This month is Suicide Awareness Month. This week we hear from a skilled clinician who has also personally experienced the loss of a child through suicide. Here is her story.

Hello, my name is Melinda Switzer, and I am an LPC working for the Children’s Advocacy Center in Smith County, Tyler, Texas. I am EMDR certified, and it is one of my favorite modalities to work with. In honor of suicide awareness month, I wanted to share my personal experience as a suicide survivor (meaning I survived my son’s death by suicide.)

For some reason, I always thought that I might lose a child, and it started when my grandmother lost her 56-year-old daughter to murder-suicide by her husband. I remember hurting so badly for my grandmother, my daddy, my cousins, and every member of our family who loved our Aunt Lynn so much.

I also remember my experiences with suicide when I was a Paramedic. I saw many ages anywhere from 12 to 90, and I always thought the same thing: this is someone’s child, grandchild, mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparent, cousin, nephew, niece, friend, and so on. I knew someone would be receiving the worst news ever soon and I would always say a quick prayer for them. The worst part was telling the family members that there was nothing we could do and seeing the devastation in their eyes. I look back and see what God put in my path to help prepare me for my future tragedy. However, I had never experienced anything like what I experienced on July 4, 2016, at 9:37 a.m.

My youngest son, my blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby boy, at the age of 32, had taken his life. He had suffered from depression and anxiety and self-medicated with prescription and illegal drugs. Matthew joined the Navy, right after high school and was stationed in Florida. He loved Florida, the beaches, the girls, the nightlife, everything about it, but mostly, he loved that he could go to any “doc in the box” and get any medication in almost any amount that he wanted to help take his pain away. I was appalled at the list of medications he sent me from his clinic records. I believe he became addicted to prescription drugs, and I encouraged him to come home where he had the support of his family.

During the 7 years he was here with us, he secured a job as a quality control inspector for an Oil and Gas Company out of Houston, purchased a home, and was able to save money. On the other side of the coin, he became addicted to prescription drugs again (he had beat his addiction to drugs and alcohol himself before leaving Florida and returning to Texas). Things were good for the first five years he was home. During the last two years he was here he learned that he could purchase any drugs he wanted off the dark web and had them mailed to his home. His girlfriend left him after she sent me a video of him crawling on the floor after overdosing. I asked her if she had called an ambulance, and she said no, that he did not want her to and he would sleep it off. She then decided to leave because she could no longer deal with what had been happening, which she had also taken part in. This was six weeks after I had taken him to a new psychiatrist, and he agreed to try some medication for his mental health issues and promised he would not self-medicate with illegal drugs to give the medications time to work. I later learned that he only stopped the illegal drugs for three weeks.

I went to his house the day before he ended his life and begged him to let me get him some help. He refused, stating he could not be locked up somewhere. He was cleaning out his house; his cabinets were empty, and he was putting everything on the curb for the trashman. He was not himself; he was screaming and cursing and attempting to tear the house apart. He stopped for about 30 seconds, came over, hugged me tight, and told me he loved me. At that moment, I saw my child, and then he was gone again; back to tearing up everything and ranting and raving. He told me he was moving back to Florida. I knew he was looking for drugs, but I chose to believe that he probably was going back to Florida. He kept telling me he was okay and that I just needed to go home and let him get some sleep. I was afraid to do that because I did not want him to do what I thought he might do. So, I stayed until he went to bed. He died by suicide the next morning. That is my very abbreviated story, but what I want you to know is how going through my own mental health crisis about three years ago, exactly 5 years after his death, to the day, led me to where I am today.

I ended up going into an outpatient program for help. I completed the program and went back to work after 12 weeks. I was doing much better and believed that I could now move forward. I had a decision to make: I could either lay down and die with Matthew, or I could make good out of what Satan used for evil. I chose the latter and enrolled in graduate school to become an LPC to help others through the same stresses I experienced. I was beginning to feel some peace again, but only for a brief time. I returned to the hospital two more times as an in-patient for generalized anxiety for a total of 17 days. It was hands down, the second worst experience of my life. I could now relate to my clients and understand their needs. I could navigate what not to say to someone who had just lost a family member to suicide. “I know how you feel, no you don’t,” “This was God’s plan, no it wasn’t,” You can always have more children, no I can’t, nor do I want to,” “At least you still have other children, I don’t have my son,” “God will make good out of this, no He won’t, I get to decide that, this will determine if I live or die.” “God will not give you more than you can handle; sometimes He does.” The answer to these questions is there is no right answer for everyone, those were just my answers. The words that meant the most to me were, “I have no words; I am just going to sit here with you” and “My heart breaks with yours, and I am praying for you.” Education of the grief process is paramount for these survivors to help them prepare for unexpected grief and better prepare for days ahead that will be tougher than others.

There are so many unanswered questions, guilt, and shame (yes, guilt and shame, suicide is looked down on by many, due to the stigma, there is also the shame of not being able to protect your child from themself). There is so much hurt, jealousy, and feelings of incompetence as a parent, even as a human being; blame must be placed somewhere, right?

Those who physically find their loved ones have a different experience than those who did not. I did not see my son, and I am still grateful that I decided against it. I did not want to remember him that way. I have found that for some of my clients who did find their loved ones, the struggle seems to be greater. With other clients, seeing the loved one and saying last goodbyes were comforting for the client; everyone is different. EMDR is excellent for those clients who did not have that choice, as well as the ones who did. There are many stressful moments in suicide. The absence of weddings, graduations, no grandchildren, dreams that have all been shattered, and other missed opportunities in life for the client’s loved one, as well as themselves, is a constant reminder of life before the loss and life after the loss for suicide survivors. Survivors many times also think that it would be better if they could just die and be with their loved one. I have never had any thoughts like that in my life until I lost Matthew, but I kept thinking what if I can do some good for prevention and that became my drive. The events that helped me the most were what we did as a family to honor him—donating to the homeless twice a year annually with the Beauty from Ashes Project, as well as sitting on the Out of the Darkness Community Walk Planning Committee for the past 7 years, donating the Memory Wall to the walk, and lastly becoming a therapist and starting a private practice named Beauty for Ashes Trauma Treatment and Therapy in memory of my boy.

Matthew’s death was not in vain and served a purpose to help others. Matthew was a sweet-spirited child, and I have always referred to him as the child of my heart; we were very close, he was the child and adult who validated me as a good mother. He would never miss an opportunity to tell me he loved me, and even in the end, God gave me that thirty seconds of seeing my Matthew. I would never take anything for those brief moments, and then he went right back to whatever, and whomever was controlling his body on that awful weekend, it was not my sweet Matthew.