Surviving Suicide Loss: A Survivor’s Story

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Early in the morning, a police officer came to my place of work to tell me the unthinkable, that my 18-year-old son, Cameron, was dead and that he had hung himself.  Shortly after, my husband came to the office to pick me up and take me home.  I was in complete disbelief and shock and my mind was numb like I was in a trance.  I don’t remember most of what else happened that morning.  I do remember strangers who came to the house and a woman speaking to me who I later learned was a member of the L.O.S.S. Team.  Yet I can’t remember what was said for sure as I was out of my mind. I do remember being handed a packet to look through when I felt I was able to that would have useful information in it related to suicide. 

I would have never guessed that my son would do something like that.  I blamed myself so much that I remained isolated from the world, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. I felt ashamed for letting him down and eventually I had many more feelings, like anger.

I went to support groups for people who have lost someone to suicide and connected with some other people who shared a similar loss.  Through that connection some of us decided to volunteer our time and help raise awareness of the incidence of suicide while raising money to further the cause.  My son’s death was so public when he was found on the grounds of South Middle School, yet he wasn’t the first, nor the last teenager to die by suicide during that year.  I became driven to help others who have gone through this.  At a support group meeting, I met another parent whose son had lost his best friend to suicide.  He and I started working together to raise awareness and money for suicide prevention activities in our community and our schools.  He learned about a student organization club called S.A.D.D. (Students Against Destructive Decisions) that helps students deal with problems related to drugs and alcohol, sex, suicide, and many more issues our kids struggle with while coping with life’s struggles.  We wanted to start S.A.D.D. Chapters in all of our local schools so kids can have an outlet to share their problems.  I also worked to set up a suicide awareness event that is a fundraising event for the Front Porch Coalition and S.A.D.D. Chapters in our community.  I named it in honor of my son, the “Cameron Jordan Suicide Awareness Ride.” 

It has been a long, difficult struggle since that cold day in January.  I’ve had moments when I could not stop crying, moments when I felt like I could not go on, feeling suicidal myself.  But I have survived and want others to know that you can survive this even when you think there is no way that you can.  I am now just sad and miss my son terribly.  It even still haunts me every time I walk into work.  Yet at the same time I am driven by a goal to help others who have gone through this or prevent it all together.  I know that is a goal that I may not ever reach but I am still going to try as that is what gets me through to the next day.

Renee Hatcher

Easter Morning 2008

My mother, sister, grandmother and some other friends and relatives were getting ready to go to a restaurant for Easter dinner. 

Mom got a call from my sister-in-law Brandi. My brother James was going to have Easter dinner himself with his wife and her parents.  However, my brother never arrived. Brandi and her parents got very worried and started searching for him. After driving around, they discovered my brother's car in a parking lot outside of a highway. Various personal effects were in the car, but my brother was nowhere to be found. Search and rescue attempted to search for James up and down the highway and into the woods and hills alongside the highway, but they were unable to locate him.

Over time, the police discovered James had serious money problems, debts, unhappiness in his marriage to Brandi, cutting himself off from close friends.  On top of all this was the spectre of depression, for which James has been treated off and on for a long time. We clung to the hope that James simply took off, wanting to avoid the problem.  That faint hope was crushed when his body was finally discovered a mile from where they were originally searching.   My brother apparently killed himself the day the car was abandoned. 

Photos at his memorial service were filled with his happy, smiling face, which belies the true pain he must have been feeling up until the pain ended for good. Hindsight vision is rarely 20/20 and there may have been signs that James was contemplating suicide, but no perfect clarity he would actually make such an attempt. The brother I had played with and fought with as a child, had long since moved away, both in distance and in emotion from his family.  I will forever be plagued with the belief that I could have done something.  Rationally, there was no guarantee that I could reach my brother, since neither his wife nor his best friend realized the cloud he was under.  Emotionally I wish I could have at least tried a little harder to communicate with James, despite knowing there might have been no guarantee that he would respond.  I will never know the answer for as long as I live.

With every death, life continues.  And so it does with the birth of James' grand-nephew, Kalo James. So a little bit of him lives on in our memories as well as in life itself, even if I would prefer the whole of him to a part of him.

Patti Martinson