Tributes
Pay it Forward Stories & Tributes
Personal remembrances, survivor reflections, and heartfelt tributes that honor loved ones with compassion, memory, and hope.
Donna Hillman
On September 12, 2006, my world came crashing down when I came home from work to find my 18 year old son Jordan alone in his bedroom. He had taken his life.
The shock and devastation of losing my only child in that manner changed me forever. The darkness that followed took many years to find the light again but I have.
I prayed for a very long time that God would find a way to use me to come alongside others in a similar situation to help them in any way I could to find comfort, hope and healing after such a tragedy.
Finally, my prayers were answered and I was asked by my pastor to lead a grief support group at my church. We are up to about 15 people now in our group and it has been amazing to witness them supporting each other and lifting each other up in their grief and begin to find joy once again.
Our group is called ‘Anchored in Hope’ and is dedicated to the memory of my son Jordan Daniel Hillman, a child of God who is so loved and so missed. For more information about our group, go to GriefShare.org Aliso Viejo, Ca.
Maria Rienzo
My story of living with the loss of someone by suicide began in 2011. January, 2011 and August, 2011 – I lost my mother and boyfriend.
My journey has been a slow process lasting 8 years – from extreme low to joy.
I learned never to waste a pain, so I joined AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention). I began by walking for prevention, and then joined the board.
As a board member, I was assigned Grief and Healing.
This process has taught me to “move through my grief” versus “getting over.”
My prayer for everyone who has suffered from a suicide loss- Is to be free from the chains of blame, “why “and “what could I have done?”.
God Bless
Maria Rienzo
Laura DePersis
Laura DePersis, Anthony’s mom, has been attending SOS regularly with her husband Pete since October of 2017. At our February 16 group, she surprised me with this beautiful quilt …a real “Work of Heart.”
Every square is a meaningful gift to me, each representing either a saying, a statistic or fact that she has heard or learned while coming to SOS (or copied from our website.) The phone at the top with the caption “This is Jeri. Are you okay?” is an acknowledgment of the ‘checking in’ I do from time to time with our members.
She even drew my husband Bob’s face from a picture in the gallery! A very touching surprise.
There are no words for me to tell Laura how much this means to me, and I know the amount of time and effort that goes into producing a quilt.
THANK YOU, LAURA AND PETE, for the support you give Gary and me, and the care you show your friends and fellow survivors.
Anthony can be very proud.
Love, Jeri
And thank you to my granddaughter Kendra – some of you know her from the Candlelite Services. Those are her cute little fingers holding up the quilt for this photo opp.
Jeri
Finally, I am proud to post this entry from my dear friend, LaRita Archibald. I met her at my sister’s home just weeks after Bob’s death.
This is the lady who gave me the written materials – and moral support – to start our SOS group in 1988, and has been an inspiration all along. Every survivor who has ever been helped by this group owes a big thank you to La Rita Archibald. Jeri
La Rita Archibald
Suicide was an uncommon occurrence in 1978 when my 24-year-old son, Kent, ended his life. A clergy’s response to my concern for Kent’s soul was, “It’s best to put this behind you as quickly and quietly as possible”.
The counselors I sought were interested in the circumstance of Kent’s death but had no understanding of my anguish or grief needs. When I learned the American Association of Suicidology would convene in Denver in early 1979, I knew I must attend. I was certain that among this gathering of great mental health minds there would be one able to tell me why my son had killed himself. And surely, there would be someone who would understand my grief, assure my sanity and direct my mourning.
I found neither. However, from the seven survivors attending the conference’s only suicide survivor session I met another mother grieving her son’s suicide. The two of us spent hours sharing and comparing our woundedness, our sense of unmet responsibility as parents and our fear of the future. Even though our family situations differed widely I found great comfort sharing with another who truly understood my terrible aloneness and whose words validated the madness I was experiencing as grief.
From our exchange grew my determination that never again would another person surviving suicide loss in my community be without a source of genuine empathy, comfort and encouragement.
I contacted a newly formed help-line volunteering to be a response to any request from someone bereaved by suicide. The few inquiring callers caused me to consider providing a place where suicide bereaved could share face to face. When I told my husband of the benefit I thought providing such a setting would be for suicide bereaved he agreed to help me, but with the warning, “I don’t want you to be disappointed if no one comes.”
But they did come!! At our first November 1980 meeting there were two survivors in addition to my husband and I. By Spring 1981 word had spread and there were 19-25 suicide survivors every month who drove from Denver, from Kansas, from Wyoming, and from across the mountains to spend two hours with others who experienced the suffering of suicide loss. And thus HEARTBEAT, among the nation’s first suicide survivor support groups, took root and spread to other communities.
Forty years of study, research, peer counseling, a great amount of prayer and Divine direction, as well as my lived experience, culminated in “Finding Peace Without All The Pieces After A Loved One’s Suicide”. This book offers explanations and answers I so desperately sought after Kent’s death…How Does God View Suicide?
Understanding How The Cause of Death Impacts Grieving and Healing, Meeting Needs of Suicide Bereaved and more. Other suicide bereaved told of their loss and struggle toward healing in “Finding Peace Without All The Pieces…” They, like me, wanted to share what they learned, to offer hope and direction to those who must walk our bitter road, to assure newly bereaved that not only would they survive but, with time invested in healthy mourning, they would thrive…that joy, laughter, and a new wholeness of self await beyond the terrible anguish of suicide loss.
Newspaper Clipping
This poem was shared with the group by Patti. She got it from the paper 30 plus years ago.
TO TODD:
It’s been almost 2 years, son, since you died and you’ve been ever by my side. I mourned you then, I mourn you still, deep in my heart I Always will.
But lately there’s a brand new me, changes are happening gradually. A ready smile, a quicker step and gratefully a bit more pep.
I didn’t know I would see the day, I’d think of you and say, “my smile is back, my heart is light, I battled grief, I’ve won the fight.”
I feared that when this day came, ties to you wouldn’t be the same. That when pain left, you would too, and precious memories would be so few.
I cast aside these foolish fears. You’re even closer now, you see with clearer mind and heart that’s free.
I sort out good times and the bad, put in perspective the time we had. Then thoughts come back like dear old friends. They’ll comfort me, till life ends.
It must please you, my dearest son, to see my grievous ordeal done. And when someday we meet anew (the butterfly’s promise will come true)
We’ll be together evermore, with a longing ache nevermore. Until that day my distant star, it’s not good-by, just au revoir.
Happy Birthday – I Miss You – Love, Mom
A Letter of Consolation by Henri J. M. Nouwen
Real grief is not healed by time. It is false to think that the passing of time will slowly make us forget her and take away our pain. I really want to console you in this letter, but not by suggesting that time will take away your pain, and that in one, two, three, or more years you will not miss her so much anymore. I would not only be telling a lie, I would be diminishing the importance of her life, underestimating the depth of your grief, and mistakenly relativizing the power of the love that has bound you together for all these years.
The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her love meant for us. Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted. Therefore, it is often only in retrospect—or better, in memory—that we fully realize its power and depth. Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain. The pain we are now experiencing shows us how deep, full, intimate, and all-pervasive her love was.
I want to comfort and console you, but not in a way that covers up real pain and avoids all wounds. I am writing you this letter in the firm conviction that reality can be faced and entered with an open mind and an open heart, and in the sincere belief that consolation and comfort are to be found where our wounds hurt most.
What did death do to you? If your experience of her death is in any way close to mine, you were ‘invited’—as I was—to re-evaluate your whole life. Her death made you stop and look back in a way you had not done before. Death has given you new eyes with which to see your life. Death simplifies. Death lays bare what really matters, and in this way becomes your judge. As we review our lives long-forgotten events return to our memories, as if they had taken place only recently.
All these times have passed by like friendly visitors, leaving you with dear memories but also with the sad recognition of the shortness of life. In every arrival there is a leave taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one’s growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying and all celebration is mortification too.
As the days passed, our hearts came to know that she is gone, never to return. And it was then that real grief began to invade us. It was then that we turned to the past and saw that death had been present in our lives all along and that many farewells and goodbyes had been pointing to this dark hour.
I Am Alive By Jeff Schuck
I am alive.
I may have lost my son or daughter,
…but I am a survivor of the long dark night of unspeakable loss.
The unbearable pain of my own darkness, and, I am alive.
I am unwilling to stand idly by and allow shame to defeat love or silence to defeat action. I stand for the enlightenment of a society that would hide from parental grief, that would avoid, that would pretend, and I am alive.
I am unwilling for my perseverance to be in vain, unwilling for the passing of my child to be in shame. I loved my child more than I loved myself, and my child’s life will have meaning. In my action. I am resolved, and I am alive.
In a world blinded by the pursuit of pleasure, I am here to say that people are in pain. In a world rushing to get ahead, I am here to say, that people are being left behind.
In a world obsessed with the value of the market, I am here to speak for the value of life, and I am alive.
This will be no quiet fight, for I am the voice of audacity in the face of apathy.
I am the spirit of bravery in a word of action. I am a commitment to action in the face of neutrality.
I am out of the darkness. I am into the light. and I — I am alive.
This was given by Jeff Schuck at the opening and closing ceremonies at the OUT OF THE DARKNESS 26 mile, night time walk event for suicide awareness and prevention, in Washington DC the weekend of August 17-18, 2002.