Preface
My son Richard committed suicide on 11 July 1982, a few weeks before his thirty-sixth birthday. His death was a shock, but not a total surprise. His life had been unbelievably tragic.
I hadn't known how to help him during his life, though I never stopped trying. When he died I knew how to help him even less.
I knew from reading and intuition that suicide is not a release from pain. I believed he was experiencing greater anguish after his death than anything he had suffered during his life. I believed that his suicide doomed him to total isolation in the spiritual worlds, much worse than his isolation on earth. I believed he would have to endure incomprehensible remorse for ending his life.
The agony of his life and death welled up in my heart. Seeking relief of any kind, I enrolled him in perpetual prayer groups in the Catholic Church. I prayed for him constantly.
Richard's death brought forth with full force many questions. Why had he suffered so? Could another mother have helped him more? Did my problems cause his? Why hadn't we found the proper help for him? Why had all segments of our culture failed him?
I felt I had failed Richard as his mother.
Religion failed Richard. We were Catholics. I went to daily mass. I didn't find there anything that helped explain Richard's life.
Medicine failed Richard. The doctors treated his epilepsy by giving him drugs whose side-effects robbed him of the quality of life and the ability to contact his higher self for guidance. I know what drugs can do. I lost seven years of my life by taking prescribed drugs from a psychiatrist.
Education failed Richard. His degree in Political Science didn't enable him to support himself.
Government institutions failed Richard. The Social Security Administration provided him with minimal subsistence through SSI. However, their programmes couldn't habilitate or rehabilitate him.
I didn't blame any of the above, except myself. All of them had tried. None of us had the solutions.
When I received some money from Richard's share of his father's estate, I vowed to use the money to help others like Richard. To do that I first had to find the knowledge. I didn't know how or where, but I would! I couldn't bear to believe that Richard's life had been meaningless.
In my search for answers, I learned that I could help Richard by reading spiritually inspired works to him. I started immediately. I read daily, and, to my amazement, things began to change for both of us.
After several years of reading, I wanted to share my experience with others. However, when I started to write about Richard's life, I frequently had to put the book aside. I had to face the tragedy of his life. I had to face my failure as his mother. I had to face the darkness that had enveloped both of our souls. Not until we both had found some light could I bear to look back on that darkness. Finally, I could finish the book.
The book tells about my journey into unchartered territory and the transformation of my son's life after death. Along the way, I found answers to many of the burning questions mentioned above.
I learned why I hadn't found help for Richard. I had been looking in the wrong places. I discovered that answers could only be found in the spiritual worlds through meditation. I found medical doctors, psychiatrists, priests, teachers, group homes, musicians and spiritual scientists who could have helped Richard, in spite of his difficulties, to live a meaningful life. All of these individuals were meditants on a spiritual path, bringing their spiritual research into their work.
I know that I still have only a thimbleful of understanding, but I want to share my experience with you for several reasons. Suicide is becoming rampant throughout the world, especially in the age group 15 to 25. I have come to see that death is never a release from suffering, and that suicide is never a viable choice. Suicide is a profound tragedy with dire consequences. I hope my findings will help deter others from committing suicide.
However, if you have lost children, spouses, family, or friends to suicide, you can help them and yourself. Perhaps my discoveries will bring you release from pain.
Finally, I want to share my unspeakable joy with you. I experienced by persevering on a spiritual path, by continuing to read to Richard, that he was able to return quickly to a new life on earth. His soul is filled with more light this time. He has beautiful, loving, light-filled parents. Possibly my experience will bring you renewed hope.
Oh, the ineffable joy of it! To apprehend that no darkness can withstand spiritual light forever. To experience that regardless of the depth to which one falls spiritual striving can lift one to the heights. To perceive that death of the body is not the end. To see that even suicide can be transformed.
I hope you will join me on this journey, which begins in deepest darkness and haltingly becomes a path to the light.
Doré Deverell
Carmichael, California
15 January 1996
Doré can be contacted at:
PO Box 2045, Fair Oaks, CA 95628, USA
e-mail: dore@macnexus.org
web-site: www.waldorfshop.net/lightbeyond
Part I
Richard's life and death
1 The Beginning---1946
The moment I saw my new-born son, Richard, filled me with anxiety about being a mother. Words of my father returned to me as I saw his tiny body: 'I can't imagine your being a mother.'
My impoverished and abuse-filled childhood had not prepared me for motherhood. At home with the baby, I felt an abyss between myself and him. When I tried to cuddle, he would draw away and whimper. Intuitively, I felt something was wrong.
As he grew, he became increasingly inward, playing alone endlessly with his blocks and toys without noticing me. I told my husband, Clyde, 'I feel so unnecessary to Richard except for meeting his physical needs.'
'How can you say that about a little baby?' he asked.
Richard talked very little, so I began reading an alphabet book to him when he was about two and a half. He learned very quickly to read the letters to me.
Hoping he would connect with other children, I started to work and put Richard in nursery school, but he didn't connect. I felt better working, but I felt so guilty at leaving Richard that I quit working when he was four. A child psychologist assured me at that time that Richard wasn't mentally retarded. Since he was so unresponsive emotionally, however, I was sure I had failed him as a mother.
On the other hand, Richard showed great abilities of learning; for example, he learned to ride a bicycle in a number of weeks at age four.
One day when Richard was five, he said to me, 'Mommy, I want you to call me Richard. I don't like being called Dickie.'
I tried to comply, but kept forgetting. He then began to call me Dottie, a nickname Clyde had given me. When I asked him to call me Mommy, he said he would do so when I called him Richard. I made the extra effort and finally succeeded. As promised, he once again called me Mommy.
I felt bemused at this entire interchange. Was it healthy for a five-year-old to so cleverly manipulate his mother? He didn't seem like a child to me but more like a calculating adult. I couldn't understand where he'd learned to think like that.
Though intelligent beyond his years in some ways, his inwardness invited other children to abuse him. He quickly became the neighbourhood scapegoat. Living in surburbia in Los Angeles was my first opportunity of observing Richard with other children in an unstructured situation. Watching the children pushing him around churned chaotic feelings in me. I felt helpless in these situations. To comfort myself at such times, I told myself, 'Richard will find friends of like intelligence when he starts school.'
Truthfully, since I could remember, school was the only place I had found any connections to life. I loved the learning, but I still had a deep soul thirst which I wasn't able to quench. No one else seemed to feel like this. I couldn't articulate this yearning, but when I was 16, growing up in the Bible Belt in Oklahoma, I called on a minister and asked: 'What can I do for God?'
He looked at me in surprise, 'You can tithe 10% of your money to Him,' he answered. That wasn't much help.
By age 18 I moved to California by myself and worked as a secretary until my marriage. It was wonderful to be the darling of the executives and salesmen, but this yearning didn't abate. When I was 20 I wrote:
On Reading T.S. Eliot
For years I did implore it
Then decided to ignore it,
And did pretty well at that.
At least, it was a brave pretence
Of grasping cold and common sense
To create a habitat.
One to touch the earth and dwell there,
To accept heaven and hell there.
Others seemed to live it
With their mechanical routine
And occasionally different scene
Of action to give it.
Unmindful of the other plane
That constantly usurped my brain
Yet could not be expressed.
But at last I saw it written
By some other thusly smitten
All of it I had repressed.
So, around it I shall build my own hearth
And only when compelled, shall I touch earth.
I look back on this poem 50 years later and I'm amazed that I knew other planes existed. Nothing in my background or education had told me so.
The next year I married, hoping to find fulfilment for these yearnings. Marriage was not the answer. I felt more unfulfilled than ever and agonized at my feelings of complete inadequacy as a mother. |
