What I knew about suicide didn’t fit my sweet, energetic 12-year-old boy

Penny Daniel is a grandmother and mother of three, "a big, a middle and a little."

She recently shared this heart-wrenching story about the death of her 12-year-old son, Declan, at the NAMI Washington's storytelling event, The Brainpower Chronicles. It's a difficult story, but draws together some lessons learned after a terrible tragedy.

We are sharing a lightly edited transcript of the story below. You can listen to all the stories from this event on KUOW's Speakers Forum.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please contact one of these resources:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255

Hotline available 24/7. Online chat also available.

Crisis Text Line: 741741

Text from anywhere in the U.S. with a trained crisis counselor. Available 24/7.

Forefront Suicide Prevention (UW)

Information, training, and resources. Not a crisis line.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Information and resources. Not a crisis line

Skating with wool socks

It was a Friday afternoon and I was driving home. My husband was a bit ahead of me, he had gotten off work earlier and he had the baby with him.

And I was trying to call my son. He wasn’t answering the phone.

My son is 12, and he’s got my eyes. All the other kids have green eyes, like their dad. Only my Declan got my eyes – the blue ones. When he was little he had blonde curls that were just beautiful.

I'll tell you a funny story about Declan. Twelve is mischievous, right? One day my husband called me, I was on my way home from work, and he was non-verbal he was so grumped.

And I was like, what happened? I couldn't figure out what he was talking about except that he had slipped and fallen and he was quite grumpy about it and it had something to do with Declan.

And so when I got home I tried to figure out what happened. It turns out that Declan had taken an entire Costco-sized can of Pam and sprayed it all over the wood floor. And then he went and got his hiking socks — the good socks, the wool ones — and went sliding through the house.

And the floor — I can't even tell you. It was the living room and the kitchen and the entry way — it was everywhere. And it was really slippery.

But he cleaned it up and it was all good.

The permission slip

I got home and was coming out of the bedroom, and I looked down the stairs and my husband was there holding a piece of paper.

And I said, “What is that?”

And he said, “It’s Declan’s permission slip.”

This is the permission slip that Declan had bothered me the night before to get signed, because it had to be turned in Friday. And Thursday night he was all like, “Mom. Mom! Mom mom mom. Mom! Mom.”

And I was like, “What?”

“Can you sign my permission slip?”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a field trip to go see mummies.”

He likes that, because 12-year-old boys like mummies.

And I said, “Well, does it have to be now?”

And he said, “Yes! I have to turn it in on Friday, otherwise Mr. Barry’s not going to let me go.”

I said, “Okay, find me a pen.”

So I signed it and said, “Make sure to turn it in! I don’t want you to miss out on that. I know you’d really enjoy it.”

So there was my husband, standing with the permission slip that was supposed to have been turned in.

And in that moment, I realized the house was quiet – and it’s never quiet.

And I looked at my son’s bedroom door and it was shut – and it’s never shut.

And I just had that growing feeling of dread, for no reason, honestly, but I just did.

And I went over and I knocked on the door: “Declan?”

And I got no answer. And I thought, “Crud, I’ve got to open the door.” I don’t like invading my kids’ privacy, I think that they need space on their own, right? So for me to open the door was just a violation of my own rules.

So I open the door, and I found Declan. He was there, but he wasn’t there.

And I went to grab him, and he was cold. And your children aren’t supposed to be cold.

In that moment, my whole self was plunged into the bottom of a really black, angry ocean. And I didn’t know which way was up. I didn’t even have a direction to go. And I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t see and I couldn’t hear.

Thought cancer

In the days and weeks and months that followed, I had to sort out what the conversation with the coroner told me – because everybody has conversations with coroners about their 12-year-old son – he said, “suicide.”

But I knew my boy! Those two things didn’t fit together. What I knew about suicide didn’t fit my bouncing boy.

People who die by suicide are angry, and withdrawn, and they’re adults, and they lost a job or had a terrible relationship breakup – some terrible thing happened and they just made a terrible choice.

But I have this boy! Who was snuggly, sweet and energetic, and liked riding bikes and playing Minecraft. He was a kid. How could suicide fit with my boy?

So I went into therapy, because grief is hard and you need somebody to talk to. And I found The Compassionate Friends, which is a bereaved parents group. And there were other suicide parents there and I started to hear the stories about beautiful children who were intelligent and well-adjusted and athletic and loving and didn’t have any problems – and then one day they were gone.

I just couldn’t understand it. It just didn’t work. To be so distressed in your psyche, in your heart, in your soul about why your child was gone is really quite unbearable.

And one day a mom used a term that finally offered me some relief: “thought cancer.”

We all understand cancer: It’s your own cells that attack you and sometimes kill you. If your mind could attack you and sometimes kill you, and they’re both illness – I finally got to a place where I could overlay that with Declan.

He could have been ill. He wasn’t immune to illness – none of us are. So of course he could get a mental illness.

I learned a lot. There are warning signs, but the warning signs for adults don’t actually apply to middle school kids. And that’s where most mental illnesses start. That’s where we should all be looking. And we’re so oblivious to it, and we don’t want to believe it and it’s terrifying, honestly.

It's really terrifying.

Keep healthy, together

And we say about people who are despondent and might be suicidal: “Why don’t they reach out for help?”

If you think for a moment, how hard would that be? To say, “I want to hurt myself. I want to die.” Those aren’t the words that are really well received.

So we need to start looking and understanding what to look for. I have learned how to talk to someone.

I had to. What if I was in a situation like that before, like where I actually recognized something was going on and I could actually intervene?

Because suicide is incredibly preventable. Who knew? I did not before. Now I do.

My daughter just had a baby last year. Before our granddaughter was born, my daughter and I sat down and talked. And I said, “Sweetie, this isn’t going to be easy.”

We don’t talk much about our pain – we recognize that we have it, and we don’t deny it, but we don’t talk much about it.

And I said, “You’re going to have a baby. Post-partum depression is an issue. And I know moms now who have lost daughters to that. And I want you to talk to me about this. And I want to have a plan.

"I want to understand that you understand that you know if you start to sink, and if you start to feel like you want to die, or that you’re useless here, I want you to reach out. I want to have a plan, so that you don’t experience that. And if you do, that we get you help, and you don’t leave me.”

And she cried. And she said, “Thank you so much, Mom. Because I know we need to talk about this.”

So we made our plan.

And we got to welcome her daughter to the world and thank God my daughter did not have post-partum depression.

But we still talk about it. We talk about all illnesses.

And we keep healthy, together.