02/20/2025
I remember those first days, weeks and months after J's su***de. We needed to know WHY he had died by su***de. It wasn't that we didn't know our son, because we did. We watched him grow and we struggled when he did, when he hit late adolescence and his world became really complicated because of emerging bipolar syndrome. He self-medicated with alcohol and drugs and wasn't easy to find for long periods of time as he made a series of disastrous choices. There were a couple of possible su***de attempts during those very dark days. (That time was brief and we had long ago stopped holding our breath.) The good part was that he would come home when things got to be impossible and stay long enough to stabilize. Even though he rejected a diagnosis and any kind of formal mental health treatment, he became more functional. With incredibly strong will, he quit using drugs. He still struggled with depression and anxiety, but his life became almost "normal", whatever that might mean. He settled down with a wonderful partner and they had 8 years together; we love her dearly and are grateful that we have remained very close. Their son was 19 months old when J died, our first grandchild and a joy bringer to this day. We often say that J was the best he'd been since he was a little boy because he loved being a stay-at-home dad, the best job he ever had.
We saw him a lot and our relationship was close and stable. He drove the two hours to bring his little boy to spend a sweet and memorable day with us every week. As with most of us, J's su***de was a total surprise. We know what happened that last day, which again involved some disastrous choices. The WHY question obsessed us - we had to know what happened that drove him to die. We pieced together what we knew about the timeline of his last day and what we knew about J, trying to make sense of what didn't make sense. But the truth is - we will never know the truth. There are questions that will never have answers because the only one who knows isn't here. Actually, I'm pretty sure he would say he didn't know why if he were here.
Both my husband and I spent a lot of time going over and over and over that day, rearranging events and helping him make batter choices in our minds. If he would have done this instead of that. . . If we had known what was going on, we could have . . . If someone else had or hadn't . . . If he would have asked for help . . . But none of our creative mental engineering could change the outcome. He was gone and we were left with this grief. That period of agony was the beginning of my processing of this su***de grief. It was incredibly painful, but God helped me finally give up on finding answers. I was eventually able to put the unknowns in a box and set them on a back shelf in the closet of my mind. If I need them, I can find them - and occasionally I still ponder those unanswerable questions before putting them back where they belong.
I realized that even if I knew why, it wouldn't bring J back, and that was what I really wanted. Putting the whys away helped me find peace. -jb-
