Your Latest Visit

I cannot remember the precise content,

or the wordless understanding brought in dreams.

All I know is that I felt you.

Sensed you gently:

identified your thought and spirit clearly.

Your presence deliberately subtle;

suggesting a wisdom this was as much

as I could stand just yet.

You came to me a tender,

soft communication

to let me know,

I’m here Mom.

I’m still with you.

It’s going to be O.K.

Forever,

Your Mother

2/18/10

Connections

I am making two major trips in the coming four months. One is for my daughter, Deva, who is expecting her first child (my first grand child) in May, and one is for my son, Justin, who we lost to suicide in June of 2006. The trip for my daughter is to be there in Chicago when she gives birth, and support her and her hubby in the first few weeks home with the baby. The trip for my son is to attend a conference for suicide survivors in Boston taking place at the end of February. It is a forum to meet other survivors and keep the person who Justin was alive and vital. While I'm making these trips for my children, if I'm honest I must acknowledge they  are really for me. The purpose and mission for both these journeys helps me maintain a connection to my children that I need. Maintaining these connections keeps me going and makes my life matter. Maintaining these connections keeps me sane.

And if I will not be attending my son's wedding, or rushing to be there when his first child is born, then at least I can do this. It's more than a simple remembrance, it's making a pilgrimage to honor him and mark the central importance he has, and will always have in my life. Part of the need to do this may be because his loss is so recent. It's been less than four years since he left us. But even if the unimaginable happens, and I live to be very old, I sense I will always have this need to give Justin my attention. In the same way Deva will always be my daughter, Justin will always be my son. That will be the case for as long as I live. In some ways this pilgrimage is an indefinite journey.

Unanswered

If you had gotten past that lethal patch of life,

moved through it to reach the other side,

Who would you have become?

If you had lived to manifest the full measure

of your talents, contributing all your gifts,

What lives would you have touched?

If that day had ended with more resolve than anger,
and your determination to buck life trends by living,

What could you have accomplished?

If those speaking at the memorial service had
stayed in touch and called you on that day,

Would you have gone to visit them instead?

If I had stopped you on your way out the door,

professed unyielding support and belief in you,

Would you have greeted me that evening wanting to talk?

If your father had faced his demons upright
and strong, showing you endurance by example,

Would you have held on to belief in the future?

If I had listened to you with respect and reverence,

sought your guidance, demonstrated high regard,

Would you have survived withering doubt?

If at the moment of your decision you envisioned

me handcuffed, forehead smashing into the car,

Would you have stepped down from that stool?

If you had foreseen the bleeding, terminal

wound your departure would rip open,

Would you have chosen death anyway?

Forever,

Your Mother
1/21/10

Visitation

The other evening, Justin made a nocturnal visit to his father and it made all the difference in the world. He visited him in a dream at a time when his dad was struggling with doing the right thing. And his influence moved his dad to overcome fear, facilitated enlightened action and supported him in facing one of his most difficult demons. In this instance, Justin’s visitation helped his dad overcome the pride, anger and resentment that continue to threaten, allowing him to marshal the strength to take a step he was resisting and would otherwise not have taken. It was a crucial step moving our family further on a path towards healing, even in the awful void of missing him. And while I continue to wish for my own personal message from Justin; my time to feel his presence with me, I am content to know he took this time with his father and I feel more than ever that he is O.K., that he has found the peace he wants for us, and that he is watching.

Another Year

Another year of missing you ..... of you not being here ...... of not hearing your voice on the other end of the phone, or sitting in your company during holiday visits home. This missing you will never end, I think; no matter how long I live.

The Dangerous Myth: Blacks And Suicide

It is the stuff of legend; the belief that death by suicide is so rare in the black community as to be nearly unheard of.  That we are the descendents of those who survived the middle passage, slavery and Jim Crow, and depending on one’s point of view we are either too strong or emotionally uncomplicated to engage in this act.  That is the myth. Yet all the faces you just saw are those of people who ended their lives by suicide.  They are all somebody’s beloved …… somebody’s brother, sister or spouse.  In some cases they are somebody’s parent.  And they are all somebody’s child. Their deaths expose the lie that suicide doesn’t happen in the black community; that those who take their own lives are exclusively White, or Asian, or anybody other than the resilient black people we’ve believed ourselves to be.  While the rate of black suicides is lower than that of Whites, things are rapidly changing. Here are the facts.    

• While female youth of all races are more likely to attempt suicide than males, males complete suicide at 3 to 4 times the rate.
  

• Between 1950 and 1981 the rates of completed suicides increased 214% for black males aged 15 to 24. And it increased for black females in the same age group by 133%.
  

• From 1981 to 1994, the suicide rate increased 83% for African American males between the ages of 15 and 24. And it increased 10% for black females during the same period.

• Although Caucasian youth remain more likely to complete suicide than African American youth, the gap is quickly closing.  As of 1995, the white male suicide rate for youth stood at 18.3 per 100,000.  The rate for black males doubled to 13.8 per 100,000.
  

• In Chicago and NYC some mental health professionals are now reporting the suicide rate for young black males is now higher than that of whites.

• The rising tide of suicide is impacting both black middleclass youth and those from poorer inner city neighborhoods.

• Suicide in black males is more often associated with rage, anger and somatic symptoms than the sadness and melancholy more typically associated with depression.

• Today, suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death among African American males between the ages of 15 and 24.

And while these statistics are staggering, they mask the individual stories of loss that happen one person at a time, leaving family and friends shocked and devastated.

The suicide death of James Dungy, the 18 year old son of Indianapolis football coach Tony Dungy was widely reported in the press.  This high profile loss resulted in some fleeting public awareness that blacks do indeed take their own lives. But there are many stories less reported in the media that underscore this fact.

There’s the story of Edwin Jones Jr., the 15 year old straight A student who shot himself in November of 1997.  “He was always such a neat child,” his step mother said. “He even shot himself neatly so the blood wouldn’t show.”  Edwin left a picture of himself in the middle of his bed with a note reading “By the time you get this you’re going to know I received an F, and I’d rather be dead ……”

There’s the story of Kelvin Smallwood-Jones, the deans list student who was a football star and home coming king at his Washington D.C. high school. Recipient of a full academic scholarship to Morehouse College, Kelvin dabbled in photography and mentored at-risk kids.  Less than two weeks before his 20^th birthday, Kelvin shot himself on the deck of his mother’s home.  Kelvin’s mother said she used to worry about whether he was wearing a seatbelt or having unprotected sex. She had no idea Kelvin was at high risk for depression and that his life would end by suicide.

And there’s the controversial death of the 10 year old fifth grader Aquan Lewis, found hanging in an Evanston elementary school bathroom. It’s reported he made public threats of suicide after being scolded by a teacher. That same day he was found unresponsive by the school janitor. While his mother insisted her son would not have killed himself, the Cook County Medical examiner said there was no evidence of foul play and ruled his death a suicide.  

These are a few of the stories of loss due to suicide.  For the full impact of this tragedy we need to consider that in the U.S. alone an average of 33,000 suicides are completed each year; that annually there are 33,000 stories each with their individual circumstances, precipitating causes and pain so intense that in a moment they follow through with this irreversible decision. We’re talking about one suicide death every 16 minutes.

And for every person ending their life by suicide there are a host of other victims. They are the survivors; loved ones who must figure out how to remake their shattered lives in the wake of this emotional carnage.  I am intimately familiar with this carnage. On June 30, 2006 my son, Justin Donnell Woodly took his life. He was 24 years old; and this is his story.

Birthday Remembrances

Every year since Justin’s death I’ve written a poem to him on his birthday which is September 9th. The following piece was prepared for what would have been his twenty sixth birthday and it expresses more than anything the struggle going forward.

Upon Your 26th Birthday

How do I construct a day that honors you,

rather than surrender to my grief.

These seem to be my choices.

Fitful, restless sleep and a 10 o’clock a.m. rising

suggest I’ve begun the day missing the mark,

failing you again.

How do I recover, placing you boldly at

the center of this day; Evoking you completely in thought and word,

commanding total recall, absent debilitating sorrow?

Rematerializing you in minds-eye so vivid you

are present with us, smiling, long-lashed, playful,

tall and muscled, in one of your good moods.

How do I intentionally summon the feel of your

beating heart, ear pressed to your chest,

embraced in one of your all consuming hugs,

without the desperate, glacial void of missing you?

How do I construct such a day,

without inviting bleeding, intolerable loss:

Serve as resident keeper of all your hopes and dreams,

chronicler of your fleeting age, from beginning to end,

and survive this telling?

How do I construct a life that honors you,

rather than surrender to my grief.

This is the struggle for all that is left;

God’s uncompromising final exam.

And the answers remain a mystery.

Forever,

Your Mother

9/9/07

To reconcile the fact that I live on in spite of this awful hole, the only tolerable thing I’ve determined I must do is to spend my life time honoring him. The question remains how to do that. I have come to know this. Justin deserves to be remembered for his life, not his death. Above all I must recall his compassionate concern for others, his quick wit and quirky sense of humor, his unwavering discipline, his kind thoughtfulness and his continual desire to make things right for those he loved. And the horrible image I saw on the day I found him must somehow be forever replaced by the memory of him smiling.