My Heart

The dull pain in my heart still comes and goes,

Much the way that a tide ebbs and flows.

Alone, I endure this anguish and despair;

There is no one who comprehends with whom I can share.

In my guilt and my grief I’m completely alone

The light of my life—my son—now is gone.

Your brilliance extinguished by your own hand,

An effectively lethal act—spontaneous, unplanned.

In one brief moment, the decision you made

To end your life—the ultimate price paid

For a life so full, yet somehow beyond sad,

Suicide the only option that you felt you had.

You’re never to know just how widespread

Was the shocked disbelief at learning you were dead.

My world in shambles, nothing ever the same,

Irrationally feeling as if somehow, I were to blame.

My brave façade shows the world my smiling face,

Though inside, emptiness has taken my heart’s place.

But at night, safe in my bed, where no one else hears,

My new best friend—my pillow—accepts my silent tears.

Desperate for answers,

I search and wonder and ask God, “Why?”

I know God listens, but as yet, there’s no reply.

Yet, His Word assures me that in another time, another place

I will once again see your beautiful, heavenly face.

That thought sustains me and I somehow carry on

In a way once thought impossible after you were gone.

Though now a new person, changed in ways I’d never dreamed,

Learning through tragedy that you weren’t who you seemed.

This painful journey must be solitary and alone;

No way to avoid it; the grieving must be done.

So for a brief span, but a lifetime, we will remain apart,

Till I see you and hold you and reunite with my heart

About the Author

My son, Luke, took his own life on October 21, 2008. He was thirty years old, handsome, charismatic, adventurous. I have been an active member of a local Survivors of Suicide support group in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and have made friends and found comfort on the website www.suicide.org. I’ve lived in Northern Wisconsin all of my life and have been married to my highschool sweetheart, Bill, for thirty-seven years. We are blessed to have a second son, Jesse, and his two young children in our lives.