The Choice

his neck.
On his desk she found a note: It’s not you, it’s me. Sorry to
disappoint you. —J
When Renée and her husband, Greg, ĕrst came to see me, Jeremy
had been dead for only a few weeks. e loss of him was so fresh that
they weren’t grieving yet. ey were in shock. e person they had
buried wasn’t gone to them. It felt as though they had put him in the
ground alive.
During those early visits, Renée sat and sobbed. “I want to turn
back the clock!” she cried. “I want to go back, go back.” Greg cried too,
but quietly. Oen he would look out the window while Renée wept. I
told them that men and women oen grieve differently, and that the
death of a child could be a ri or an opportunity in their marriage. I
urged them to take good care of themselves, to let themselves rage and
weep, to kick and cry and scream and get the feelings out so that they
didn’t make Jeremy’s sister, Jasmine, pick up the tab for their grief. I
invited them to bring in pictures of Jeremy so that we could celebrate
his sixteen years of life, the sixteen years his spirit had resided with
them. I gave them resources on support groups for survivors of suicide.
And I worked with them as the what-if questions rose up like a tidal
wave. What if I’d been paying more attention? What if I hadn’t
answered the phone that night, if I’d given him that huge hug? What if
I’d worked less and been at home more? What if I hadn’t believed the
myth that white kids are the only ones who commit suicide? What if I’d
been on the lookout for signs? What if I’d put less pressure on him to
perform in school? What if I’d checked in on him before I went to bed?
All the what-ifs reverberated, an unanswerable echo: Why?
We want so much to understand the truth. We want to be
accountable for our mistakes, honest about our lives. We want reasons,
explanations. We want our lives to make sense. But to ask why? is to
stay in the past, to keep company with our guilt and regret. We can’t