Deb described equated her experience of losing Josh to suicide as having a now shattered world. As with all of us who are in this most unfortunate of circumstances, my world also completely changed…but it did not shatter, instead it stopped spinning on its axis.

My story is a bit complicated as my son was missing for about a month before I even knew he was dead or even died by suicide. So my world came to a screeching halt when the two officers, standing in my house on a cold December evening, told me Izzy had been found …and he was not alive. Or rather I should say, they told me that his “body” had been found. They did not tell me “he” had been found. I thought this was especially cruel. It was one of many insensitive, hurtful things that I had to endure in the approaching minutes, hours, days, and even years.

Let’s return back to my living room with the officers who had to give me the news of my son’s death. I had no idea how he could have died but my mind had been playing different scenarios since he had not returned home. Was it he hit by a car or murdered?

Then when I was told how he died, it was as if every molecule in the universe conspired against normalcy, the Earth began rotating in a completely opposite direction as more news about his death was revealed.

Losing a child was one blow, learning about the cause of death was another blow, and then having to wait to hear from a thoughtless coroner about the exact cause of death was another blow, having it reported in various media outlets was another blow, and there was more to come.

It was entirely too much to absorb and endure at once. Rather than Deb’s gut punch, I was up against the ropes repeatedly receiving blow after blow. To process this catastrophic shift is as unnatural as the Earth changing its rotation.

Time and space ceased to exist as it did before. Nothing mattered yet everything mattered. This new reality is full of contradictions.