wfn.org | UMNS# 04466-Life goes on for two parents after each loses a son

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Life goes on for two parents after each loses a son to suicide	

Oct. 8, 2004	 News media contact:   Matt  Carlisle * (615) 742-5470* 
Nashville {04466}

NOTE: This story is the second of a three-part series by UMC.org and United
Methodist News Service. Photographs and additional information can be found
at www.umc.org.

A UMC.org Feature 
By Susan Passi-Klaus*

Clark Taylor, a recovering alcoholic, was 33 when he killed himself on a cold
January day in 1992, leaving behind a wife, 3-year-old daughter and mother
Judy Collins to wonder why-and forever imagine if only.
 
In the decade following his death, the singer and songwriter poured her grief
into her journals. Those journals evolved into Sanity and Grace: A Journal of
Suicide, Survival, and Strength, published in 2003 by Tarcher/ Penguin. In
the book she writes, "Even as I put one foot in front of the other, show up
for my life, and the lives of my loved ones, learning to survive, I shiver
when someone's suicide is mentioned, and the chill makes its way from my lips
to my heart as I speak of my own journey. ... Putting the journey into words
is one of the only ways I have found to warm the chill in my heart ..." 
 
Collins believes through her son's death she has learned to live a fuller
life, and she finds comfort in sharing her grief with the loved ones of
others who have committed suicide. It is how Taylor's spirit has managed to
live on even after he took his life.
 
"Clark is still with me all the time," says Collins, 65, by phone from her
home in New York state. "In fact, he's been very, very busy. He's like a
little angel up there. He's very close. And I think he's present, so that's
another gift of loss. You find out that you don't ever really lose anybody."
 
She is not alone. Clark Flatt is another loved one left to wonder why. The
retired United Methodist pastor from Hendersonville, Tenn. found his
16-year-old son's dead body in his bedroom in July 1997. Flatt, like Collins,
took his grief and used it as fuel for helping others. Within a year of his
son's death, he established the Jason Foundation to educate parents and
children about suicide and how to prevent it. 
 
"Looking back, Jason gave us four or five signs that something was wrong, but
I wasn't educated enough to know what those signs were," says Flatt, 53. "He
had been a very laid-back, outgoing person, but he became more withdrawn and
easily agitated and brooding. His grades dropped, and he stopped talking
about football. ... His old self just changed dramatically, but we just
thought he was going through normal adolescent changes.
 
"My guilt about that was in the form of anger that the church and the schools
and the community didn't give me the facts-they didn't provide me with the
tools and resources to prevent what happened," Flatt says. "It's like having
a child with polio, and having that child die without you ever hearing that
there was a vaccine that could have prevented it."
 
Every 18 minutes, someone in the United States commits suicide, Collins
writes in her book. They sometimes are younger than 10 years old. Others are
older 90. But the old, the young and the in-between who become the most
obvious statistics commit the so-called "successful" suicides. Some 300,000
to 600,000 others also try to kill themselves. 
 
For every endangered or abandoned life, there is at least one loved one, or
two, or 20 struggling to make sense of the insanity. 
 
Collins says she struggled with the idea that "if I had just done this, if I
had just done that, if only I had called him earlier, if only I had talked to
him on the previous day-it would have been different. Well, that's an
egotistic illusion. We don't have control over other people's lives or how
they live them or what they do. You know, we barely have control over our own
lives."
 
Collins battled alcoholism, like her son, and she tried to commit suicide
when she was 14. Taylor's grandfather, whom he never knew, also had killed
himself. 
 
"There are those of us who have that precondition," she says. "I tried to
kill myself when I was 14, so I know what that feels like. I think I know
some of the things that went through his mind."
 
Collins and Flatt never have met, but their lives intersect beyond their
shared experience of loss and grief. Both have seen God use their son's
tragedies for good.
 
"Time after time, I've watched as God took the heartache of someone else who
had lost a son or daughter and turn it into something very positive for
others," Flatt says.
 
Collins says her Methodist upbringing gave her a foundation of faith that
sustained her as she grieved the loss of her son. 
 
 "I have a very, very deep faith, and my fervent prayer is always 'Thy Will
Be Done," she says. "And I don't pretend to know what that is ... but
experience has taught me that I'm better off in a surrendered state. I know
that it's going to be all right-in fact, I know that it is already all right,
and that's what helped me get through Clark's suicide."
 
When Collins and Flatt counsel other suicide survivors, their first advice is
to encourage them to join a suicide recovery group.
 
"Talk about it with whoever you can." Collins says. "Don't let people tell
you not to talk about it. And don't let people tell you that you're through
grieving when you know you're not."
 
Eventually, they say, they found a greater appreciation of life.
 
"You deserve to have a life," Collins says. "You deserve to go on. You
deserve to have friends. You deserve to have a wonderful, joyous life. It's
not OK just to survive. I now have a determination to live as full a life as
I can."

 
*Passi-Klaus is a freelance writer living in Nashville, Tenn., and publisher
of Cracked Pots, an inspirational newsletter for women.
 
News media contact: Matt Carlisle, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5153 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org