Off the Deep End

by Lucinda Berry

Sometimes, what doesn’t kill you simply doesn’t kill you, and you spend all your time wishing it had.

know he’s gone from the moment I’m conscious, and as painful as that is, it doesn’t compare to thinking he’s there and losing him all over again.”

Talking about your son’s death never gets easier.

The only people who get over losing kids are the ones who don’t have any.

and that even if I managed to find him, I’d never make it back up to the surface, I quickly decided there was no way I was going to let him die down there alone. None.

Lots of mothers had other children, who finally allowed them to reach somewhere deep inside themselves to find a way to go on. I understood that motivation.

Everyone else called it the train accident, but something isn’t an accident when you do it on purpose.

“You’re not equipped to go from nothing bad ever happening to you to the worst thing that could possibly occur happening to you. It’s like being hurled into the deep end of a pool when you don’t know how to swim. That’s what it feels like. And all of it is dark. As if every light in the universe has been turned off.”

“My grief was all-consuming. People always say things shook them to their core, but it wasn’t like that for me. It was like I’d lost my core, as if I no longer had a center, and I came undone. Totally unraveled. I couldn’t see any hope. No light. Only darkness. I couldn’t see in front of me, let alone a way out.

She was gone, but it wasn’t on drugs. I think she punished herself by staying sober so that she had to feel all of it.

She gave in to her grief, and it devoured her. She’d seemed mind-numbingly depressed before but got scary after she moved out.

think grief makes people do crazy things.” I’m not going to argue with him there. I’ve done lots of insane things. It happens almost automatically when you’ve got nothing to lose. There’s an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose. And it’s really hard to be afraid of anything when the worst thing has already happened to you.

only takes three minutes without air for brain damage to occur. Four minutes until it’s permanent.

“It’s not being strong when you don’t have any other choice. It’s not like you can say, ‘No thank you. I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

Take it out on the ungrateful parents.” “But everyone knows there’s no better way to get to parents than through their kids. That’s where you’ve got to hit if you want it to hurt the most.”

There was no greater torture for a parent than being unable to stop your child’s suffering.