A Family Saga: Striving For Solace

This memoir describes our family's journey through grief towards healing after our youngest son, Sean, took his life in 2012. He was 35 years old and had struggled for many years with depression and paranoia.

Many reminiscences, including joyous and unforgettable moments, later enabled us to cope with the anguish of his death. Memories were a central underpinning of support at the most difficult times. Guided by my son's questions and curiosity the memoir spans three continents. It reflects his keen interest in our memorable family visit to South Africa, his birthplace, the brutality of apartheid that resulted in our immigration to Canada and the family's challenges that ensued. The memoir also explores the intergenerational trauma of my father whose close family perished in Latvia during the Holocaust.

Through my passage of introspection, during bereavement, I confronted my own vulnerability and reached into my formerly unacknowledged emotional depths. I realized that death and loss can wound each of us in many ways, unrelated to mental health, especially as millions now grieve the passing of family and friends during the Covid-19 pandemic.

I hope that our family's decade of lessons learnt and striving for solace might provide a beacon of hope to others to steer through their own darkness to inner peace, lead to acceptance, and help to alleviate the suffering of others.