him. You can touch his face, tell him what you’re doing. Talk to him.
And then give him a kiss and go on about your day.”
“I’m so scared of abandoning him again.”
“He didn’t kill himself because of you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“ere are an inĕnite number of things you could have done
differently in your life. ose choices are done, the past is gone,
nothing can change that. For reasons we will never know, Jeremy
chose to end his life. You don’t get to choose for him.”
“I don’t know how to live with that.”
“Acceptance isn’t going to happen overnight. And you’re never
going to be glad that he’s dead. But you get to choose a way forward.
You get to discover that living a full life is the best way to honor him.”
Last year I received a Christmas card from Renée and Greg. It
shows them standing by the Christmas tree with their daughter, a
beautiful girl in a red dress. Greg embraces his daughter in one arm,
his wife in the other. Over Renée’s shoulder, a picture of Jeremy sits
on the mantel. It’s his last school picture, he wears a blue shirt, his
smile larger than life. He isn’t the void in the family. He isn’t the
shrine. He is present, he is always with them.
* * *My mother’s mother’s portrait now lives in Magda’s house in
Baltimore, above her piano, where she still gives lessons, where she
guides her students with logic and heart. When Magda had surgery
recently, she asked her daughter, Ilona, to bring our mother’s picture
to the hospital so that Magda could do what our mother taught us: to
call on the dead for strength, to let the dead live on in our hearts, to
let our suffering and our fear lead us back to our love.
“Do you still have nightmares?” I asked Magda the other day.
“Yes. Always. Don’t you?”