When someone dies by suicide, it can be easy to let the circumstances of their death become the story we tell about them. The word suicide can become the first thing people think of, as if the way someone died somehow erases everything about the person they were while they were alive.

It doesn’t.

They were someone’s child. Someone’s sibling. Someone’s parent. Someone’s friend. They had a personality, a sense of humor, things they loved and things that drove them crazy. They had favorite songs, favorite foods, memories, dreams, ordinary days and really good days. They had people who loved them.

The person I lost was more than the way they died.

That’s something I have had to remind myself of throughout the years. When you lose someone to suicide, it can be so easy to get trapped in the final chapter. Your mind wants to go back there because you desperately want to understand it. You replay what happened. You think about the questions. You think about the pain. But that moment was not the entirety of their life.

It was one moment.

They were a whole person before that moment.

As a mother who has lost a child, I don’t want the story of my child to end with how that child died. I want to remember the life. I want to remember the person. I want to remember the love, the laughter, the memories and all the things that made that person uniquely who they were.

And I think this matters in suicide prevention, too.

When we talk about suicide, we need to talk about the person before we talk about the statistics. We need to remember that the person struggling is not a problem to be solved or a tragedy waiting to happen. They are a human being who may be hurting in ways we cannot see.

Their pain deserves compassion.

Their life deserves attention.

And their story deserves to be bigger than their worst moment.

For those of us left behind, remembering the whole person can be part of learning to live with the loss. We don’t have to pretend the way they died didn’t happen. We don’t have to ignore the anger, the questions or the complicated emotions that come with suicide loss.

But we can refuse to let the ending erase everything that came before it.

So say their name.

Tell the funny story.

Share the picture.

Talk about what they loved.

Tell people who they were.

Because they were more than how they died.

They were loved. They mattered. And they still do.

#SuicideAwareness #SuicideLoss #RememberThePerson #MentalHealthMatters #EveryLifeMatters