Hello and welcome to this supportive community, launched on 29 April 2003, for those who have suffered the tragic and indescribably painful loss of a child to suicide.
If you have found this site following the death of your child, grandchild or sibling to suicide, then first let me offer my sincerest and heartfelt condolences. Platitudes mean very little at this time from people who can't really relate to your grief, but everyone who has a need to visit this site is bound by the same tragedy of the death of a child they loved to suicide.
Whilst nothing that anyone says can bring your child back to you, knowing that you are not alone and being able to share your innermost thoughts and feelings without being judged, can be enormously beneficial in the lifelong grieving process.
Many well-meaning people will come out with clichés such as, "Time will heal", but the healing and the grieving will last a lifetime and is not something, as some people falsely believe, that you will ever "get over". In time you may come to reconcile yourself to its reality, however painful and impossible that may seem. Joining hands with others who can empathise with your pain will hopefully help you ease you way through the excruciatingly painful and difficult days, weeks and years ahead.
When my son died on 1 November 2002 after an intentional Heroin overdose on 31 October 2002, I didn't believe that I would survive. Yet here I am, several months further on, knowing that I have to do something positive as a result of his tragic suicide. I cannot do anything to bring my son back to me, but I can do something for those who are still alive - my other children, my partner and all those desperate, sad and isolated people out there who are reaching out for help but don't know where to go.
I hope that you find some solace and support within these pages and will use it as a place to remember and pay tribute to your beautiful child.
I know that my pain is a tribute to my son, a sign that I have vivid memories of him. He was not perfect and I do not want to have only memories of his best qualities. I want my many memories of him to condense into an accurate portrait of the personality that he was, an image that will be perfectly maintained until the day I die. I want to preserve his memory like a precious piece of artwork, a masterpiece that depicts this beautiful, clever, naïve, vulnerable, compassionate, impulsive, forgiving, cheerful, but deeply troubled boy, a sensitive, caring soul who was too gentle for this harsh world.
Jan Andersen
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love,
the things you are, the things you never want to lose.
