I am not a therapist, counselor, or doctor. I don’t hold an advanced degree in counseling or therapy.
I’m a dad who lost a son to suicide. I would like to share my journey with you, and I hope it is helpful to you and possibly help you on your journey with loss and grief.
As you continue reading, know that I am very open and honest about our experience and some of the language could be triggering for some.
A little background on me.
My name is Todd. I was born and raised in Maine, went to college in Boston, and never left the South Shore. I think it is important to know yourself what / when / where makes you happy - I like beach walks with my dog at sunrise and sunset. When you add layers of loss and grief on top of everything else going on in your life it can be too much to handle. Knowing the simple pleasure of a walk on the beach is important.
Like most of you, I’ve experienced loss throughout my life. Like most of you, I only associated loss/grief with death, such as the death of a grandparent, parent, cousin, pet, and such. It is only now that I realize loss/grief includes so much more. It can include divorce, a job, a friendship. My journey expanded my perception.
March 27, 2025; 8:51 PM
This was the moment everything changed.
The moment of my greatest loss.
The moment the voices and hallucinations took away my boy.
The moment my uncomfortable journey with grief began but at that time I didn’t realize it would open doors.
It would show me things I didn’t know. It would bring me a version of love I didn’t realize existed.
As I mentioned in William’s story, his struggle with his mental health declined, drastically and rapidly. For any of you that have dealt with this, you know it ebbs and flows and has a pattern. We knew it was getting more serious when his pattern veered off track and his hospitalizations became longer and longer. The voices were becoming louder. His attempts more frequent and serious. As 2024 was ending and 2025 was beginning, my gut was telling me I wouldn’t have much longer with my oldest child.
I don’t think I truly have felt honest, raw, gut-wrenching grief until I lost William. It changed me. It changed how I saw the world. As I am writing this in October 2026, I am only 1.5 years into my relationship with grief. I don’t know what to expect each day I wake up, what might trigger an emotion or a memory and how I will handle it. Fortunately, I had been seeing a therapist for several years and had developed mechanisms (toolboxes) for dealing with some situations. I could adapt these tools to help guide me in this new environment.
This of course would be a huge undertaking but I had a foundation to start from. My husband[1] and I had family and friends that we could lean on in the early days. Not that they have disappeared now, but they do have their own lives and their experience with William’s death is different from my husband and mine. I also must give credit to my two greyhounds. Animals have an incredible intuition. They know when you are sad and grieving, and my two guys never left my side in those early days.
My husband and I are similar in that we wanted to learn more, seek out answers, see what others did. We researched books to read and my husband found a support group for us that was specifically focused for parents that had lost a child to suicide. Listening to other people that were in the same space that we were in was a tremendous help for me. Knowing they also didn’t have the answers was comforting. We were helping each other on our grief journeys.
I’m a person that believes talking about something out loud with others helps to spread knowledge and removes the stigma around certain subjects. We shouldn’t be ashamed of sharing with each other. It’s how we can learn from each other and hopefully find some healing along the way.
I’m also a person that can be a little too honest. If someone asks me, “how are you today” and I am having a bad day, I will say – “Today, isn’t a good day, but I am present and I’m trying”. I don’t put on fake smiles. I’m not a sweep it under the rug and dealing with it later person. If something is happening, I like to deal with it right then and there, WHY am I feeling this, WHAT triggered this, HOW can I deal with it. I don’t look to make it better. Sometimes that is just not possible and I simply have to accept it. I don’t have control over things. If I do have control over something, GREAT. If I don’t, that is GREAT too. That’s how it is. In my head I say “Tough shit Todd, move on”.
Through my support group, reading, and a podcast; I knew that William’s birthday, 1st death anniversary, major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas) would be difficult. I was also told that these are also not prescribed. Some people found that the 2nd or 4th or 5th were harder. They hit everyone differently. So how people plan vacations, I now plan my time off around these days to protect myself. Maybe ‘protect’ isn’t the right word. I now plan activities on these days; activities that William would enjoy, like going to iHOP or watching a favorite movie.
I’m a spiritual person but don’t follow a religion. I do believe in signs. The next few things I share can be taken with a grain of salt. But for me, they are real. I believe in Mediums. Clairvoyants. My paternal grandmother constantly had visions. A while after William passed a highly recommended medium was suggested to me and I made an appointment.
She started with… “I’m glad you are finally here. Your son has been a little annoying. He’s been very excited that you are visiting today and it’s been hard for me to concentrate on my other clients.” (Hmm, that is very William)
“Was your son a singer, he hasn’t stopped singing ALL DAY, he has a microphone in his hand.” (Hmm, ALSO, very William)
“He’s pointing at the seat next to you and is asking where your husband is, he thought he would be with you today.” (Sorry dude, Dad, wasn’t ready for this yet, I say through my tears)
Later in the visit William is laughing, and she says, “has the volume in your car been randomly getting loud?” (YES) “That’s been him riding along with you. He’s been F**King with you, he thinks it’s been funny.”
In our conversation she also asked if music has randomly turned on in my home and I replied in the affirmative. I reflected on this later in the evening and tried to remember the songs that played on those occasions, I could only remember two, not specific songs, but the music was definitely rap (music not in my library) and thinking, ‘that little twerp’. HA
At the end of my session she told me to keep my eyes open for other signs from him.
A few weeks later two insects started appearing on my dog walks that were never around before, ladybugs and dragonflies and it wasn’t just random here and there. It was landing on me or landing on the dogs, dog leash, car door handle as I was reaching to open the door and such. With each encounter, I say, HI BUD, Glad you’re here today. It makes my heart happy.
As I mentioned, whether these experiences were real or coincidence, who knows, but they felt real to me. There have been times when I thought a dog that had passed was curled up beside me. When I thought my grandmother was in the car with me. When I thought I could smell my father-in-law’s cologne (I never had the pleasure of meeting him). When I thought my mother-in-law was walking alongside me.
What would have been William’s 24th birthday was three months after his passing. Peter and I decided to have breakfast at iHOP and take a hike on Cape Cod at The Knob. William loved balloons. I bought him a Happy Birthday balloon, and we brought it along with us in the car. My Thanksgiving was spent with my cousin and her family in Arizona (I didn’t feel thankful for much) and I wanted to spend my Christmas alone with just my greyhounds watching my favorite movies (and the ones William loved too).
I haven’t found the wording I want to use for ‘missed’ birthdays. Nothing I’ve read yet has touched upon that. He doesn’t age anymore, he wasn’t 25 this year, but that day is still his ‘birthdate’, it means something to me. It affects me. This one was easier than the first one without him, but it may not always be that way.
I plan on making updates on my journey as it continues. I don’t know how my second Thanksgiving without William will be, my second Christmas. I have to wait and see.
There are some people that get a tattoo after a child’s death. Peter and I aren’t into tattoos. But I wanted something with William’s name. One day in one of my feeds a bracelet appeared and it was for a word that had special meaning. I immediately had an idea and emailed the company to see if they could make it the way I wanted it. When I got the ‘yes’ I ordered 4, two for each of us. There has never been one off my wrist. If I need to wash one, I put a new one on first before removing the dirty one. That way William is always with me.
The one thing I have shared in my support group is that I was relieved that William was successful in his suicide (I know that this wording isn’t accepted by everyone). Those in the group understood right away and didn’t question my words. When I’ve said this outside of my group I am usually met with fierce anger, such as “WHAT, how can you wish your son to be dead instead of alive”. I have to clarify to them, that’s not what I said. I said, I am glad that he was successful in his suicide. I would 100 times over wish he didn’t decide to jump that day and he would be in the car singing a song with me today but that isn’t the case. He did jump from 5 stories up and his neck was broken. Had he survived that, what would his life be like? Would he be paralyzed? Would he have brain function? Would he be eating out of a tube for the rest of his life? My adventurous boy. My thrill seeking, entrepreneur, wanting to see and experience the world, the boy who loved to tell stories and sing. Would being stuck in a body that he couldn’t control anymore and still hearing the voices and demons and not having a way to escape them be a way to live anymore?
The answer is simply no. That would be a fate that is worse than death. My son is now limitless. He is exploring. He is singing. He is helping others. He is with three grandparents who are doting on him like CRAZY. He is with his birth-sister. He is FREE from the voices. The demons. The PAIN. I know he is HAPPY. I know he is watching over his dad and I .
(1) Throughout my website I reference my husband. Although we are separated now, I don’t like to reference him as my ex because he means more than that to me. After 27 years together he is still my best friend and knows more about me than anyone else. Some of you will understand that, and some might not. So, in this space he will still be called ‘husband’ or just his name, Peter.
Other Grief
On the Loss, Grief and Love tab I speak of other types of loss and grief.
Separation and divorce are other areas to think about. Many might not think this way, for some when this happens it is a time of bitterness and turmoil. But other times, like mine, a tragic event happens and things just shift. You still love each other, but things just aren’t ‘the same’. You experience the loss. You grieve that. You ride that journey.
I lost SO MANY rounds of these games to WILLIAM.
Mental Health Awareness
Our own mental health and of others around us is very important. I believe science is only at the early stages at being to understand our brain and how differently each one of us responds to afflictions to the brain, psychosis and other ailments.
Watching a loved one go through schizophrenia and psychosis is extremely difficult. I’ve often tried putting myself in William’s shoes to what he would have experienced first-hand, and I just can’t imagine it. To not have any grip on reality. To not be in control of his thoughts. He would often write things down in notebooks and to him, the items made sense, but to anyone else, it looked like gibberish.
It is also more difficult to have an adult child go through this. They are a legal adult. They can make their own decisions. There is no way to make sure they take their medications. There is no way to ensure they go to their doctors’ visits. You have no control. They can have lucid days, and, on those days, progress can be achieved, but they are few and far in-between.
Speaking on the subject was often taboo. Luckily, this is changing with each passing day. Public figures (such as Selena Gomez, Kristen Bell, and Calum Scott) are speaking about their personal journeys and struggles and destigmatizing the myths and untruths about mental illness. They are normalizing what ‘real’ people are facing daily. They are showing the next generation that it is ok to talk about their feelings and seek support and help.
You’ll see that on our donations page we give to the Schizophrenia and & Psychosis Action Alliance. They are doing great work and we hope that with every dollar we give, we help them to find answers.