Submission 39

Dear Jordan,

As I write this letter to you son, it’s been 30 months since that fateful day. I remember the call I received from Charlotte as if it was yesterday. I also often think of those moments when she came home to find you and how with the assistance of Jan and Simon your neighbours they tried desperately to save you, probably knowing it was already too late. The weeks and months of trauma which followed have become vaguer memories for me now and replaced by a general sadness whenever I think of you, which is every quiet moment of every day.

I do want to replace these sad thoughts with happier memories of who you were when you were in this physical world but it’s hard not to think of the loss so many of us feel since you chose to leave us. You know I’m not a religious person but I do cling on to some kind of spiritual belief or perhaps a better word than belief is hope? Because without hope, how can we who mourn you carry on? My hope is that when I leave this world, we will be reunited. Of course, only time will tell if this is what happens or not?

As you know, since your suicide, I now devote my time to helping others who are struggling as you did. However, the more I’m able to help others to avoid taking the path you did, the more I learn and realise what I could have done to better support you. During those first few months, I heard from so many of your friends about how you would often tell them about me in the most positive of ways and how you even looked up to me as some kind of hero. I also hear from others, who are well meaning and will tell me what a good and loving father I was/am. Oddly, many of these people have no idea what kind of Dad I was/am still.I could have been not so busy, focused less on my career and the pursuit of ‘success’ because at the very moment I was finally about to recognise my success, I lost a part of the very meaning of my existence-you my son.

Now, I’m constantly reminded of how I must be there for your sister, Danielle, and not fall into the same traps again.I now know from your journals and the poems you perhaps hoped would remain locked away on the web, that you struggled with dark thoughts for so long and you bravely battled to stay with us, until and in your own words, you could ‘no longer deal with the thoughts that were literally showing me no way out’.

You are the bravest of people Jord, I realise that now. You were special to so many people who all miss you desperately.There is so much more I could write here, so much I want to tell you. Now, I accept that whatever I have to tell you will be confined to a one way conversation every morning when I wake and each evening before bed, as I talk to your photographs instead of being able to hold your hand and hug you and let you know that everything will be alright. If I had our time all over again, knowing what I know now, I would not just be a better father to you, I would be that person you so needed or perhaps I wished I’d been.

I will love and miss you forever my beautiful boy.

Dad xxx