I wrote much of this piece in the months after my 14-year-old former student Liam died by suicide. As we mark two years of grieving him, I share these words now for the comfort of all those who love him. I share these words for the comfort of anyone who has known this kind of loss.

From the moment I knew I was pregnant with my first child, I had one quiet prayer for my baby: “Live. Please live.”

I knew the fragility of the life growing inside me, but I believed this embryo would grow into a fetus, would grow into an infant, would grow into a child, would grow into adulthood. I believed it all in that moment. I risked believing it all.

When we brought our first child home from the hospital, I lay in bed that first night with my hand on his chest as he lay in the bassinet next to me. I slept with my hand on his chest making sure his breath went in and out, in and out. Live. Please live. Keep living. Nothing felt guaranteed. First, a safe pregnancy. Then, a safe birth. Then, a safe travel through the newborn days.

At some point I stopped checking on him to see if he was still breathing when he slept. I put him to bed strong in the belief that he would awake in the morning, that he would cry for me before I was ready to be awake, that he would protest when I changed his diaper, that his body would grow in the night, with new words and knowings shaping his dreams. 

…….

One night after an ordinary day of reading picture books, making farm animal sounds, and cutting grapes in half, I sat on the couch and scrolled through Facebook. That’s when I saw the words on the screen: “RIP Liam” next to an old picture of my former student. What? Rest In Peace? Is this real? Is this some kind of joke? Is this a mistake? I don’t understand.

The comments below confirmed that it was real. I gasped, and the tears came immediately, fat and breathless. I’ve never been hit so hard in the middle of an ordinary day. One moment I was perusing pictures of someone’s Parisian vacation and the next moment I was holding my hand to my chest, crying out.

I rose from the couch and went to the bathroom, where my husband was bathing our 18-month-old.

“Liam’s gone,” I said, standing in the threshold and crying through words. “I don’t know what happened, but he’s gone. He died.”

That night I walked the dark hall with a lit candle in my hand. I carried it through the house guiding my way as if the electricity had gone out, as if a breaker had switched off. I walked in the dark with the light in my hand because I didn’t know what else to do. I was lost. I had lit the candle for him, and then I couldn’t bring myself to blow it out. I carried him with me all over the house. I said his name. I saw his eyes. I heard his voice. Liam. 

“I’m going out,” I told my husband finally, car keys in hand. I pulled out of my driveway and drove across town, not knowing where I was going but finding myself in front of his house because I wanted to be close to him somehow. I wanted to send a light out of my window and through the glass above his mother’s door to say, I’m here. I’m so sorry. I’m here. 

A soccer ball rested motionless in his front yard, the light glinting off of it like a moon that fell to the ground.

…….

This is not how it’s supposed to happen. 

Just as the child in me grew to birth, this adolescent was growing towards a new birth every day, growing towards dreams, towards unfolding purpose and meaning.

My mind toggles back and forth between my son’s face and Liam’s.

First steps and first loves.

First skinned knee and first feelings of adolescent despair.

First toddler tantrum, first teenage rage.

Reaching towards adulthood. Breathing air. Cartwheeling into the future. 

My son runs ahead of me into the back of the play tent in his room, hiding in the darkness behind the curtain doors. “Where aaare you? Hellooo?” I say, tiptoeing. He waits for me to peek in the play window. He erupts in giggles and rushes out, tumbling into my arms. Here you are!

Where are you, Liam? When did you start hiding from us? Why couldn’t we find you?

…….

Four days after his death, I sat in my car at the dealership giving the attendant my information for an auto warranty service. The woman with a clipboard in her hand at my window checked the boxes on her list.

“Nothing has changed? Your address, your insurance? Everything is the same? …Ma’am?” 

She must have kept repeating herself because I stared ahead in bewilderment, nodding with vague uncertainty. I didn’t know if I could keep my mouth shut and nod that nothing had changed. 

Everything has changed. Everything! A mother has lost her child. Everything has changed. He lived his last day. They said their last words. He smiled his last smile. He breathed his last breath. And no one knew it was the last anything. Everything has changed. Every last thing.

That first week I seesawed between seeing Liam alive– sleeping securely in his bed, full of speed and force on the soccer field, protected in the classroom behind his wit and beautiful smile–and being hit all over again, remembering: He is gone. He’s gone. How could he really be gone? I saw him before me–living, dead, living, dead. I couldn’t reconcile the swirling buoyancy of his vitality with the stillness and heaviness of the truth. He’s gone. How can someone so full of life and soaring headlong into the future be cut short here? 

How long had it been since I last said his name? How long had it been since I thought of him? Did I ever send him that card I’d thought to send after I saw him perform on the Middle School stage or when I learned he made that special soccer team? No, I didn’t. I didn’t let him know I still delighted in him and who he was becoming.

It had been almost four years since he had been my student, which feels like a full lifetime when you’re 10 and then 14. But for me, time had moved differently. He still felt close to my heart.

I had been living my life forward, with Liam tucked away safely on his course, protected in his corner. He had been stitched securely in the quilt of my life, and he had been keeping me warm. When I found out he died, it felt like a square of that safety was carved out of me. The seams were ripped open, and the hole torn through me. Though I knew not his presence in the daily movement of my life, there was now the empty space he carved.

He was the wholeness I didn’t know he was holding. He was the light I didn’t notice shining in the sky.

“today some stars gave in to the black around them & i knew it was you,” poet Danez Smith writes.

There is blackness around us, and we know it is you, Liam. There is light around us, and we know it is you, Liam.

…..

“No no no. Not Liam, no,” I cried in the bathtub many nights with a hot washcloth over my face while my own son slept in his crib.

I don’t know why this has to be his story. I don’t know why the story of his physical presence on earth has to end here.

Don’t say it. Don’t say “Everything happens for a reason.” Don’t you dare say it. He didn’t die for our reason. He didn’t die so we could learn a lesson, so that we could open to a revelation. His life was worth more than our knowledge. He didn’t die so we could treasure our children more and learn to love each other and keep each other alive. Don’t you say it. He didn’t die for that reason. We would throw away all these lessons in a heartbeat if it meant having him back.

But he died. He died, and we can’t let it end there. We can’t see him extinguished. We can’t let it be for nothing–his joy, his passion, his light, his pain, his death. We can’t let it be for no reason. We can’t see him extinguished. 

So we find meaning. We find a deeper way to live and love. We are forever changed by his life and by his death, and we find a meaning that lets us keep living with our feet on this earth. He didn’t die for our reason, but he died, and we can’t let it be for nothing. We can’t let darkness, hopelessness, and all-encompassing despair be the final answer.

A reason emerges. A reason for our continuance emerges, a reason for us to live and feel joy again and hug our babies tighter and check on each other.  A reason for life emerges, not a reason for his death. A new reason for life emerges because it has to– otherwise we couldn’t breathe in the heaviness of the loss. 

…..

I think of all the love, all the attention, all the care that goes into just one day of caring for my baby. And I think of the over 5,000 days of love that were poured into Liam in his 14 years. What happens to all that love when a person’s life on earth ends? Where does all the love that their body held go? Surely it could power the whole city. It is a lifetime of wattage. It is an unending acreage.

Sweet boy, you were so wanted and so loved. The world was waiting for you before you were born. It was incomplete before you arrived. You lit up a space that needed your light and your light alone. Now you are gone, and the world has a hole. It feels like your star was torn from the sky. Light bleeds from the cut, like the weeping fireworks that crest in vibrant arcs and fizzle their way down.

I have another baby now, a second son who began growing in me right after the soccer ball went still in your yard and the moon fell from the sky. His heartbeat willed me forward, and his heartbeat scared me. Live. Please live.

Oh my goodness, how fragile this whole world felt after you left. Any illusion of control I had over whether my children lived or died took on water after your absence. A thousand holes were pierced in the underbelly of my sense of control.

And yet I simultaneously had the desire to control every moment more. Every interaction felt more urgent in answering these questions: Does my child feel cherished? Does he know the irreplaceable light that he is? Does he get the message that he can come to me with any hurt? Does he feel like he can talk to me? Does he know I’ll love him no matter what?

Liam, I have to believe that all the love that knit you was what held us together after you were gone. I have to believe that the love that lit you is what guided me through some of my own darkness and life-altering choices. All the love that your family, friends, teachers, and coaches wrapped you in was not destroyed, was not lost. It stayed here with us. It stayed with you too. 

You came and you changed us forever. The world was incomplete before you arrived. And it’s more complete for having just 14 years with you. But we’re also aching. We wanted so many more years. And you deserved so many more.

We will never fully comprehend why you died. I will never stop praying, Live. Please live. I go on being a little more scared of the possibility of the gut punch of death. I go on living as a fiercer advocate for life, sweet and brutal life. I fight for myself with more conviction and compassion than ever before. I forgive my loved ones more than ever before. I check on my people whenever I remember. I expand my idea of who “my people” are.

Liam, we love you. We remember you. We let the love that knit you hold us together. We will never be the same. 

Photo Credit: Christopher Guider

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline : 1-800-273-8255