Without Tim: A Son's Fall to Suicide, A Mother's Rise from Grief

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
A very personal, deep dissection of a family leading up to and after the suicide of their 18 year old son. Not a lot of sugar coating with this dramatic read. This death would begin what is referred to as a suicide cluster. 9 more young people in that area would end up killing themselves. Many would choose the method of the first victim. Quite a few of the victims knew each other.

I wasn't thrilled with the format of jumping backwards and forwards of the timeline. But as far as brutal honesty, the author lays it all out there for the world to see. I guess when you decide to write this sort of book, you put all your family's dirty laundry out there for the entire population to view.

Any parent that has raised teenagers can relate to some of the events that are written about. Behaviors that parents don't approve of are common place. But a tiny percentage of those kids choose to end their own lives. Even kids that end up on the wrong side of the law rarely resort to this desperate act. So was this a preventable act or was it preordained to eventually happen?

When the mom dug deeper, she spoke with some of her son's friends. Her son spoke of killing himself for almost 4 months. The mom inquired deeper and the friends didn't believe him because even as he spoke of killing himself, he never actually did it. That was until he did. The dead kid's friends believed that the family knew he was suicidal. Yet all that time he had been telling them that he was fine.

You think you know your kids well enough to suspect when something isn't right with them. Are parents that caught up in life that they miss the warning signs that their kids are in way over their heads?

It's a fascinating read about human nature and self reflection after the fact.

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vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
I feel for families that experience a child's suicide not only for the loss of their son/daughter, but because people come out of the woodwork to blame them. Why didn't you do something? Why weren't you paying attention? Blah blah blah. All those people should die and go to Hell.
 

PeoplesElbow

Well-Known Member
I think people don't want to believe their children are capable of it, that they don't want to feel they failed that badly as a parent. Not saying they did fail, but I'd imagine someone who knew their child was suicidal would feel as they were.

I knew one kid who killed himself at about 13-14, his dad beat him and his mom on a regular basis.
 

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
I think people don't want to believe their children are capable of it, that they don't want to feel they failed that badly as a parent. Not saying they did fail, but I'd imagine someone who knew their child was suicidal would feel as they were.

I knew one kid who killed himself at about 13-14, his dad beat him and his mom on a regular basis.
In the book, the author writes about getting the kid medical help the first time they got word he was suicidal. The dead kid told some friends what he was thinking. They in turn told this kid's younger brother. The brother told the parents. They immediately Baker acted the kid. Since he was 18 years old, 20 hours later he signed himself out of the medical facility.

If you can believe everything you read, the parents were tough on their kids. Lots of rules and punishments in the form of losing privileges. The mom wanted to send the kid off to 1 of those boot camps for obstinate teens. But the dad squashed that idea.

Reading the book, you can see the evolution of things going out of control. But I'd like someone else to read it to see if they agree with my assessment that perhaps being a little less demanding the outcome could have been different. The dead kid was ranked 4th in his high school class. He wasn't dumb or lazy. He did like to smoke pot often and they viewed that as him showing defiance.

Who knows what the correct approach is. As parents we all 2nd guess decisions we make that affect our kids.
 
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