It has been fifteen years since hearing from my son. He called that morning around ten o’clock to give us his new phone number. I remember asking him if they would be coming up for the weekend for a visit. He answered no and I asked him if he needed money. I said, “I love you” and passed the phone to his dad. They spoke for a few minutes and then he passed it along to Vanessa, Brandon’s sister. That morning is clear to me after all these years. The conversation was short. If only we had known, it was going to be the last one. What would we have said?

I have had long enough time to mull over some things. I have relived moments I never saw but only imagined like you do as you read a book. There have been questions in my mind that will have to die there. No one can answer me but Brandon and God and the two other people who were there that night, the “best friend” and the wife. Neither of them is talking. They have “moved on.” The wife as I understand it had already remarried very soon after Brandon died and is divorced. Makes me wonder how many tattooed names of lovers she has gone through. It didn’t take her long to get over my son. His name was tattooed on her pale bony shoulder. The best friend has already married and become a father. I know more than I want to know about those two. They moved in together two weeks after the memorial which was soon after Brandon died. None of this seemed suspicious to the idiot investigator.

Fifteen years is a lifetime when you have buried one of your children. I would tell someone who is freshly grieving this kind of loss that “time heals all wounds” is somewhat false. Yes, it is not as intense and painful as it was in the beginning. There are times when it feels new again especially when my questioning mind “goes there.” But I try not to go to the dark places that are now growing with cobwebs. I have to remind myself that my son is no longer in this place of despair and grief. That brings up the ever-stinging question, what if he did do it? It is what I have had to contend with all these years until I die. The one answer…. the most important answer is from God. He would not see me suffer any more than I was already suffering. I am certain that Brandon is with Jesus in Paradise. (I refer the reader to any of my blogs about the hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul.”) I write this next sentence with some trepidation only because I know how sensitive this subject is, but I am confident. I have the comfort in knowing that suicide it not the unforgivable sin.

There is so little comfort for those left behind after a loved one dies by their own hand. Besides bearing unbelievable grief, there is guilt coupled with blame and the whys of it all. There are armchair psychiatrists who never knew the person(s) but who are all too eager to give their “professional” opinions. There are the representatives from certain religious denominations who come out from under the pews and from behind the pulpit to condemn those who die this way. As of late, I have watched crime shows, bio pics, and documentaries with almost morbid curiosity about celebrities and unknowns who have died by suicide. Their families and friends had all been shocked and “never saw it coming,” but some had been expecting it. In our case, we never would have expected our son to do this to not only himself but to us. I sound like a mother in denial, but my son and I were close, and he always called me if he wanted to talk, or something was bothering him.

After fifteen years, the ache of our loss is a slight throb on some days. Brandon is on my mind most days yet there isn’t that insufferable physical and emotional pain anymore. I really felt that I would die in the beginning. I wished that I would die because the pain was unbearable. I know God’s pure peace now and I try not to borrow the old grief that was so new at one time. I am always reminded of just how God has held me together with His divine seams of love and the lyrics of our song. There is no end to what He will do for those of us who have suffered. He came to this world to share in our grief and suffering and to forgive us of our sins. We need only to receive His gift of grace. I am forever grateful.

I have read other Christian mothers’ blogs who also share how our Father in Heaven has ministered to them after losing their children. Our common bond is not just our losses but our healing from the despair from that loss. We agree that we are stronger in our faith and have the hope that sustains us during those down days that still show up now and again. We have God’s promise that we will be with our children forever and how can we be sad about that? God bless the reader and anyone who has suffered the loss of a child.