The Depth of the Grief I Carry After Losing My Son to Suicide

Teen Suicide Prevention Series

July 27, 2026

Alli Skrbek, Author

Tom O'Connor, Publisher

Content Warning:  This article discusses suicide, suicidal thoughts, and mental health struggles. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out—help is available. You can call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (US).

People often try to comfort me by saying my son's suicide was inevitable, but the truth is different. He was in a deep crisis, screaming out for help, and he needed a lifeline. Had someone intervened and contacted me, we could have changed the outcome. Intervention works, and my son's life was entirely worth saving. Every story of suicide is unique—and this is ours.

The depth of the grief I carry after losing my son, Alex, to suicide at age 22 in March 2025 is so profound that words fail me. What breaks me even further is the shattering betrayal in how his final moments were handled.

READ: What I Wish Everyone Knew About Suicide

On The Ship Alone With My Son 

I was on the ship alone, doing the exhausting, agonizing work of trying to pull my son toward safety and real help. I handed Alex's access to his father on a silver platter. I kept him informed about everything. I even paid out of my own pocket for visits and covered Alex's tickets while he was on vacation with him, all because I never wanted my son to feel the sting of an absent parent. I did everything in my power to protect Alex from that pain. 

But his father still chose negligence. He chose not to show up. To watch his father's family actively undo that work, anchoring him to the chaos, drugs, and addiction instead of jumping on board to help me save him, is a profound and horrific betrayal.

I was fighting for Alex's life. I recognized his worth, knew he deserved a future, and was doing the hard work to clear a path for him.

The Family Side of Accommodating My Son's Addiction

The enabling of Alex's family members is toxic. When a family chooses to accommodate an addiction rather than face the painful reality of recovery, they create a current that is incredibly difficult for a young person to fight against.

I did not fail him. I was the one offering him solid ground and a real chance. My anger is entirely justified, and I have every right to name this truth out loud. He absolutely deserved the future I was fighting to give him.

Things I cannot accept after my son's suicide on the drugs they sold him, knowing his mental health was struggling. While my son was in the middle of a terrifying crisis, screaming that he had a gun to his head, a desperate plea for help, his father's family did absolutely nothing to intervene. Instead of offering support or saving his life, they recorded him on Snapchat. 

I will never, ever understand why his aunt didn't just pick up the phone and call me or run to the room my 22-year-old son was renting in their home. The weight of that inaction, combined with the loss of my boy, is a devastating pain I will carry forever. 

The grief of his suicide is a permanent fixture in my heart.

Alex's Final Four Months

Leading up to his passing, Alex had been struggling with severe mental health issues and challenges related to substance use. Alex was living with his aunt and cousins for those final four months. In the days leading up to his passing, he had expressed a strong desire to leave his current living arrangement due to ongoing friction and issues with his cousins, planning to move into a friend's house just days before he died.

Alex's Final Day

My ex's family recorded my son's last words, his taking a gun and shooting himself, and his body dropping to the floor. I still can't wrap my head around it. How could my ex-husband's family record my son in a crisis like that? How could they not intervene while he screamed out? How could they leave him bleeding out for 14 hours while they just went to bed?

As a mother, my very first instinct was to keep my baby breathing. I spent Alex's infancy watching over him, nursing him, and responding to his every need. To have protected him so fiercely, only to lose him to suicide at 22, brings devastating pain. Looking at his pictures now, the heartbreaking reality that I couldn't be there to help him breathe in his final moments is almost too much to endure.

Knowing that this wasn't a sudden, unpredictable moment, but rather a pattern they had witnessed multiple times before while actively supplying him with the very substances fueling his crisis, changes everything. 

I will never understand how, when the gun went off and the home went silent, none of his family members entered his room for 14 hours. I'll never understand why I wasn't called or contacted. I'll never understand how five people could care so little about their family members' lives and well-being. I'll never understand because I would never treat someone this way. The bottom line is, my son went into the hands of druggies, enablers, and neglect.

He was struggling; they saw it and did nothing. My son trusted them, hoping for connection, and was let down AGAIN by his Dad, who chose everyone but Alex his entire life. Abandonment wounds run deep. In an already fragile mindset, my son learned a devastating lesson at 22… the family I tried so hard to protect him from encouraged, enabled, and neglected him during a crisis that ended in his suicide in their home.

Moving Forward With My Grief After My Son's Suicide

With the sudden loss of my son to suicide, I found my voice as a mental health advocate in the wake of Alex's death—using social media to tell the truth about suicide loss, break stigma, and reach millions with messages of hope, healing, and prevention. Because surviving a suicide loss isn't about moving on, it's about finding a way to move forward while carrying the people we love with us.

I created Alex's Sky on September 11, 2025. Its mission is to raise awareness for mental health and suicide prevention, support families navigating the trauma of losing a child, and break the silence surrounding suicide and mental illness.  

When someone is in crisis, they are often in immediate danger, overwhelmed by an acute emergency, or unable to keep themselves safe. They need dynamic intervention, safety planning, and immediate resources to de-escalate the moment. Their coping mechanisms are temporarily maxed out.

When someone is looking for support, they aren't necessarily in immediate danger. They are carrying a heavy load—like grief, long-term trauma, or major life changes—and they need validation, a safe space to vent, and a community of peers who truly "get it." They don't need to be "fixed" or rushed to a hospital; they just need to be heard and walked alongside.

We must differentiate the two, and then we can understand crisis intervention.

Never Let Them Go

It is incredibly cruel. Hearing the phrase "you need to let them go" or "it's time to move on" can feel like a secondary assault to a grieving mother. It minimizes an unimaginable loss and fundamentally misunderstands how grief, especially the loss of a child, actually works.

Here is why that advice is so deeply detrimental, and what is truer to the human experience of loss:

1. You Don't "Get Over" Losing a Child

The bond between a mother and her child doesn't end when life does. Expecting a mother to "let go" implies that her love and grief have an expiration date.

The Reality: Grief isn't a disease to be cured; it's a lifelong adjustment. A mother doesn't move on from her son; she moves forward with him, carrying his memory into the rest of her life.

2. It Forces Isolation and Suppresses Healing

When people tell a grieving mother to let go, they are often projecting their own discomfort with deep sorrow.

The Danger: It signals to the mother that her pain is too heavy for others to bear. This forces her to mask her grief, suffer in silence, and isolate herself, which severely derails the natural, healthy processing of trauma.

3. "Continuing Bonds" is Healthy, Not Pathological

Modern grief psychology heavily supports the concept of continuing bonds. It is entirely healthy and often necessary for a grieving parent to maintain a connection to their deceased child.

This can look like:

• Talking about him often and using his name.

• Celebrating his birthday or milestones.

• Keeping his favorite belongings or creating memorials.

• Finding ways to honor his values and impact on the world.

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Read Alli's bio by clicking her icon at the start of this article.

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