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My son Caleb died by suicide on June 9, 2018. He was 21. I have written here ever since, and most of it circles back to him.
I do not have a program. I cannot heal your grief, and I will not tell you it gets better on a schedule, because for me it did not. What I can do is tell you the truth about the country you just landed in, and point you to the pieces that might find you where you actually are. Whatever brought you here, I am sorry. Start wherever it hurts.
When it just happened.
The first hours did not feel like anything. Two officers told me my son was dead and the air left my body. Then for weeks part of me waited for him to walk back through the front door. If you are numb, or telling yourself a story where this did not really happen, that is not denial you need to fix. It is the mind doing the only thing it can.
Read: How Does It Feel to Lose a Child to Suicide and The Quiet Pain of Losing a Child by Suicide.
When you think you are losing your mind.
I cried in a store over a pack of his gum and told no one. I could not put two sentences together. I checked the back seat, panicked when a text went unanswered, lived most of the day inside a fishbowl. None of that is crazy. I found that out in a room full of other survivors who described my own head back to me.
Read: Not Crazy and Merely Existing.
When everyone thinks you should be over it.
It has been years and the wound is the same size. People want healing to mean I went back to who I was. That man died with Caleb. I am not healed. I am surviving, changed, still here, and that is its own kind of honest.
Read: Still Here, Do You Ever Heal from Grief After Losing a Child?, and What Is Grief.
When you are furious at God.
I yelled at God for months with no filter, and I still do not have tidy answers about unanswered prayer or why a verse like Romans 8:28 can land like a taunt. My faith did not survive by avoiding those questions. It survived by taking them straight to Him.
Read: Yelling at God, When Prayer Is Not Enough, All Things Work Together for Good?, and Faith and Doubt.
When the calendar turns on you.
Birthdays, the death day, Father’s Day, Christmas. The days everyone else circles for joy are the ones I have to survive. I have skipped them, left early, refused the forced smile, and grieved the traditions we lost.
Read: A Letter to My Son, One Year After Losing Him, Surviving the Holidays, and Life Isn’t Fair.
When you are a father, or a man, with nowhere to put it.
I do not cry the way people think men cry. It comes as a storm, alone, in the truck, in the silent house, and then I collect myself and go back to being the version of me the world is comfortable with. If that is you, you have not lost your mind. It is the sanest thing your body knows how to do.
Read: The Private Tears of Men.
When you love someone who is grieving and do not know what to say.
You do not need the perfect words. Most of the damage I took came from people reaching for comfort, “everything happens for a reason,” “he is in a better place,” when all I needed was someone to say his name and stay. Here is what helps and what wounds.
Read: Supporting Parents through Child Loss and What Not to Say to a Grieving Parent.
When you are barely holding on.
Some days the only thing I accomplished was breathing on purpose, in for five, out for ten, for hours. If you are closer to the edge than that, please do not be alone with it tonight. Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Find a Survivors of Suicide Loss group near you. I go to mine every month, years in. I am not the strongest person in that room, and I am still here.
Read: Tortured Hope.
This is not a path with a clean end. I am still walking it. If you read one thing, read the one that names where you actually are today, not where someone says you should be.