| In the weeks that followed Jody’s suicide, every day seemed like a lifetime. Each sunrise brought a painful beginning, like birth. However, unlike birth, where there is eventually joy, there was a daily struggle to face the reality of a deep, irreplaceable loss. It was like going through labor, but there was no new life to compensate for the pain; there was only more pain because my baby was dead. The loss of a newborn is painful enough, but my son had given me seventeen years of precious memories before he aborted himself. At night, the darkness, like death from old age, would bring a quiet, resigned surrender to my child’s end, and hopefully my own. In the morning of the next day, dismayed by my own survival, the pain would be fresh and another twenty-four hour life cycle would begin. In between morning and night I somehow existed, and eventually was able to pretend everything was okay, trying very hard to go on with my life in a positive, productive way. Those around me even saw the smiles of someone they assumed was adjusting amazingly well. In private, I was fighting the finality of my son’s death, not wanting to believe or accept that I would never see him again. At times I raged and wailed that such a thing could happen. I have known others who have experienced the death of someone very close and dear to them to just stop funct-ioning for a period of time. They stopped performing even the simplest of tasks, such as making coffee. They just stopped doing almost everything except praying that death would also devour them. What they sought was an end to their tortured existence, an easy way out. But there is no easy way out of this life, and each leaving sets off a chain reaction of pain for those left behind. I began to focus on the others around me, feeling I must do so for the sake of my two daughters, but I too desired death. I thought, at the time, how easy suicide would be. How easy it would have been, right after Jody’s death, to follow in his footsteps. Thank God I was thinking about others at that time and not myself, and what I thought I wanted. My life would have ended, causing the same kind of pain for those who love me, and I would never have known the incredible joy that lay ahead. Never would I have seen my daughters married or known the love of my grandchildren. I would have died without knowing the fulfillment of a good marriage. I would have destroyed all that was in my future. However, it’s hard to care about a future when the present is so laden with pain. At the end of August, several months after my son’s death, I sought relief and change by going to Ocean City, Maryland, the resort where we had spent a family vacation the summer before. I went alone so I could think, and remember, and cry as I wished, without prying questions or intruding looks from well meaning loved ones who felt they needed to guard me, or monitor my mental stability. I walked the beach wishing for that which could not be, could never be again. I sat in the sand, in front of the beach house where we had stayed, and relived, with the agony of grief as my guide, the moments we’d spent there. In fact, I went over our whole life together. The time we’d had together was too short, and I didn’t know, when it was passing, how precious. No one warned me that my time with my son might not last or endure. I never dreamed that I would only have seventeen years with him, or that the past summer would be the last one. We’d all been happy that last summer at the beach. I guess I thought I could recapture some of those feelings in my search for some relief from the pain that I could hardly stand, caused by a loss that I didn’t want to accept as forever. I kept hoping Jody would walk out of the beach house to go for a swim with me. He didn’t, and I knew he wouldn’t. I began to dwell on where he was. I pictured my precious child beneath that mound of dirt back on our farm. I wanted to dig it away, to uncover my Jody and hold his body in my arms. “Oh dear God,” I thought, “I'm going crazy.” I couldn’t help it, I just wanted him back. I pictured his smooth young face beneath the dark blonde hair, his hazel eyes and warm smile that always brightened his entire expression—and mine. I could almost feel his strong body and powerful arms. I closed my eyes and made myself listen as I recalled his voice. “Aw, mom, you don’t really want me to do that. If I clean up the back porch you’ll have nothing to bug me about.” It was the gravelly voice of a teenage boy entering manhood. It was the voice of my son. I didn’t ever want to forget the sound of that voice. I would consciously keep bringing it back over and over again so I wouldn’t forget it, so I wouldn’t lose Jody in the only form I had left, my memory. It was the first of September when I got home from the beach. First I unloaded the car. That’s like me to do what I think I should before I do what I want. Then, almost hesitantly at first, I began the walk to the newly established graveyard in the hillside pasture. The tall pasture grass, left unmown that summer, parted with passive acceptance as I made my way toward my son’s burial ground. From about one hundred feet away something caught my eye. Something that produced tears and caused my heart to speed up, as did my feet. I ran the rest of the way and fell to my knees beside the almost bare mound of dirt. As a little boy Jody loved to pick Black-eyed Susans. He’d pick those wild flowers and bring them to me with such love and pride in presentation. The last bunch he picked for me was on my birthday before his death, August 4, 1976. The Black-eyed Susan is an independent wild flower that can not be forced to grow out of season. Even the blanket of Black-eyed Susans placed on the winner of the pres-tigious preakness horse race are really painted daisies. That race is run in May before the Black-eyed Susans cover the Maryland countryside, and they can’t be forced to grow in greenhouses. Black-eyed Susans grow from seeds, and do not return from the same roots year after year. The growing period for these wild flowers is the middle of June to the middle of August. But there, the first of September in the year of my son’s death, in the center of Jody’s grave, was a single perfectly formed Black-eyed Susan. It stood with strength and reassurance. It was all alone in the still, unsettled dirt covering the grave. There was not even a blade of grass or a single weed around. I wept with mixed emotions of intense loss and love, feeling both distance and closeness, sadness and sudden relief. I saw it as a sign from my darling Jody. It spoke to me words from my dead child. “Do not cry. Do not despair. I love you and never intended for you to suffer so much. Please forgive me, and please be happy with the rest of your life. Please believe that I’m okay, and at peace.” Whether it was a sign from Jody or from God; perhaps a bird dropped a Black-eyed Susan seed on the fresh grave, it brought me relief. I felt that my son wasn’t so far away, and that his spirit would always be with me. If nothing more, it helped me to begin to think of Jody there, at the gravesite. He was dead, and I began to accept that. I started to realize that I would never again see his form as I had known it. But his spirit would be close and would guide me. I would not forget him and what we shared. He would always be special. What we gave to one another, what we had meant to each other, would not die or diminish with the passage of years, and it has not. Each year since Jody’s death, a single Black eyed Susan has grown on his grave. It is a comfort and a joy. It is a remarkable phenomenon that now makes me smile rather than cry. Jody was a kid who never forgot my birthday, and never outgrew giving his mom flowers. I choose to believe he still hasn’t. There are many mysteries in life and death that can’t be explained, and I think shouldn’t be, just accepted. Susan Bowden-White: From a Healing Heart, Image Publishing, Ltd., 1411 Hollins Street/Union SQ, Baltimore MD 21223. |
| Blackeyed Susans |