A Son’s Suicide, A Mother’s Regret.
How an Unanswered Cry for Help Destroyed a Family.
“You are important. Your life matters and people care about you — even some you’ve never met. Please, take good care of yourself.” ❤ Renee Dubeau
My cousin and I grew up next door to each other on our family farm in rural Michigan. We were the oldest of six grandchildren who lived and played together in the 1980s. Our moms worked beside their mother, our grandmother, at the family business and as far as we knew life was pretty good. We spent our summers in grandma’s pool and winters sledding down the big hills at the cemetery behind the corner church where grandpa was laid to rest long before we came into the world.
Between swimming and sledding, we had years of memories carving out the middles of the big round hay bales so we could hide inside them, running through cornfields with outstretched arms whapping every stalk as we ran and skating across the pond out back when the ice got thick enough to hold us to get to our friend’s house on the other side.
Sounds wholesome, right? This little family just doing their thing out in the country. So quaint — charming, even. The simple life and all that jazz. Looking at those snapshots from our childhood, you’d never imagine the extreme grief, loss, guilt, shame and trauma our…
