New Directions in the New Year

This is the first Jewish new year since Noah's suicide that I could begin to reclaim the kind of introspection and repentance I used to do in preparation for the holiday. I went to a retreat where I cried often but could still be present for gratitude practice and important teachings about despair, comfort, and transformation. I wrote a little in my journal about where I’d missed the mark, hurt others or been hurt by them, and intentions I wanted to set for the new year.  

Reading those intentions a few days later, I was appalled to see no mention of Noah. In the past, I always had a resolution for being my better self with each family member. This year, I thought about finding daily ways to remember Noah because I’m uneasy with how memories of him are coming unglued in my mind. But when making the list, I forgot to include anything about Noah’s memory, much less a fuller sense of forgiveness—that murky place I rarely visit. It was as if Noah had slipped from my consciousness. This scared and chastened me; I joked with my support group that I'd have to atone for the omission. The facilitator reassured me that Noah’s absence from the list means I'm starting to integrate the loss and focus on rebuilding. I hope she's right. When I looked at the list again, I noticed that my resolutions for my husband and living son relate back to Noah’s death, so indirectly, he was on the list all along.  

Poet Merle Feld suggests warming up for the Jewish new year by reflecting on when in the past year you were your best self and felt most proud or fulfilled. Those moments came for me when I was reaching out to other suicide loss survivors and creating tools, experiences, or writings to help them move through grief. I also felt fulfilled when I used my voice or leadership to enrich spiritual life in my Jewish community. Grief has propelled me into greater expression of caring, compassion, and creativity. 

Therese Rando writes in Grief, Dying and Death (1984) that mourners must create a new relationship with the person they lost and a new identity for themselves. I’m on the way, I think, to a shift in identity, but I’m stumped when it comes to re-forming my relationship with Noah. Maybe I’m still mourning the part of me that has died. “The interactional part of the self created by the unique and special relationship . . . now exists only in memory,” according to grief expert, Rev. Alice Zulli. All the parts of me that were linked to Noah, involved in raising and loving him over the years and thinking about, interacting with, and worrying about him as a young adult, have been slowly leeching out of me since the shock of his suicide. The dead take us with them; it’s easy to feel dragged away, especially with suicide loss, when there's no chance for reconciliation or good byes and we may have felt helpless for months or years in the face of their suffering. Zulli advises the bereaved to grieve for what is truly gone, affirm what continues, and accommodate the new. 

Right now, it’s hard to see how a one-sided relationship to the past and to memory can be a relationship at all—especially with a vital young son who was once so engaged and engaging. Maybe that’s a task for the next new year.

From Numb to Stunned

While out of town recently, I was feeling numb about Noah, as if detached from my loss and traveling incognito. I was underground; no one knew I was a suicide loss survivor. Actually, most people I talked to did, though only a couple expressed condolences. If people feel unsure of what to say in the immediate wake of suicide loss, how much more awkward it is after time has passed. To speak or not to speak? I propose a new rule of etiquette: if you haven't seen the bereaved person since their loss, no matter how much time has gone by, murmur a few words. It's not a painful reminder; we are reminded every day. It's a caring, respectful acknowledgement of the enormous hole in our lives.

Only one moment on my trip broke through the haze. In a small museum, I turned a corner and looked down on this plaster scale model of  the bronze Pennsylvania Railroad War Memorial--the grief within suddenly embodied, filling a gallery.

The long, lean young man, weightless in the encircling arms of the angel. The strong angle of the neck with the soft fall of the head. The feet suspended above the earth, just out of the fire. The surrender to a force poised to carry him away. The readiness of the wings, the knowing gaze.

The streamlined 39-foot monument is "unusual in its intense verticality," I read--as was Noah at 6'4". Larger than life--as was Noah in his prime.

There is a Jewish tradition that every blade of grass has a companion angel urging it to grow. I used to scoff at such things. If only there had been a wise, calm companion that Noah had trusted to bear him through the fire to a healing place.

Today, September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day, I pray that those at risk for suicide can stop scoffing long enough to recognize the angels in their midst--and that more people can reach out to those in crisis with compassion and informed support.

When Remembering is One-sided

"I will remember you; will you remember me?" I've been so preoccupied with how we will remember Noah that until I chanced to hear this wistful song again the other day, I’d forgotten about Noah remembering us, his family. The silence at the end of the question sent me into a long crying fit in the car. 

Mutual remembering is the bargain we strike with those we love, even if we eventually break up or lose touch. They matter to us and we to them; we have shared some experience together; we recognize each other’s uniqueness; we are different for having known one another. This bond sustains relationships and makes us wistful at life’s passages, from graduations and weddings to the end of summer camp.

In families, it’s an unspoken covenant between generations that elders will not be forgotten; younger ones will tend our shrines. The young will carry us with them in how they see and act and look in the world, maybe even pass some stray bit of us on to the next generation. The whole taken-for-granted enterprise of family—what we bequeath to the young (for better or worse) and how they receive (or resist) it. Our little toehold on immortality.

But a suicide breaks the promise, nullifies the bargain. All of us who loved the lost person will continue to cherish them and carry them with us, but their particular way of holding us in their hearts comes to an abrupt halt. What should be a mutual exchange becomes woefully one-sided. This loss of part of ourselves happens with any death, of course, but it is compounded by suicide and especially a young person’s suicide, when there are no good byes. This did not have to be.

It strikes each time with a heavier sense of finality: The piece of my husband and me that became part of who our child was died with him. Our particular spark will never move through Noah and be reflected by him and re-imagined and passed on to others. We will never be regarded and remembered and loved in quite that inimitable Noah-like way again. We have to learn to live with the silence in this one-sided relationship of remembering.

Of Shaming and Naming

True confession: I'm ashamed of how I sometimes give in to the shame and stigma that still surround suicide in our society.

At my group adult bat mitzvah three months ago, I decided not to include the part of my speech about grief after suicide because I didn’t want to dampen the celebratory mood of other families with a reminder of our tragedy. (Also because I didn’t want to risk being any more weepy than I already expected to be that day!) As a result, I felt invisible during the ceremony compared to classmates who shared highly personal speeches. About a year earlier, when I read the bat mitzvah class a reflection on how the suicide made me feel cut off from God and holiness, one person commented, “too much information.” I felt shamed and shocked—only slightly mitigated by sympathetic hugs from others. So is it any wonder I was wary of sharing my experience in a larger setting on our big day?

At family gatherings, I still find myself self-censoring sometimes and not talking about Noah when he comes to mind for fear of bringing people down and sucking all the air out of the room. Is this a surprise when most relatives continue to avoid mentioning him?

On this blog, it took months for me to write Noah rather than N. When I made the change, it was a relief, as if restoring his personhood and our connection. But I keep my full name out of postings for fear that students or colleagues will Google my name, see the blog, and judge me; I don't want them to know this fact about me, especially if they don't know me well. The blog still lists Mourning Mom as the author. And I know I will need to check with my husband and son about using Noah’s last name in a book I'm writing based on the blog, lest it somehow harm them or sully Noah's reputation or our family name-- in the eyes of . . . who?

The most moving moment at gatherings of suicide survivors for me is the closing ceremony when we hold hands or light candles and go around the room each speaking our lost one’s name and their relation to us. Some people, like me, have more than one name to say. We stand up and speak the names with sadness, love, and pride. These names that are spoken less and less often in the world as time moves on. These lives that we will never forget. In that setting, we stand together against shame and stigma.

I was amazed last year to see thousands of young people at the Alive and Running run/walk for suicide prevention, noisily lining up for T-shirts and water like at any fundraising race. Afterwards, I thought of changing out of my T-shirt when I went to a nearby café; it was OK for the race, not in public. But the cafes were full of people in T-shirts proclaiming their affiliation with the cause or the name of the loved one whose memory they were honoring. The S-word was outed on a sunny Sunday morning while other people enjoyed their brunch or cappuccino, and there was no shame. This gives me courage.

I’ll be walking in the event again on September 27 in Los Angeles, still learning to stand without shame in public as a survivor of suicide loss.  Join me?

When Couples Grieve, Part 2: Travelling in Different Directions

Our three-week road trip last month turned into two weeks. We never made it to Glacier National Park. We traveled with differently weighted packs of grief taking up more and more space in the car. I was eager to see new vistas and explore the route together, like we had on a wonderful cross-country trip the year before Noah’s decline began. My husband, tied to home as steadying comfort, was anxious and glum being away. Little things sparked panic; normal pleasures felt flat. “Do you want to turn around?” I asked, but he said we should continue. 

Then, in an unfamiliar town, the dog disappeared into the woods at dusk and didn’t come to our calls. He finally turned up half an hour later, but not before turning my poor husband ashen at the thought of another loss. We managed to have a good hike the next day with friends—and the dog firmly on leash--but I knew something was still wrong when my husband refrained from climbing a higher peak from the overlook. The next day, he left the farmer’s market after a few minutes without even tasting the local apricots. This time, we decided to cut the trip short.

On the long drive home, my husband seemed relaxed and relieved to be heading back to the familiar. I was glad for his sake but worried whether we’d ever be able to enjoy traveling together again for more than a few days. Once home, we reveled in the tomatoes and peaches that had ripened in our absence. Then I caught a glimpse of our shrine to Noah and my heart sank. Back to this again, I thought; still here, still dead. The reminders of Noah that fill our home are what I need to leave behind for fresh perspective--and what my husband needs to hold close for security and comfort. I look forward to the newness of travel; my husband is wary of feeling “unmoored.” A support group facilitator tells me this kind of divergence is common for survivor couples.

After stewing in some glumness of my own, I plunged into a work project. I’m trying to see the shortened vacation as a blessing, forcing me to journey inward with creative and spiritual pursuits. Maybe soon, I’ll think about travel plans with friends or shorter trips with my husband. Slowly, he and I are debriefing what happened and seeking other things to look forward to together.

"Inside Out" Wrenches

Spoiler alert: If you’re planning to see the movie, you may want to read this later.

My husband and I have been looking for fun, escapist movies in the past two years far more than in the past. We routinely reject movies that deal with death or troubled people; I can’t even enjoy British mysteries if they dwell too much on dead bodies. But who knew that a Disney-Pixar movie full of the usual cleverness and whimsy would remind me of Noah’s struggles and bring on tears?

The movie animates the inner workings of the mind of 11-year-old Riley, with Joy in charge of the other emotions (Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) in a huge storehouse of colorful balls (memories). Riley is a happy kid until her family moves to another city. Suddenly, the emotions are alarmed to see Sadness tinging Riley’s sunny memories with blue and Riley sinking into an uncharacteristic funk. As memories are tainted, entire “islands” of experience—family, friendship, sports--lose their color and motion and and collapse. Joy and Sadness go on a quest to retrieve Riley’s lost “core memories” and revive the islands that make her who she is. But Joy is flummoxed by the situation, and ultimately, it is the power of Sadness that brings Riley home after she runs away, prompts her to speak her heart, and allows the family to reunite around supporting her in her sorrow. What an unexpected message for a Disney film!

I saw the movie a few days before Noah’s birthday so maybe I was primed to be triggered. I couldn’t help thinking of Noah’s despair when I saw everything in Riley’s world being touched by Sadness, over and over. “I can’t help it!” Sadness says, and indeed, Noah’s depression seemed to have a life of its own. Like Riley, he became a shadow of his former animated self. He didn’t know what to do with sadness and couldn’t easily express it. It was sadness that made him notice others who were lonely or unhappy and reach out to them at college, as people he barely knew attested at his memorial. Yet he was ashamed of his own sadness and convinced he just had to “man up” to his problems.

As Sadness took over, Riley’s mind went out of control. More and more memories started to dim, as they no doubt did for Noah. When Riley’s islands of experience started to crumble in the movie, so did I. The longer Noah suffered from depression and anxiety, the more he lost parts of himself—his wit, intellect, curiosity, confidence, interests, pleasures, and ties to family and friends. Watching each island self-destruct in the movie was like watching the dissolution of Noah’s mind, piece by piece. It’s like watching a house warmly lit from within gradually go dark, window by window. This seems to be what many families experience as they live with someone who is mentally ill. I was consumed with fear and helplessness in the last 8 months of Noah’s life, though I always believed the devastation could be halted and fixed. 

When Riley finally confesses her sadness to her parents, she says she was afraid to talk about it because she knew they wanted her to be happy. Were we as blind as Riley’s parents when the seeds of Noah’s sorrow were first taking root? Did everyone’s high expectations drive him to silence and shame as sadness became more overwhelming? Noah once said that no one really knew him. Did I argue too much with his despair rather than really listening and giving him hope? 

Two psychologists who consulted on the film wrote, “The real star of the film is Sadness, for Inside Out is a film about loss and what people gain when guided by feelings of sadness. . . . Its central insight: Embrace sadness, let it unfold, engage patiently with a preteen’s emotional struggles. Sadness will clarify what has been lost (childhood) and move the family toward what is to be gained: the foundations of new identities, for children and parents alike.”

If only we could rewrite the script for our lost ones. When their suffering and suicide have plunged us into such a well of sadness, how do we find what is to be gained and remake our lives?