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The Letter That Found Me When I Was Finally Ready
How lucky am I to have found that letter.
It was tucked away in a small box of my mom’s things in my grandparents’ closet. Neatly folded, quietly waiting. I found it 24 years after she died by suicide. It was the last entry in a journal I had somehow overlooked, written the month she passed in 1994.
For most of my life, I tried to understand my mom through other people’s memories. I pieced her together through stories, trying to make sense of how much she loved me…and still asking the question that never really left: why?
Because the truth is…I don’t have many memories of my own.
She died when I was just 2 and a half years old. It was 1994, before smartphones, before cameras were always within reach. Every year, I find myself cycling through the same four pictures I have of the two of us. Just four. That’s all I have. Four small snapshots to hold onto, to study, to try and feel close to her in some way.
So much of who she was has lived in imagination, in stories, in pieces.
The day I found the letter would have been her 47th birthday. The next day was International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day.
That doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me.
In the letter, she wrote: “I just hope it’s at a time when you’re able to understand me and most of all forgive me.”
For a long time, I wasn’t ready.
Grief is complicated like that. It doesn’t move in a straight line. It lingers, it resurfaces, it changes shape over time. I carried confusion, anger, sadness—and a kind of emptiness that comes from missing someone you never really got the chance to know.
I also carried my own struggles. Depression. Periods of suicidal ideation. And in 2014, I had a suicide attempt.
At the time, I didn’t understand the weight of what I had been carrying since childhood. I later learned through research from Johns Hopkins that children who lose a parent to suicide are up to three times more likely to die by suicide themselves.
That statistic stopped me.
Because suddenly, my story had context.
But it didn’t have to be my ending.
Finding support through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention helped me in ways I didn’t even have words for at first. It connected me with people who understood this kind of loss without explanation. It helped me make sense of feelings I had buried for years. It reminded me that I wasn’t alone. That healing, even after something like this, is possible.
Somewhere along that path, I found my way to her.
Or maybe… I finally found my way to understanding her.
When I read the letter, something shifted. I didn’t just see what I had lost—I saw what she had been carrying. I saw her loneliness. I saw her pain. And I saw how deeply she loved me, even in the middle of it all.
For the first time, I felt like I understood.
Mom, after 32 years, I forgive you.
Not because it didn’t hurt. Not because it didn’t change everything. But because I can finally see you more clearly now. And in that understanding, I found a kind of peace I didn’t think was possible.
I love you. I always have. I always will.
I’ll leave you, the reader, with this:
They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing, and the second, a bit later on, when somebody mentions your name for the last time.
I will never stop saying your name, Mom.
I will never stop sharing your story.
#SuicidePrevention #survivorofsuicideloss #AFSP #MentalHealth #Veteran #Grief #Suicide #MothersDay
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