Death by Asphyxia

Suicide is an act that appeared incredibly selfish until I stood right next to it.

Three and a half months ago, my nineteen-year old son committed suicide. He struck off on his own, threw away his phone, told no one where he was going. He hung himself in a tree along a roadside about an hour away from home in Portland. A jogger noticed what he thought was someone lurking in the trees. He moved closer where he could see that the body wasn't standing but dangling, toes a few inches off the ground.

After those first moments with the police chaplain on the front porch, after the shock and disbelief, after shuffling around in our living room like ghosts while friends and family floated in on gusts of startled sadness in response to texts and calls, after the chairs had been dragged from kitchen and dining room to make a big circle, after fumbling with the phone and forgetting which questions to ask, after finally tracking down the sheriff who investigated the scene, after learning the facts, I sat quietly in the midst of the crowd. Our desperate boy/man was out of pain even as we sunk to its epicenter.

I swirled (and still sometimes do) in what if's. What if I stopped him from leaving that day when he packed his backpack and included his blue and red climbing rope? What if I required him to see yet another mental health specialist sooner? Not at all? What if I had demanded a brain scan years before when I thought his struggles were more than 'boys will be boys' or 'post traumatic stress disorder' (PTSD) from his early troubled childhood in the foster care system? What if I was softer and more forgiving? What I had been stricter? What if I told him I loved him more often? Less often? I felt guilty and so did everyone I talked to. "I think this is my fault," said his little brother, "I was so annoying." "I should have lent him that bike," a family friend commented with a sigh and shake of her head. "I didn't return his call," his old middle school friend told me after a hug so long I started to squirm. Suicide left us all to do mental math we couldn't possibly compute.

I pressed my fingertips into the letters and numbers carved into the tree where he died: his initials, the date of his birth and apparently of his death (his body was found several days later but the medical examiner determined he had been there a few days). A short video on a camera in his backpack left his suicide note/poem/rap. "Lights out, people," he signed off with a two-fingered salute.

In his short life, my son struggled with demons. Sleep eluded him, food failed to fill him, friends drifted away. His fuming presence at home threatened us, especially our younger son. He used marijuana in an effort to calm himself and balance the moods which swung between dark and darker. He made Herculean efforts to keep from hurting someone or destroying things. We sought out counseling from many sources, for him, his brother, ourselves. He spent fifteen months in residential treatment. Still, in the weeks before he took his life, he grew increasingly distant, huddled in black jeans, black jacket, his head deep inside a sweatshirt hood. He accused us - and everyone - of plotting against him as his brain rattled toward what might have been schizophrenia and was certainly some kind of madness. Even so, his essential heart showed through on occasion. In an orange t-shirt with a smile on his handsome, chiseled, young-man face, he snuggled with the dogs and stroked their ears with control and gentleness. Having failed writing in school, he began work on a novel and peppered it with seeds of creative brilliance he won't bring to fruition.

Nothing shined a light on my son's suffering and despair like the taking of his own life. From the first minute I fully understood that he was really dead, I felt his act of suicide as a twisted act of caring. He ended his despair, hung himself where no one who knew him could possibly find him, he hurt no one else. He removed what he felt was a burden on the rest of us. Given that depression and despair seemed inescapable from the perspective of his black hole, and that all the help we'd accessed so far had been no help at all, he took the step he deemed necessary and pro-active. I cannot say it would have been better for him if he'd stayed. I doubt the darkness would have lifted any time soon, if at all. In a strange and regrettable way, I believe that the most kind and loving part of his tortured soul won a battle.

I still ask myself what I could have done differently, better, sooner. What did I miss that could have altered this outcome? But I never judge my son's action, never doubt his agony, or constrict with anger. When anger comes, if it does, it won't be at him, the one who suffered always. His act wasn't one of selfishness, it was one of unfathomable pain. And so my chest swells with sorrow and my eyes brim with tears as I hear the news of other deaths by asphyxiation, a mother of two young children, a famous comedian. I am so sorry for their suffering. My patched-together heart aches.