Remember the Grievers
What can we do right when private loss is so public?
I am a Spartan.
Like Spartans everywhere this past week, I was shocked and saddened when news broke about the senseless violence on campus that took three young lives, critically injured five others and shattered the tenuous security of countless students and faculty — not just at my beloved MSU, but everywhere. Not again, I thought. Not again.
I’ve lived and worked in this community since I was 18 years old. My ties to the University run deep so my next, more selfish thoughts were “please let friends and family be safe.” With the tv on in the background, I scanned social media, relieved as friends reported they were unharmed or that they’d spoken to their children who, though hiding and traumatized were thankfully alive.
Fear can drive us apart, but in the wake of inexplicable tragedy such as this, shock and pain unite us and we are instinctually driven to want to help, look for answers, just do something. Anything.
Our collective helplessness craves response and demands action. We gather. We speak. We post on social media. We display symbols of our support, shared disbelief and sorrow to ensure those around us know that, we too, are moved. Joining ourselves to a community of grief is our attempt to relieve the ache of confronting how powerless we feel alone.
It has been not quite a year since the sudden death of my 18-year-old son, who died from an undetected personal struggle with mental illness. I am no stranger to feeling powerless and alone.
A couple people have asked me this week how I’m doing, kindly offering concern that my thin scar tissue would be re-opened by last Monday’s tragic event. And honestly, I have been thinking about it a lot, but not in the way they assumed. The loss of these young Spartans, while horrible, does not remind me of my son’s death. I don’t need a reminder of that because missing him is melded with my every breath. What it does bring back most acutely is how hard it was, and continues to be, to grieve for him.
What I can’t stop thinking of is how the immediate shocking aftermath of my son’s death wasn’t just ours alone to survive and fathom. For everyone else it was breaking news — that spread seemingly at the speed of sound. So fast, in fact, that his sisters and brother were not even close to the first to find out, though we desperately tried to ease the way in which that nightmarish news was delivered in an effort to protect them. There was not even a minute of privacy in which we could hold each other at the opening of the rest of our new, very different life ahead.
So now, my heart breaks for the parents of these innocent students because through no fault or choice of their own they’ve been forced into a very public and shared grief, when all grief is intensely personal.
Yes, we grieve adjacent to them, but not with them, and not as they do. To them, their loss is not of security or innocence or sense of self in the context of the world they live in. Their loss isn’t a cause to debate about or rally around, a ribbon or a symbol of some larger issue or a hashtag to recycle for greater political or societal purpose.
Their loss is lovely, compassionate Arielle.
Their loss is magnetic, smiling Brian.
Their loss is talented and bright Alexandria.
My loss was Mekbul. He was kind, hilarious, thoughtful, talented — full of empathy and joy, laughter and compassion. He was unique. He was life. Not death.
To me, his life will never be about the manner in which he was parted from me.
And so too for these shattered parents, their children will never be for them.
But because their loss is so public, they won’t have the luxury of controlling their child’s story. I don’t either. For most people, that story will always be about how they died, when it should be about how they lived.
I don’t know the families of these fellow Spartans taken so abruptly and I wouldn’t dare pretend to know what they are thinking or how they will individually process the loss of their children. But I know how I have felt and I wish I could spare them from this complex burden they will forever carry.
Any parent who has lost a child, of any age, by any cause, will feel that loss resting on their skin every day for as long as they live. There is no comparable loss. It is out of our accepted, understood order of things.
But as a parent who has suffered the indescribable pain of losing a child by suicide, I’ve learned if your child dies in a way that the public feels compelled to render an opinion about or offer solutions for, it removes the private space needed to simply mourn everything you’ve lost on your own terms. Your grief gets overwhelmed by the feelings of others and their larger desire to try to control what for you, is too late to control. Without meaning to, you’ll likely find yourself in defense mode and, in the midst of all the public reaction to the circumstances of your child’s passing, very much alone.
After my son’s death, many rushed to love us as best they could, and we remain so grateful. The people you least expect sometimes turn out to be your biggest champions.
And yet, because suicide is both an epidemic and its prevention a cause, we couldn’t just have arms wrapped around us quietly lifting us in our grief — we also bore the weight of becoming a public cautionary tale.
Our son’s death brought the distant fear of something like this happening too close for comfort to many in the relatively small circles I typically traveled in. I get that, I really do.
But what I never expected was that our initial crushing sorrow would get worse. Suddenly at every turn we were bombarded with messaging about how to prevent suicide, the community reacting to its shock (and fear about their own kids) by flooding the atmosphere with articles, advice, opinions and in quite a few cases, judgment. It complicated our personal attempts to process and cope with our grief and multiplied our pain in a way we couldn’t have foreseen.
We saw and heard things like “Check in with those you love”(we did), “Talk to your kids about mental health,” (did that too) “Tell people they matter, they are important, they are loved,” (again, we did, daily). The worst for me was “Look for these signs” as if had I only paid better attention my son would still be here. As if every person who dies from a mental health crisis exhibits a discernable need for intervention at all. In fact, for many, the exact opposite is true.
With some distance from those early weeks, I have come to accept that this avalanche of response wasn’t a personal indictment of my love and care for my son, but at the time those messages were unbearable and added to our feeling of isolation.
Most surprisingly, we encountered very misguided and pointed refusals to honor our son’s memory for fear that it would make suicide seem “attractive” to other kids, an outdated and ignorant viewpoint. That one broke us, quite frankly. In truth, honoring their friend was exactly what my son’s classmates needed to assist in their healthy processing of grief, but at the time I didn’t have the strength to fight and I can’t get those chances back now. My son deserved to be remembered in any way that helped our family mourn him and some opportunities to do that were taken from us. Why? Because his death didn’t belong to us anymore — others had a part in deciding the terms under which we could share him with the world.
With some memorably insensitive exceptions, I don’t harbor resentment toward anyone. If it hadn’t been my child, I have to admit that I am unsure how differently I would have responded. I might have reacted out of ignorance instead of compassion, too. I might have shared those simplistic mental health memes wishing that somehow, I could do something, anything, to help. To make sense of something for which there is no explanation. To reassure myself that this, like all my fears, couldn’t touch me and mine.
And it will be so for these parents. Their children’s names will go on, but not just because of how much they were loved, cherished and appreciated or because they made the world better, which they assuredly did. They will have to fight to remember their children’s wonderful lives separated from the tragedy that drew the world’s eyes upon them — to define them by how they lived and not how they died. It will be a lifelong effort.
We need to address this tragedy of school shootings and mass gun violence as a nation, absolutely we do. We can’t possibly turn away over and over and expect a different result. Doing all in our power to dismantle the circumstances that allowed for the violence at Michigan State this week is critically important.
But moving forward, I hope that in our rush to connect, solve and fix we will stop for a moment to consider how our words and actions impact the grievers. I hope we can leave them some room to define their loss for themselves. Unlike us, they’ll never leave this moment behind to move on to the next challenge. As we will someday struggle to remember the collective sorrow of this time, they will struggle to remember what it was like to live without it.
Our culture prioritizes strength, resilience, problem solving and self-determination. Those are good things, but they should not be celebrated at the expense of sympathy and the gentle consideration of those who mourn. For them, some things can never be made right. Grief, trauma and loss will touch every one of us in some way, as much as we wish it would not. Approaching those who grieve with more insight and recognition will only make our own burdens lighter when that time eventually comes.
My son’s life will never be forgotten. In the last almost a year now his best friends and teammates have stood as compassionate advocates for each other and their classmates. They are filling the hole he left in their lives with caring and purpose. In their devotion to honoring him, they’ve done extraordinary things to raise awareness and funds, to reduce stigma, grow inclusiveness and strengthen mental health supports in our community. It is both hard for me and a source of healing. I can’t help that it’s both, but watching them increases my ability to find some peace. They are doing what is in their power out of love for their friend and it is beautiful.
I’m certain the classmates of these precious Michigan State students will do the same. How do I know?
I am a Spartan.
