Talk to Me by Allison DuBois

abandoned her immediately. I was shunned by coworkers, and people assumed that drugs were involved or that I was a bad parent to let such a thing happen. There’s anger—if someone murders your child, you become angry, but when your child murders himself, a very confusing anger can result. And disconnection—my brother didn’t choose to die; I knew that if he could, he would have remained with us. But my own son chose to end his life, and trying to resolve that permanent decision with the love I was sure he felt for me was very difficult.
    For me, the burden of intense, unrelenting guilt was the worst to bear. I attended a support group and found it helped to share with others who have been through the same experience. They did not judge or make the assumptions that so many others around me did. I read many books on suicide that were beneficial. The most helpful book I read was Allison’s We Are Their Heaven . Whereas other resources gave me intellectual understanding and told me that I wasn’t alone in my struggle, We Are Their Heaven gave me real hope. Not just hope that I would someday heal and learn to get on with life, but hope that my boy was not really gone . . . that he is still here among us.
    Oh, how I wanted to contact my son! Yet I was still heavily burdened with the guilt and disconnection that suicide leaves in its wake. I thought, ‘What if I did somehow mess up and I was the reason for Adam’s decision? He chose to leave. That must mean he doesn’t want to see me.’
    As I continued to sink into the murky swamp of my own brewing, my thoughts evolved into a solid belief that my son was angry with me, hated me, and would want nothing to do with me—even if he could. I pushed away friends, hobbies, a girlfriend, and most forms of life’s pleasures. While I felt I was progressing through the stages of grieving, I was actually stuck with the guilt and disconnection. I was living a lonely, self-loathing life, and when I did try to connect with my son, I convinced myself that I sensed only anger in return. How could a man like me deserve to be happy when he had so obviously failed his child?
    I had never been to a reading. Frankly, I feared receiving confirmation of what I dreaded most. I would visit Allison’s website now and then and receive her email newsletter. Then I began to feel more and more impelled to check the dates of her events. I was always ‘satisfied’ to see there was nothing in my state. ‘There . . . see, can’t go. Silly idea anyway.’
    Eventually, it was bound to happen. Allison was having an event in a city three hours from where I live. I kept putting it off, all the while having it more and more brought into my mind. I finally said, ‘I’ll open Allison’s book, and if it gives me any indication that I should go, I will.’ (I admit I gave this little chance of success, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have done it.) So I stuck my thumb into the closed book and opened it directly to the page where she wrote of the needs of grieving fathers. I took that as a positive sign. I decided that I’d been living in guilt, pain, and fear for nearly five years. If anything was worth a short weekend trip, this certainly was.
    Arriving at the hotel, I was still very tentative. All I wanted was to know whether or not my son loves me. I decided to grab something to eat and sit out on the restaurant’s patio. When I walked onto the patio, the old song ‘Silly Love Songs’ was playing—at the chorus, ‘I . . . love . . . you.’ Coincidence, I thought.
    I was very nervous at the event. I still feared my son was angry with me and didn’t love me. At the meet-and-greet, I thanked Allison for her work and told her how much her book had meant to me. It was a short conversation, and then I took my seat that I had selected in the back corner. I knew I wasn’t guaranteed a reading and, in my