A mere 11 days after I had buried our son, I got on my bike and met up with my Friday group of riders. Not long afterwards, during a meeting of a support group for parents who had lost children to suicide, a parent asked, ‘How can you get on your bike with that smile so soon after you buried your son?’ (not the type of question I expected in a “support group”). I responded (I think rather calmly), that I didn’t get on the bike with a smile. But I did get on the bike. That was the beginning of my resilience. I began to “ride through” years before I started to use this phrase as my metaphor for life.
I continued to explain to the inquisitive parent that I didn’t utter a word for three hours during the ride and that the riders were sufficiently sensitive not to ask me any questions, especially the most annoying of all, “How are you?” How do you think I am after just losing my son to suicide? Just give me that much-needed hug and stop asking questions. Let me ride and help me up if I fall. So, I barely uttered a word during the Friday rides during that first year after my son’s death, but I never missed one. I knew that I was saving myself by simply showing up for those rides.
That was resilience.
This does not mean, of course, that the loss and trauma ever go away. One cyclist saw me crying during a ride a few years ago and protected me by saying to the other riders, “Don’t crowd Meir, he is having an “Ariel Tsunami.” An example of an “Ariel Tsunami” was one day when two riders didn’t arrive at the meeting point and didn’t answer their phones. When they finally arrived (only five minutes late), they explained that one of them had had trouble with a tire. I then burst into tears, dropped to one knee holding my face with both hands and screamed at them, “You must always answer your phone!” They looked at me as if I had gone mad, so I explained that on that terrible day my wife and I must have each called Ariel 50 times. In shock and total disbelief, we were hoping that Ariel would pick up the phone on the 51st attempt. So, we both kept calling and calling and calling. But there was no answer. There never will be. It doesn’t matter. I am allowed to cry, but there is a cryptic and powerful statement in the Talmud (Moed Katan 27b) in the context of the laws of mourning: “Cry, but not too much.” So, I cried when my friends didn’t answer their phones, but I then stood up, got back on the bike, and continued to cycle.
During the first year after Ariel died, I think I cried at every single red light as I drove from client to client working as a fitness trainer. The red light was a safe place. I could not cry while working with fitness clients as that would be unprofessional. I also could not cry while I was driving because that would be unsafe. So, the precious few moments at the red light are where I gave myself permission to cry. But not too much. The light turned green, I wiped away the tears and drove to the next client. For me, that is resilience – crying, fiercely at times, but knocking on the door of the next client with a smile. And the smile was just as real as the tears. Riding through is smiling and crying endless times during the course of a day.
Nine years later, these tearful breaks at red lights no longer occur. In a strange way, I miss them because the tears were cathartic; when the storm was over, a strange sense of calm prevailed. Now, instead of powerful outbursts, the pain feels more like the minor, but incessant, aftershocks of an earthquake. There are fewer tears, and of lesser intensity – but the sense of loss persists. The goal of my resilience is not to stop feeling pain – that is simply impossible – but to stay as close as possible to the “path” so when I stray a bit to the left or right and fall, I can pick myself up and continue riding through.
As I ride up and down the Jerusalem mountains, I now see things during a ride that I had previously never noticed. I used to focus on how fast I was going, how far I had travelled and at what cadence and watt power. These statistics are still important to me, but now other things matter as well. I see sunrises, sunsets, trees, and flowers that I simply never saw before. My sense of sight has changed since the loss of our son. I need to see the beauty and goodness of life because the thorns that press upon me lead to sadness and darkness. So, I ride, and observe the beauty of God’s creation. I ride and feel powerful; I see beauty and feel good. Our son’s absence is always present – and always will be. It’s because of this continued presence of absence that I have trained myself emotionally to be more aware of the beauty and light within the darkness.
Another aspect of resilience focused on my professional work as a social work educator. At the time of our son’s suicide, I was the Director of the Israel Block Program for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work. My job entailed locating appropriate social work agencies for the students’ internships, hiring supervisors who would work with the students, and administration of all aspects of the students’ field work in Israel.
Both the students and the supervisors visited me during the shiva as I sat on the floor, unshaven (according to Jewish tradition) and often in tears.
This was not easy for me, and I didn’t have much time before I needed to resume my professional responsibilities because the students were required to submit monthly reports by January 1st (our son had taken his life on December 17th), and the monthly meeting with them was set for the first week in January. Some of the professionals suggested that I skip the January meeting with the students and forgo the mid-semester assessment sessions between the students and supervisors.
I thought differently, and chose a different path that resonated with me – to move. This was my resilience, similar to getting back on the bike 11 days after my son’s funeral. As such, I wrote the students and supervisors expressing my gratitude for their support during the shiva and notifying the students that their monthly reports were due on January 1st. In addition, I reminded both the students and the supervisors that mid-year assessments were going to take place as planned. My resilience was resuming my responsibilities with assertiveness, even though I was in great pain.
It takes a village to be resilient – and some good therapists! A few months after Ariel died, I started working with a trauma therapist who was immensely helpful. She was a good listener and was extremely careful not to push too fast or too hard. A question that I learned to appreciate greatly during my year of therapy was, “Is this bearable?” which reflected the caring and sensitive way my therapist treated me. I was and remain, grateful. There were times, though, when I felt that like some of my friends, she too tried to protect me instead of listening.
One example of this was her explanation of why Ariel did not mention any family member in his suicide note. On another occasion when I expressed guilt, I found her need to protect me to be exasperating. In my opinion, guilt after the suicide of a loved one is an integral part of the mourning process, and needs to be heard without judgement or protection. For example, in “Healing After the Suicide of a Loved One,” Ann Smolin and John Guinan mention a support group for mothers who had lost their children to suicide. During one session, two mothers each blamed themselves for the suicide of their respective daughters. One mother blamed herself because she had chosen to keep her daughter at home instead of hospitalizing her, while the other mother felt terrible guilt because she had chosen to hospitalize her daughter who then took her own life.
(To the friend who gave me this book during the shiva I will be forever grateful, as I believe it helped save me during that first, awful year.)
Regarding guilt: therapists, friends, and society in general need to hear anguish and not brush it off with platitudes or patronizing pats on the back. The ubiquitous ‘what ifs’ are exactly that – ubiquitous. It’s normal. I need to be heard, held, and hugged when I express my guilt, and not told that I am wrong or too harsh on myself. There is no wrong in mourning. To paraphrase Megan Devine in “It’s OK That You’re Not Okay: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand,” suicide is horrific and it’s okay not to be okay! To my therapist’s credit, when I told her during one session that I felt unheard, she apologized and promised to do some work on herself as to why she felt the need to protect me.
But I wish to reiterate that my trauma therapist was a critical factor in my ability to process my trauma and to survive during that first awful year. I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to process my loss, anger and, yes, guilt with her. She also really helped me understand (after she was able to listen to my sense of guilt) the difference between guilt and regret. For more on the issue of regret, I recommend Daniel H. Pink’s “The Power of Regret.”
I may feel guilty or regret about many things that I did or failed to do with Ariel, but that does not mean that I am “guilty,” nor does it mean that if I had acted differently or had had more knowledge that Ariel would be alive today. I will never know. But I do know that I will always live with the ‘what-ifs,’ and regret, and that I need people to listen to my angst instead of trying to convince me that I’m a good guy. I think I know that. But good guys make mistakes and it’s okay not to be okay and, even more importantly, it’s okay to own my mistakes and talk about them with others so they won’t be repeated.
Another critically important aspect of my resilience was participating in a support group for parents who had lost loved ones to suicide. There is great power and comfort being with people who know exactly what you are going through. In “The Skills of Helping: Individuals, Families, Groups, and Communities,” Lawrence Shulman calls this type of support “mutual aid,” the “same boat” theory, if you will. Even though many members of the group eventually left and the two professionals who led the group were often ineffective, the remaining members bonded together and are still in touch today. As one member of the group noted, we are like a bundle of sheaves – we are close, and we protect one another. There is no better definition of a support group than this.
The group met in Herzliya every other week for two years. I could have chosen to participate in another support group that also included parents who had lost children to car accidents and murder, but I intuitively knew that the loss of a child to suicide was profoundly different from other types of losses. I believed that sensitivity to the issue of guilt and the pervasive ‘what-ifs was crucial to understanding the angst of a parent who had lost a child to suicide, so I decided to attend the group that B’shvil Ha’Haim offered, and am glad I made that choice.
I developed important, life-long relationships with the group members who remained to the end of the two-year commitment. More importantly, despite issues with the moderators, I learned an important lesson: one can always learn from other people, even if there is a lack of connection. In fact, I have integrated two important ideas I learned from one of the moderators that has strengthened my resilience:
- Instead of saying “never,” I will never be happy, I will never travel again, after the loss of my child, etc., the moderator suggested that we add the term “for now.” By so doing, we allow ourselves the possibility of change in the future.
- If we allow for the possibility of change, we can appreciate the power of movement. One cannot simply let go of pain, but we can move forward – ride through – with the pain and despite the pain. As I mentioned in the chapter about the shiva – we are allowed to sit with our pain, but we need to learn also to move with our pain – always at our own pace, but with forward movement.
Years after the support group had concluded, I attended an in-service training program for volunteers organized by B’shvil Ha’Haim. The goal of the program was to train a cadre of volunteers who had lost loved ones to suicide to share their personal stories and/or to elucidate suicide prevention principles through a power point presentation. With the help of a skilled moderator and other staff at B’shvil Ha’Haim, I learned how to integrate the two methodologies into a lecture, and in the past year and a half I have given talks to educators, city councils and soldiers. These talks have been very meaningful for me, as I can say with full conviction that if Ariel’s suicide changed my life forever in a painful way, becoming a public speaker about suicide prevention has changed my life in a positive way. During a recent talk with soldiers who had lost a fellow soldier to suicide, a soldier asked me: “How do you have the strength to continue living after such a painful loss?” My response was, “By doing exactly what I am doing now – as I believe that increasing knowledge about suicide prevention is my responsibility, obligation, mission, and privilege. Giving presentations like these strengthens me because I believe it can save lives.”
One aspect of resilience is connected to honoring Ariel’s last wish in life to help the children of the Miklat. My wife helps throughout the year by preparing gift baskets for the Jewish holidays for the children at the Miklat as well as those living at the transitional apartments. My way of helping the children has been the establishment of an annual fundraising campaign for the Shelter as a way of honoring Ariel’s memory. Five years ago, when I first initiated the campaign, we raised 15,000 shekels. This past year, we raised over 70,000 shekels. I realize the irony – I was and am still angry that Ariel didn’t mention any of his family in his suicide letter, but I have decided to keep that anger at bay. Honoring Ariel’s wishes and his love for the children gives me great satisfaction. It helps me ride through.
The final aspect of resilience, the most surprising one for me, has been writing. I do not consider myself an author. My story is about our son’s suicide. I had – and still have – a choice to fully live and enjoy life and ride through with loss, or to wallow and ultimately shrivel up in that loss. Writing has become a form of self-therapy that has enabled me to constructively channel my pain. I am not trying to inspire. I am trying to survive. When people offer kudos, I am certainly thankful – and humbled. But I respond by offering my truth – I am just a very average guy who absorbed a crushing blow, but I decided to get back on the bike and live life with the pain and despite the pain.
The writing of this website has been much harder than writing a post on Facebook or a blog for Times of Israel. The posts and blogs were written after days of an idea swirling around in my mind that prevented me from thinking about anything else. My mind was so terribly busy (maybe Ariel was teaching me how hard it was to live with a noisy brain) , and after I managed to put the idea down on paper and push the send button, I was able to relax and breathe. This wasn’t creativity –– but a learned skill to survive. Creative or not, the ideas did flow out of me once I was able to formulate them in a coherent way.
The writing for this website, on the other hand, has been more demanding and challenging for me. I had to think instead of feel. I was forced to relive so many painful memories that I had successfully stored away in the basement. Now, I had to lift heavy boxes up many flights of stairs. It was hard work.