I haven’t written this blog for ages but I sometimes I just feel I should share part of my journey as even though it has been 12 years this year, I experience something nearly every day that relates to Toby and that he died and how he died.

I don’t think many people realise this about grief – even after years it lives within you, every day of the rest of your life.

A few experiences I’ve had recently relate to telling people I have just met that my son has died and them ignoring me – this happens a lot. I don’t believe I should not talk about Toby just to avoid having an uncomfortable conversation.

In my job I am constantly meeting new people. I work for the National Trust as a welcome assistant and I don’t just talk to people about mining history, we share stories about our dogs, our lives and of course our children.

When a person dies they cease to exist in the physical world but their lives up to that point still matter and their memory shouldn’t have to be erased to prevent conversations about death and dying and in my case, suicide.

If I’m with my friends and they are all talking about their adult children and grandchildren – should I not join in and share memories of my child?

I really appreciated a friend who recently was willing to engage in a proper grown up conversation about Toby and his death. We were just chatting over coffee and she asked me something interesting which most people never ask, ‘It must be very hard not knowing why he did it’.

I’m quite comfortable responding to these kind of questions as I really encourage more people to have open and honest conversations about suicide rather than shying away from it as if it is a huge taboo or contagious. It shows empathy and a willingness to try and understand more about suicide.

So that has prompted me today to write this blog, hopefully to help others that struggle with accepting they will never fully know why a loved one chose to end their own life.

It is hard to get your head around the fact that a person would choose to take actions to end their life. I still find it hard to comprehend even after doing extensive research for my dissertation. There is no simple answer as to why someone not just thinks about it, but who makes a plan, then carries it out.

How often do we hear ‘They couldn’t possibly be suicidal, they seemed so happy and were making plans’. The recent case of the missing woman demonstrates this. We don’t know if she took her own life or if it was an accident but so many friends and relatives were insistent that she couldn’t possibly have been suicidal as she loved her children, had a lovely life, had sent a text making plans for the next day…etc etc. When I hear those statements I just think, if only you knew how many people die from suicide who you could say those same things about.

All Toby’s friends thought he was carefree and happy-go-lucky. He didn’t demonstrate any signs of being severely depressed or suicidal. I would have given him money, and gone to the ends of the earth to help him but for some reason he decided he no longer wanted to live in this world. Even though he didn’t leave a note he had written some notes in a notebook the day before saying ‘today is the most satisfying day of my life’. That hit me hard.

Everyone wants reasons as that would make it easier to accept. ‘His wife left him, he was made redundant, in debt, in poor health etc etc but millions of people go through hard times but don’t take their own lives. There is no one reason. I do believe that any one of those events can be a catalyst – the straw that broke the camel’s back, but that it is much more complicated than just having a shit thing happen then deciding to end it all.

Suicide is complex and every case is different. I believe it is an intense desire to end the pain of a current situation and dying seems the only way out. I’m sure many of us can relate to the feeling of not wanting to go on, I feel that frequently – but then something else must happen to go from that feeling to actually deciding on a method, obtaining anything needed then going ahead. I can’t imagine being that brave – I would chicken out. So I believe the suicidal mindset is just focusing on bringing the current intolerable situation to an end – it doesn’t mean they don’t love you or their children.

Quite early on in my journey I recognised that they were 2 critical things I had to address and make peace with if I was going to survive and not drive myself crazy and go down a destructive path.

The first thing was to realise that I was not responsible for my child deciding to kill himself. It wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do or should have done. It wasn’t my fault. When I truly acknowledged this it was life-changing.

The second thing was making peace with knowing I would never truly know why Toby killed himself or what was going through his mind that weekend. I can speculate based on what I knew about him and his life at the time – but I had to accept I would never know why.

I went to a spiritual retreat 3 months after Toby passed away – searching for some comfort and healing. It was run by a guy known as The Barefoot Doctor (he has since passed away). In one session I wailed that I just wanted to know why he did it. I was taken aback when he said ‘why don’t you try asking him’. At first it seemed like a strange question – but then it made perfect sense. I closed my eyes and reached out and really tried to connect with Toby, and a very clear answer came back – ‘I don’t know mum’.

This made perfect sense to me and in that moment I was healed from the pain of not knowing why. Toby wouldn’t have been able to articulate in words why he did it…it was exactly what Toby would say. It wouldn’t have been authentic for him to write me a neat little ‘I’m sorry mum I love you’ note.

Toby was an esoteric being, a free spirit, mega-sensitive and intelligent – maybe on the spectrum – If I ever asked him how he felt about anything he could never tell me. I have a few notes and musings he wrote a few months before his death and it seems he was lost and confused, and couldn’t find a place in this world.Death is complicated, suicide is even more complicated and for those of us left behind, a survivor of bereavement by suicide, our grief is very complicated, and even more so if it is our child.

So if you are in this situation, recently bereaved and struggling with trying to understand why – perhaps see if you can sit with this and get to a place of peace and acceptance – it will aid in your healing.