There’s no other way to think of it. Leave the suicide, the details of it, and the uncomfortableness of it alone. Losing the child is the horror of it. What does it matter if it was a fatal car accident, or an accidental drowning, or a suicide? It doesn’t. The loss is the same.
The family should lose the idea of any sin, guilt, and shame to be associated with the boy. No one in their right mind kills themselves or wants to kill themselves. The child was obviously suffering from a depression, anxiety, some kind of mental illness, a chemical imbalance, a loss of hope, some kind of feeling (if any feeling at all) that was so awful…that the idea of waking up tomorrow trying to deal with it was worse than making the painful decision to put all of the bad feelings away today. For good. Once and for all. Finally.
Don’t pray for his soul. Pray for all of us that let him down. Pray for those of us that made a remark that lasted way too long. For those of us that didn’t reach out, that didn’t notice, or that didn’t care to notice, or maybe for those of us who didn’t even think to ask. Pray that all of us speak more about depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and the like. And pray that all of us don’t hesitate to open our mouths tomorrow.
Pray for us to get better at paying attention. Pray for it to be less embarrassing to talk about depression tomorrow than it was today. And then pray tomorrow that it’ll be less embarrassing to talk about depression and mental illness today than it even was the day before. Forever. And then pray again.
The boy is resting now after the exhaustion of running away from whatever awful, awful fucking thing that was chasing him. So there’s no judgement theology to be brought into it, because the Lord, wherever he is and in whatever funny outfit he dresses in, isn’t looking down at the boy, banished forever in some terrible fire and hell. The boy’s hell was indeed here on this Earth.
I am certain that the Lord is holding the boy now, has been entrusted with his care, and will love him forever. As we all should.
Edit: I have tears streaming down my face as I finished writing this, because as some of you may remember, it is very, very close to home.
I am very sad for the family, for our collective human family, and very sorry for your loss, Giggity. Make sure that his parents know that he loved them very much.