Denise Shelton
1 min readMar 3, 2021

--

This is timely for me, Sherry. Yesterday, I got my second COVID vaccine shot. I should have been celebrating. Instead, I was coming apart. There was a HuffPost first person about suicide the other day written by someone I used to know. Apparently, her son took his own life at the end of 2019. The only male out of five kids in the family. In the past few years, I’ve learned that several people I know lost their sons. A couple were in accidents, but most killed themselves. I have one son, my only child. He’s 26. He’s on the West Coast and I’m on the East Coast. I haven’t seen him in over a year. Everyone in my immediate family has struggled with depression. At the moment, I am not worried about him taking his own life, but I have been in the past. I don’t think I could survive his passing whatever the reason. Congressman Jamie Rankin’s son, Elvis’s grandson, so many examples in the news. A recent survey of young adults by the CDC showed that during the pandemic, 1 in 4 say they’ve thought about suicide. Nobody’s doing anything to prevent this. It’s terrifying. When you read some of the stories, parents were often aware the kids were struggling and tried to help. They often lived at home. One father said he hugged his son and told him he loved him every night before bed. It may have bought him some time, but in the end, it wasn’t enough.

--

--

Denise Shelton
Denise Shelton

Responses (2)