This collection of true stories will invite you to lean into the process of understanding the larger implications of how suicide affects others. This book poses several questions.
What happens to the people left behind when someone commits suicide?
How do the survivors navigate the grieving process?
Which methods do they use?
Do they ever recover from such a profound trauma?
These questions are answered through the written submissions of the 26 contributors to this work.
Each year in the United States, approximately 40,000 people commit suicide, making suicide the tenth leading cause of death for Americans. The number of annual suicides in the United States is double that of the number of homicides.
For every completed suicide, there are approximately six survivors. This means roughly 240,00 suicide loss survivors were created in the United States just this year.
This new release has quickly catapulted to the top ten in every relevant sales category. This is a great opportunity to capitalize upon the success of my previous memoirs and enable The Scattering of All to join my other memoirs as best sellers.
First, Barbara.
“Do you want to go say good-bye to your mom?” Cindy asked.
I waved to my mother from the car window and said, “No, that’s okay. I’ll see her tomorrow.”
That was the last time I saw her. She committed suicide the next morning.
It was a perfect summer afternoon and all I could think about were horses. My mother, my sister Hillary, and I had spent the weekend with the Laidigs, a generous, kind family we had met at church that spring. They had invited us to their house in the country and our fractured little family folded into the love that was waiting for us there. We played on the lake, sang songs, and communed over fresh food that we had prepared together. There was joy alive in our blood and I was reminded what it felt like when laughter shook my belly and lifted my cheeks. Many times that weekend I looked into the deep, clear blue of my mother’s eyes and felt her relaxed presence. She was with us. By then it had been over a year since my mother and father had separated. The sonic boom of her broken heart had permeated our home leaving a thick layer of dust that made everything sad. My mother was held captive by her grief and in between her bouts of tearful pleas for mercy and fits of rage, she slept, almost all the time. That weekend however, a comforting peace had returned after it seemed to have been stolen from her, carefully tucked away in one of my father’s shirt pockets that went with him the day he left.
I felt relief and immense gratitude for a brief return to normalcy, and the faith that comes when you witness someone’s aliveness.
All the while, she was preparing to die.
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Marilena Petrocelli
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Mafalda Pinto
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Sergio Omar Vazquez Maldonado
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Author review: Great communicator and wonderful job on the translation. Highly recommended! |
