The Loss of My Son

MONK in MANHATTAN- Published by Arkana. An essay about my son who took his own life in 2018. 

After my son died, I thought I was going to bully through this horrific event using my reason and my will. I felt terrified of the dark feelings of loss. I had an unconscious fear of disintegration, that the weight of grief, the loss, would annihilate me. At the same time, unconsciously, grief was all I had left of my son. I didn’t trust what was on the other side of grief. I couldn’t look at a world my son wasn’t a part of. I could not understand that my resistance to accepting the loss of my child, my resistance to accepting difficult feelings and working through them, was a way of continuing my relationship with my son instead of moving forward.

Eventually, I came through to the other side of the worst parts of grief.

I welcome you to meet my son in this essay.  There’s an audio component, too.  It's a story about a few moments in our lives, fractional moments that do not make up the entirety of our shared experience of love and laughter taking place over twenty-seven years.