will always be grateful for the friends and family who’ve held me in my grief, especially in those most difficult early years.  “I was blessed to be one of those people who received your broken hearts” after Noah’s suicide, a grief therapist wrote to my husband and me. I’m touched that she finds this to be a blessing. I know what she means from when I’ve had the honor of supporting others bereaved by suicide.

To my fellow survivors: May you be surrounded by love and care this holiday season. May you take the opportunity to thank those who’ve received your broken heart, to remember who or what has helped hold your grief. May you feel a glimmer of gratitude return to your soul—if not this season, then maybe the next.

A Mother's War-time Eulogy and Grief After Suicide

 Moments of collective grief can be tough for suicide loss survivors. Often, we turn away because we’re already living in a world of pain and can’t bear any more. Other times, we feel keenly attuned to public grief because it mirrors our own .  

So it was for me listening to Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s eloquent eulogy for her son, Hersh, one of the six Israeli hostages murdered by Hamas in Gaza two weeks ago. My heart ached for this courageous mother, somehow able to speak her unspeakable pain in public so soon. Though the circumstances clearly differ, some of her words echo the feelings of parents bereaved by suicide. I want to highlight parts of the eulogy here in the belief that every grief informs another and unites us in common humanity.

For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. How many of us begin with gratitude when speaking about our loss? It took me many months after my son’s death to be able to say the word again, much less to own it.

Now I no longer have to worry about you. I know you are no longer in danger. Goldberg-Polin endured 11 months of anguished waiting, not knowing her son’s fate, while she advocated tirelessly for his release. Many suicide loss survivors undergo years of worry about struggling loved ones, not knowing when they might get a 3AM phone call. Some feel relief when death frees loved ones from their torment—and themselves from constant vigil.

You squeezed into your young life a lot of experiences. And that gives me relief and comfort. Hersh was a beautiful, dark-haired young man with an open-hearted smile. He looked like he could have been a cousin of my son, Noah, who had also lived multiple lives by 21. Many bereaved parents describe the great vitality of their children. If a life is to be cut short, let it be a rich life? Small comfort, but something.

Hersh’s father spoke at the funeral of having “failed” Hersh and the other hostages. His mother spoke of the sickening feeling that we all could not save them. I think we all did every single thing we could. How we survivors can relate to self-blame, one of the hardest things to cope with after suicide. Experts advise that if we put ourselves on trial for a loved one’s suicide, we should consider all the evidence, including the ways we tried to help.

As we transform our hope [that you would be rescued] into grief and this new unknown brand of pain, . . . help shower us with healing and resilience … help us to rise again. How many survivors kept hoping that our loved one would find relief from some treatment, would feel joy again and return to their former self? We keep hoping until suddenly, it’s too late. Every morning, the unbelievable shock of their absence. Every hour, how we must wrench our poor hearts from worrying and hoping about the living to mourning the dead.

I know you’re right here, Hersh’s mother said, pointing to her heart; I just have to learn to feel you in a different way. How, I continue to wonder, do we learn to love a memory?

To the Goldberg-Polin family: Thank you so much for sharing your grief. May Hersh’s memory be a blessing.

To the parents of Palestinian children killed in Gaza: Though your grief is no less intense, we hear less about it in the media. I hope that one day, we can hear your stories and eulogies more fully in English to better understand your experience. I’m reminded of how, years before the current conflict, bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents came together in organizations like Parents’Circle-Families Forum to mourn their loved ones and build relationships for peace.

To my fellow suicide loss survivors: Some days, we need to practice self-care and turn away from the sorrows around us. Other days, I hope we can recognize and greet others walking the mourner’s path, wherever they are in the world.

Announcing "In the Mourning Grove," My New Poetry Collection

To my fellow survivors & friends:

I’m writing to let you know about my new book, “In the Mourning Grove,” a collection of poems in the key of grief, now available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press.  

It was my dream to have a collection published in honor of Noah around the 10^th anniversary of his death, and I’m very glad to finally announce the book’s arrival. Half the book is elegies about Noah and the experience of suicide loss, while the other half explores a range of losses, from parents’ divorce and early deaths to the loss of innocence and the passing of a beloved pet. Fellow poets have called the poems “vivid and visceral,” “unflinching and gorgeous,” noting that they “teach us about heartbreak and resilience” in ways that are ultimately life-affirming. “When some people bury a loved one after a suicide, they bury memories of their loved one’s life,” writes Dr. Kita Curry, former CEO of  Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Los Angeles. “This brave and loving book highlights how important it is to continue to celebrate and find solace in their lives.”

I would so appreciate it if you’d pre-order a copy today for yourself and others at: In the Mourning Grove by Susan Auerbach – Finishing Line Press. Not only will you get the discounted pre-order price but if you order before September 13, 2024, you will help boost my royalty percentage. (All royalties will be donated to suicide prevention and suicide loss organizations through the Noah Langholz Remembrance Fund, as with my previous book, "I'll Write Your Name on Every Beach.") Your copies will be mailed by the publisher when the book is released on November 8, in time for the holiday season.

Many thanks for considering my request. I hope you'll find the poems meaningful.

Yours,

Susan

              

Of Birthdays, Rainbows & Trauma

My son Noah would have been 33 today. How I wish I were making him apple pie à la mode, his go-to birthday treat in the last years of his life. Or at least talking to him on the phone, wherever in the world he might have been. (My guess is he would have been in France helping the host family from his exchange student days move out of their beloved houseboat and into their first-ever home on land.) My husband and I went to a French bistro called Entre Nous last night to reminisce about Noah and the food and people he loved. How I wish that Noah were still among us to enjoy that place, to have a rendezvous with me to reconcile “between us.” How I wish that I did not need to start a new computer file called “Blog Posts – Year 11 and Beyond.”

I was recently interviewed for the podcast “Untethered: Healing the Pain from a Sudden Death”  by traumatic grief specialist Dr. Jennifer Levin. It was an occasion to look back over the years and explore how my grief has evolved with time. The biggest change is simply that grief takes up less space in my heart and mind than it did in the first 3 or even 5 or 6 years after Noah’s suicide. In the early years, the intensity of traumatic loss filled my every waking moment, and my role as a suicide loss survivor was at the core of my identity, relationships, and activities. Gradually, with a lot of work processing the loss, the intensity subsided, leaving room for other feelings and experiences. Joy, faith, and gratitude crept back in. Grief and regret over losing Noah will always be a part of me, ebbing and flowing, but they no longer dominate my days. I hope this gives hope to the newly bereaved after suicide who question if it ever gets better. (Dr. Levin’s podcast  is on a break at the moment but I recommend browsing past episodes to learn from many types of suicide loss survivors, as well as grief experts, and checking out the resources on her website .)

There are signs of this shift in grief orientation as I walk through the house and notice my different reactions to pictures of Noah and my living son, Ben. The pictures of Noah are years old and static; they will never be replaced by newer ones. The pictures of Ben are ever-changing on a digital picture frame full of his adventures and our family gatherings. I blow kisses to images of both my beautiful boys. But when I see Ben, my heart quickens in anticipation of talking with him, visiting him, traveling with him, seeing him with his cousins and grandparents—all the ways we continue to deepen our relationship and enrich each others’ lives. With photos of Noah, there is no promise of connection, no future together—only memory, weighted with regret and unanswered questions.

Lately, I’ve been feeling Noah’s presence in a more vital way in, of all places, the bathroom. Some afternoons there’s a trick of the light there that bounces off a bevel in the mirror, bending into little rainbow shapes on the tub and floor. Rainbows are rare in our southern California skies and I long ago decided that any sighting of them is a sign from Noah—even if he, unlike his biblical namesake, never got a chance to witness the miracle of a rainbow after the deluge that engulfed him. When I see the little wisps of rainbow spectrum in the bathroom, they cheer me. It’s as if Noah’s spirit found a way to reach out after all in the most humble of places at unpredictable moments. In a poem to him, I wrote: “You are teaching me not to seek/ but to notice what is given.”

Speaking of poems, I want to leave you with excerpts from a couple that may resonate. First from “trauma is not sacred” by Kai Cheng Thom :

all bodies know how to heal themselves given enough

time …

beneath the skin of every history of trauma
                there is a love poem

waiting deep below

And from Padraig Ó Tuama’s “The Lifeline”:

            When death sounds, I forget most

            of what I learnt before …

            I carve that hole in my own

            chest again, pull out all my organs once

            again, wonder if they’ll ever work again

            stuff them back in again. Begin. Again.

To my fellow survivors: Wishing you many lifelines as you move through grief.

11 Years Gone: What We Place on Our Hearts

In honor of Noah's 11th death anniversary today, I send out excerpts from a heartening teaching by Rabbi Yael Levy to all who are bereaved or suffering:

What do we place upon our hearts

When our hearts are broken,

Weary,

Anguished,

In despair?

 

We place upon our hearts

Names of those we love.

We place upon our hearts

Names of those who have loved us,

Names of those whose challenges, joys,

Pain and achievements we carry.

 

I place upon my heart

The intention to be present,

Even in the face of loss and grief.

I place upon my heart the intention

To seek the light

Shining in the brokenness,

Always.

 

I place upon my heart tender memories of Noah and and the intention to carry him with me, always.

March Sadness: Tugs of the Season

The three weeks leading up to Noah’s deathaversary have always been harder for me than March 19th itself. Those were the days 11 years ago of bringing Noah home to heal, only to helplessly watch his decline as he refused treatment. Before mental illness robbed our family of Noah and his love, it robbed us of the chance to help him.

I used to start counting down the days to March 19 after my February birthday. Last March, I was busy preparing for the 10^th death anniversary with love notes and travel plans; the anticipation of celebrating Noah’s friendships kept me hopeful, even buoyant. This year post-birthday, I got COVID and couldn’t think about loss or much of anything.

Now the familiar downward tug of March sadness is back. While trying to recover my strength, the double blow of COVID and grief has literally stopped me in my tracks. I’ll be 15 minutes into an easy neighborhood walk and need to sit down. I’ll plan two things to do in a day instead of one and need a nap by 1pm. I toss and turn all night. As in the aftermath of the suicide, the body takes a hit.

I woke up this morning with my mind on Noah and his illness. Bryan and I like to dwell on what our son might be doing if he were alive but we tend to skip over how he would have had to battle his illness or learn to manage it. So much damage had already been done to the boy we knew and loved by the time he took his life. That’s a tough truth to remember. Might he have emerged from the ordeal with new self-awareness, deeper love and compassion for others, openness to mindfulness or spirituality? Might our family have found a new balance?

An old friend who came to be with me right after Noah died hasn’t visited much since then. She was here last month, overtaken by tears at one point. “I keep thinking about Noah,” she said. “It’s so sad and there’s nothing to be done.”

So what to do? I take a hot bath in the middle of the day. I make a lot of soup. I cuddle with the dog and marvel at the chickens. I put on the last gift Noah ever gave me, a silky black shirt covered with odd little chickens. I reread a chatty letter in Noah’s careful handwriting from 2008, signed “miss you” and “love.” I remember a dream with messages flashing in hot pink and purple lettering on his memorial stone. I couldn’t read the words. But what mattered was that they were from Noah in colors I associate with his spirit. What mattered was that I felt his love.

It's been a cold, rainy winter. The star jasmine vines that usually announce the month have been slow to spill over the fence with their entrancing fragrance. I’ve been checking and the blossoms are doubling now from morning to evening. The first rock rose and California poppy are out in the garden and we are awash in backyard eggs. March sadness may be a perennial but harbingers of spring abound. What matters is to notice.

To my fellow survivors: What’s it like for you as your loved one’s deathaversary approaches? What do you notice shifting over the years? Wishing you comfort, courage and clarity as you move through your days.

Past & Present Connections: Where Will Your Love Go?

I’ve had this list of resolutions on my office wall since 2017, four years after my son Noah died by suicide. Though I rarely notice the list anymore, I’ve internalized much of it. I tell Noah he should have been here for a family party or my reunion with his old friends or the latest Kore-eda Japanese film. I nurture my friendships and love to spend time in mountains, near and far. I wrote a book of grief poems that will be published next year. Still, I wish I did more things more often in his name: visit his grave, travel, relax.

When I made the list, I was desperate to stay connected with the living Noah, much less Noah’s memory. I could already feel him taking up less space in my heart and mind. From then till now at the 10-year mark, I’ve agonized over what has felt like a gradual, inevitable loosening of the bond as the pleasures and demands of the present rush in. Noah’s struggle and horrific death no longer crowd out everything else as they once did.

Our son, Ben, just gifted us a digital photo frame loaded with photos of his (Ben’s) life, our beloved little Frenchie, trips together. I wanted to add pictures of Noah but my husband said the pictures on the frame should be from the present. This startled me: does Noah belong only to the past? All the pictures we have of him are at least ten years old while everyone else is moving on in their lives. How can that be?

Ben has given us wonderful photos of himself and his art, which we gladly display. Was the digital frame another way to assert himself in our home amid plentiful images of and by Noah on the walls? Does our living room feel like a shrine to his brother that leaves him out? I plan to talk with Ben about this in the new year and may reconsider. At the moment, I still want to walk by and sit near signs of Noah’s presence in our lives.

It is often said that grief is love with no place to go. I felt that so acutely in the early years, as if I had a phantom heart; I kept reaching for it but it was utterly shattered. As if all the love and care and worry for Noah that had flowed for 21 years suddenly hit a mighty cliff face and exploded into an abyss. No outlet. No response. No home for the love I thought would fill a lifetime.

As I document on this blog, it took time and effort and a lot of support to let grief open my heart again. Sometimes I found places to bring my love; sometimes they found me. Sometimes I was (and still am) more numb than I want to be. The journey continues …

Wishing everyone heartening connections in the new year.

To my fellow survivors: Wishing you more hope and healing in 2024. If you feel grief is love with no place to go, how might you revitalize that precious flow of love you had with your lost one? To what or whom might you now direct it? What’s on your list of ways to cherish their memory?

 

 

Of Triggers and Tears—& Survivors Day November 18

For the past month, though our family has no loved ones in the Middle East, I’ve been immersed in collective grief over events in Israel and Gaza. As when the nation mourned 500,000 COVID deaths or yet another mass shooting, I found myself easily caught up in the global anguish; I was already bereaved and it didn’t take much to remind me of losing my son Noah to suicide. I could cry along with masses of people I didn’t know because I know how it feels to mourn or to lose a child. I felt especially vulnerable as the war intensified and anti-Semitism flared around the world; as in the aftermath of suicide, so much of what was trusted and taken for granted is in disarray. I hope any of you feeling overwhelmed by the news can pace yourself and set limits on your media consumption, just as survivors learn to “dose” our grief.

I also found myself suddenly in tears reading about the suicide deterrent steel nets that are finally being installed at the Golden Gate Bridge. More than 2,000 suicides have taken place there since 1937. Why did it take so long to build a physical barrier? I cried out of frustration for all the deaths that might have been prevented. I cried because there are still so many unprotected “suicide bridges” out there, including one in my home of Pasadena, CA. And because there are no physical barriers possible for some means of suicide. I wondered whether Noah had ever considered jumping when he was living in San Francisco and riding his bike over the Golden Gate, taking in the magnificent views. So many ways you could have died, I wrote shortly after his death. On surfboard, snowboard, motorcycle—/just one blindsiding wave, curve, car. …

Maybe I’m more triggered than usual because I’ve been reading Sushi Tuesdays: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience by Charlotte Maya. Her 41-year-old husband jumped to his death from an office building in my town. It’s been several years since I read a grief memoir and it’s bringing back lots I’d forgotten about the aftermath of suicide, from dealing with the coroner to having to take care of others in their grief. Maya’s story is especially vivid in depicting her and her young children’s anger at being abandoned and betrayed—an emotion that is often given short shrift in the suicide loss community. She also has much to say about the heartening support the family received from a seemingly endless supply of helpful “Janes” in her community.

“Grief is like a heavy sandbag at your feet,” a survivor friend tells Maya. “And if you do not pick it up, it will trip you for the rest of your life. But when you do pick it up, you will notice there’s a little tiny hole in the bag. That’s where the grains of sand start to fall out.” Maya struggles with the sandbag as she goes through a highly self-aware, intentional grief process. “If there is to be any healing,” she writes, “learning to navigate the storm will be key. What a shame it would be not to be changed by the experience.”   

Lifting up and checking out that sandbag is key to post-traumatic growth, as many of us have found. The image reminds me of Edward Hirsch’s lines in Gabriel, a book-length poem about the sudden death of his son:

I did not know the work of mourning

Is like carrying a bag of cement

Up a mountain at night …

 

Look closely and you will see

Almost everyone carrying bags

Of cement on their shoulders

 

That’s why it takes courage

To get out of bed in the morning

And climb into the day.

To my fellow survivors: Here’s to hefting those bags together and climbing into the day as we move into the daunting holiday season. If you haven’t ever attended an event for International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day—Saturday, November 18^th this year--you may find fellowship and comfort there. Click here to find an event near you and take good care.

Mission Accomplished -- Now What?

The 10^th year pilgrimage to visit our son Noah’s friends in Europe is over. I needed to make the trip to reassure myself that he is still loved and remembered and missed. Mission accomplished – and I’m so grateful to have reconnected with these wonderful people.

We toasted to Noah at almost every meal. Everyone seemed pleased to see us and to have the chance to talk about Noah, remarking how easy it was for him to talk with anyone from any walk of life. “You made a good man,” said Vasco, his best friend from home who now lives in Paris (in photo with my husband, Bryan).

I asked everyone what they thought Noah would be doing now. They imagined him working in film or photography, sailing in the Greek islands, finding a way to live in Europe, and, to my surprise, having a child or two because “he was always thinking of the next steps in life.” Notably, everyone pictured him healthy and full of life like he used to be. Bryan saw Noah arriving in Paris by boat and coming to join us at an outdoor café at the top of some stairs near Montmartre; I visualized his long legs jostling the tiny, teetering tables and his slipping into laughter, drinking, bravado. I kept wanting to text him news of what all his friends were doing.

“So much has happened in 10 years,” said Vasco. “At 21, we were all still trying to figure things out.” He teared up often as he threaded memories of Noah through our walks around the city. Losing Noah to suicide had made him and others more compassionate and ready to reach out when friends are struggling.

Our last visit was with Filippo, Noah’s best buddy during his year as an exchange student. Filippo cooked for us, as he often did for and with Noah. The two of them used their homemade pasta carbonara as a ticket into high school parties when they weren’t invited. We learned how mutual friendship with Noah, then grief over Noah’s death brought him and his lovely partner together. At one point, answering their questions about Noah’s last months and seeing their stricken faces, I wanted to leave the room and have a good cry. But their baby kept beaming her crooked smile at me and I couldn’t help smiling back. We all agreed that Noah would have delighted in their new family and would have wanted everyone he loved to enjoy life-- like Bryan and I had been doing a few days before, hiking with our son Ben and his girlfriend in the Dolomites.

After that last visit, my body felt suddenly heavy, like I could barely walk. I felt the long, leaden weight of the past 10 years, of everything I’d been carrying, of the nightmare months just before and after the suicide. There won’t be another pilgrimage like this. This is maybe where I stop living for Noah and making trips he would have made.

I arrived home in a daze of cumulative fatigue. I'd felt slightly queasy for weeks. I had enjoyed the visits and the beauty and the adventures but the gut doesn’t lie; I still couldn’t fully digest the loss I was marking. I promptly got sick and hibernated for a week. I needed to be still and process the journey.

And I needed to care for Miso, our little French bulldog, whose cancer had worsened while we were away. Miso: a funny little creature with a dozen nicknames and a determined trot who could stop adults in their tracks with her 15 pounds of muscle and stop traffic with her cuteness, who barked fearlessly at big dogs and skateboards and purred when you held her close to your heart. She’d been in the family for 10 years, the same years when we’d most needed comfort and joy after losing Noah. He never met Miso and would have scoffed that she wasn’t a real dog but he, too, would have had to laugh at her and love her. Bryan, Ben and I were together yesterday to cuddle Miso and say goodbye.

Ten years gone. The end of an era. What, I wonder, is the next chapter?

To my fellow survivors: Do you keep in touch with the people in your loved one’s life? If not, I urge you to reach out – they, too, may need to talk and reminisce and make sense of what happened. And if you don’t have a comfort animal, I hope you are finding comfort on your journey from other beloved beings, things and places. 

On Enough-ness & Gratitude, Mother's Day and Beyond

I’m struck by the messaging of NAMI (National Alliance on MentalIllness) for Mental Health Awareness Month this May. Like: “If someone you love is going through a hard time, you don’t need to have all the answers. Just being there is #MoreThanEnough. Learn more with @NAMICommunicate at nami.org/mhm.” Everyone is included and everyone is reassured that they are enough in situations when too often, nothing feels like enough.

Suicide loss is one of those experiences that shatters our sense of self-worth. We can beat ourselves up for years over our inadequate response to our loved one’s struggle. Can we ever believe we were a good enough parent, child, partner, friend to the person we lost? Can we ever feel we did enough to prevent the tragedy? Especially in the early years after the suicide when guilt and shame often assail us, it’s hard not to list all the signs we missed, all the actions not taken and words left unsaid. We have to wait for the storm of self-blame to subside a bit to remember all the good things we managed to say and do to try to help--and to face the possibility that ultimately, our lovedone’s act was outside our control.  

Even ten years on, I find it takes intention and practice to enter into a place of enough-ness, which is essentially a place of gratitude, a willingness to be with what is. There’s always that nagging presence hovering at the edge of awareness, reminding me of Noah’s absence, my grief, and my helplessness in the last months of his life. How can I be enough as a person, as a mother, when my child took his life? How can I ever grieve enough for this loss?

I can’t help being aware of that nagging presence, dragging me back to the deepest sadness and regret of my life. But I can choose to resist its pull when it gets in the way of living the life I have now. A full life, in spite of and because of traumatic loss.

None of this embracing the “enough” is quick or easy. Meditation helps center me in the present, connecting to the fullness of breath. Gratitude practices also help, like keeping a daily appreciation notebook or taking a gratitude walk. We can try to be open to love, joy, self-compassion and whatever grace we find as we move through grief. Over time, we have the chance to recover the sense of gratitude that the suicide may have destroyed. Even if we’re not convinced we are enough in the global sense, what about at least allowing for moments of enough-ness?

Our loved ones, when struggling with mental illness or suicidal thoughts, were enough.

Our efforts to help them the best way we knew how were enough.

Our way of grieving the loss of them is enough.

It’s often said that grief is love with no place to go. When we allow gratitude back into our hearts, we realize there are a lot of places to bring the love we would have given to and received from our lost one. As I embark this month on a trip to visit Noah’s friends, I hope to bring that love with me to share with others, along with the love Noah would have heaped on those friends had he lived.

To my fellow mother survivors: May you be open to love and gratitude this Mother’s Day, with moments of “enough-ness.” As poet James Crews writes in “Gratitude”:
[Gratitude] is the faithful companion

we have always been seeking,

this feeling of fullness

that follows us everywhere

we go, less like a shadow

trailing the body, and more

like a glimmer held in the heart

that promises never to leave.

In Memorium: Noah Langholz – 10 Years Gone Today

       

In the lead-up to my son Noah’s 10^th death anniversary, I’ve been noticing the orange tree in our backyard. I’ve come to associate it with meditating on receiving and extending love. I admire the radiance and abundance of its fruit as the heavy branches spill and sprawl over the fence. I want to keep an image of this beautiful tree before me to grace this day and the years to come without Noah.

The plentitude and beauty of the orange tree remind me of:

-       the richness of Noah’s life—of the many people, experiences, interests, and talents he enjoyed, and of the love he felt and spread;

-       the outpouring of love and support from so many after his death;

-       the sweetness of the bond between my husband and I and our living son Ben, which has grown and deepened and done much to fill the empty places;

-       the fullness of life that the three of us have been able to rebuild over many of these past 10 years in spite of our devastating loss but also because of it; and

-       my hope for healing and recovery for fellow survivors of suicide loss and for those who are suffering

"And at times I'm like the tree, ripe and rustling,

standing above the dead boy's grave,

gathering him in its warm roots,

fulfilling the dream he'd lost

in sorrows and songs."

                                                    (Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours)

To Noah: Wish you were here to pick the fruit and make lots of juice, chatting in the kitchen. And to juggle oranges with your dad and brother. With love, gratitude, and amazement at all you were, we remember you.

Planning Love Notes for a Death Anniversary

I’m entering 2023 with trepidation around the 10^th anniversary of my son Noah’s death. I feel called to do something different than our usual trip to a beach town, where we look through photos, watch the dogs frolic, and write Noah’s name in the sand.

I’ve decided to focus on Noah’s birthday month in June rather than his death day month in March. I hope to have a series of visits with his far-flung friends and cousins, most of whom we see only rarely, and raise a toast to Noah’s memory. Is it too much to ask them what makes them think of Noah or what memory is clearest after 10 years? I’m hungry to add their Noah memories to my own, which seem to fade and shrink with each passing year. Maybe it's more considerate to ask them what they imagine Noah might be doing right now if he were still with us, or what would be exciting or dismaying him in the world. Maybe that’s a happier thought than trying to summon up a memory.

I’ve been taking an eye-opening class about receiving and extending love. The teacher asked us to bring to mind a moment anytime in our lives when we felt truly loved and seen for who we were—not as part of a perfect relationship, just a sense of a moment. I was surprised at how many moments came to mind and how many of those were related to Noah’s death. And how easy it was to call up those memories when the teacher asked us to imagine that person or persons standing behind us, holding us up.

So instead of focusing on Noah on his death day this year, I’ve decided to turn my attention to the circle of love that sprang up around us after his suicide and cushioned some of the pain of those early years. To all those who showed up at our house for the shiva memorial after the funeral and formed a wall of sound during the prayers when I felt very small and could barely speak or sing. To those at synagogue who literally had our backs as they sat behind us at services when we were crying. To the friends and family who checked in and surrounded us with care as they listened to our anguish, brought us food and books and healing oils and walks and plants and homemade bread. To those dearest ones who kept calling and listening and encouraging as I bushwhacked through the wilderness of grief. I was thinking of the guardian spirits who lifted me up and urged me on with the epitaph in my memoir, “They will bear you up on their palms lest you stumble on a stone” (Psalm 91).

So I plan to spend Noah’s 10th death anniversary reading the cards and notes we saved from the time of Noah's death and reaching out with personal notes to everyone I appreciate from those early years. I want to let them know how much I took their love to heart back then, how it sustained and amazed me and moves me still. What a blessing at the worst time in my life to have been the recipient of such an outpouring of care and compassion. Such an experience is truly transformative. Moving through terrible grief within the safety of that circle of care allowed me to bit by bit, open up my wounded heart.

To my fellow survivors: What comes to mind when you think of moments when you felt truly loved? If some of those moments were in response to your grief, have you thanked the people who supported you lately? Next week – or anytime!—is a good time to send those love notes. . .

Enshrined in the Heart: The Work of Remembering

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.

To all my readers: This blog recently changed its subscription service to follow.it (Feedburner alternative), in case you’re wondering why your e-mail notification looks different or why you didn’t get notified of my previous blog post, “Empathy Lessons” in November. You can make adjustments to your subscription here 

 

Empathy Lessons on Survivor Day, November 19, 2022

 

I’ve written before of the gift of a larger-than-life original portrait of my son Noah from our niece and how a glimpse of it can mesmerize me. Sitting in my living room this week gazing into the Zoom meeting screen, I realized my head was in just the right position to block Noah’s head in the portrait on the wall behind me. I appeared, for once, to be looking out at the world from Noah’s place in it. This was startling as it had never quite happened that way in the many Zoom meetings I’d done in that room. Did I suddenly notice the convergence of our two heads because I’d recently been reading and thinking about empathy?

I’m ashamed of how little I was able to understand Noah’s feelings and walk in his shoes when he was struggling. I was too caught up in my own struggle, helpless to help him and to find a way out of our estrangement. My own experience of depression in my 20s was very different than Noah’s and I couldn’t see why it was so disabling for him. I didn’t know that he was having severe anxiety attacks and frequent suicidal thoughts; even if I had, I would not have known how those felt. I knew he was in deep trouble but I was too frantic about it to be able to sit with him in the dark and listen.

It was only after Noah’s death, through suicide prevention training, that I learned how to be present for someone in distress and hear their story. It was only after learning more about suicide and mental health conditions that I could sense the suffering all around me, especially among young people, and try to reach out.

Empathy, I now know, is a response that can be taught, a muscle that can be strengthened. My greatest lessons in empathy have come through walking beside other suicide loss survivors on the long, circuitous path to healing. In the early years, I was stumbling through traumatic grief, hanging on every restorative word of those ahead of me on the journey. I could say anything about how I was feeling and they understood. I could ask how they could bear it and they would tell me, step by step. We were all  banished to a parallel universe, breathing the same thin air of an alien planet, trying to find a way home.

Over the past ten years, I’ve gotten into the habit of reaching out to other loss survivors, especially mourning moms, on this blog, in my book, and in person, both one-on-one and in groups. I encourage survivors not to fear their grief but to sit with it and fully express it. I invite their stories, anticipate their needs, reassure them, as I was reassured in the bleakest time. I try to remember not to assume anything about others’ grief, but to gently ask instead. I remind them to take good care of themselves every day.

Being with my fellow survivors reminds me that there are always more opportunities for empathy—giving it, receiving it. And that the more we practice it, the more it becomes a part of us and of healing the world.

Wishing everyone a heartwarming season of gratitude.

To my fellow survivors: If you want to be with some powerful empathy teachers, check out International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day to see stories of survivors from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Another great resource every day of the year is the articles and community forum at Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors

Tripping Over Grief and the Right to Thrive

 

It wasn’t until I came back from a recent trip that I had the jarring realization that I’d barely thought about or talked about my son Noah, who died by suicide in 2013. This was a first since Noah loved to travel and my husband and I often try to imagine him in places we visit. On this trip, I hadn’t even written Noah’s name on every beach, as I vowed to do in my memoir. Instead, I was reveling in new vistas, tastes, and experiences with my husband and son Ben after so much pandemic isolation.

I loved the trip and getting to spend extended time with Ben. He deserves my full attention, which I couldn’t give him back when still overcome with grief. But on future family trips, I want to make a point of saying Noah’s name, making a toast to him, remembering and celebrating him together. With time, this may take more effort and intention.

“Grief is a floating barge-boat,/who knows where it’s going to/moor?” –Charles Wright,“Toadstools”

In the unpredictable drift and swell of grief, I’ve been missing Noah a lot since coming home. It’s the time between my father’s 40^th death anniversary and Noah’s would-have-been 31^st birthday. I welcome the upwelling of sadness and regret and the good cry I had during deep relaxation at a yoga class—far better that than weeks without Noah on my mind. At 9+ years after his suicide, what I fear most is no longer carrying him with me as memories flee.

Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep… It interrupts you mid-laugh when you’re at a party, chastising you that just for a moment you’ve forgotten. – Suleika Jaouad, “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted”

Sometimes I’m living my life and reasonably happy, even excited or full of gratitude,  and suddenly I trip over Noah’s death. It’s like an ambush by a little alien voice in my head. Wait – how can I be happy when I’ve lost a child to suicide? Now or ever? How can I forget the enormity of what happened and blithely move through my days? As if I’ll always bear this burden and it will always hobble me. I have to rise up, quash the demon voice and assert my right to thrive, even amid sorrow and regret.

Grief is such a small word for such big feeling. Like light, it is right on top of you one minute and halfway across the world in the next. – Sarah Haufrecht

After Noah died, I thought a lot about the biblical Noah and decided to consider every rainbow a sign from my son—luminous, rare, spanning worlds. We hardly ever see rainbows where I live in southern California. But every afternoon lately when the angle of the sun is just right, I’m treated to little streaks and smudges of rainbow light skittering across the bathroom floor. With those splashes of color, Noah’s spirit is peeking into the house, leaving his mark, determined to live on among us. Every afternoon, a little bit of Noah comes home to delight me.

To my fellow survivors: With each of us at different stages, you may feel banished from joy right now. I get it. Still, summer’s here and I hope you’ll allow yourself some of its pleasures. You deserve a grief respite. You deserve a delightful day or week in spite of—because of ---everything.