A Conversation with Lisette Rimer on: The Writing We Don't Choose

Some stories are not written out of ambition or inspiration. Some are written because silence becomes impossible.

Lisette’s book, Back from Suicide, was not something she wanted to write. It was something she felt she had to write ... through grief, through questions without easy answers, through the unbearable weight of loss.

In this conversation, she speaks with honesty and courage about her son Patrick, about what it means to search for understanding, and about writing as an act of love, memory, and endurance.

The Conversation

You describe writing this book as something painful, almost like penance. What made you continue, even when you didn’t want to?

A little background for those who don’t know Patrick’s story is that he graduated from Stanford with honors in 2005 and worked for Siemens in Berlin as a programmer. He streamlined engineering software and said it was the easiest job he ever had. He was popular with Berlin’s gay community. He was featured in a gay magazine and a Stanford newsletter. He was close to his twin sister, Libby. His life was endlessly promising, but he was stretching his antidepressant medications, and he didn’t want to see a therapist in Berlin. Less than a year after graduating, he killed himself at age 23 when a boy rejected him. I was 58, stunned into inertia, blaming myself. I began to write memories of the good times, the silly humor, the deep conversations, and the constant admiration. Patrick read when he was two years old, became the top scholar of his middle school, earned a full scholarship to Pomfret School, graduated as valedictorian, and earned a scholarship to Stanford. Most importantly, he was loving, generous, and humble about his gifts.

The memories gave perspective, but they needed unity to bring Patrick to life. They needed to go to the bigger question of why a perfect person would kill himself. Suicide books made me realize Patrick was proof that depression was a disease, but writing that proof was daunting. Being an author implies authority. I was an amateur. In order to get some backbone, I imagined my amateur self on my deathbed. What would I regret? The answer came clear. Mothers are supposed to keep their children alive. I failed to do that, so I tried the next best thing. I kept Patrick alive on paper.

Was there a moment during the writing when you realized this story needed to exist, even if it hurt to tell it?

I realized this story needed to exist when I went in the wrong direction. I got distracted by family history—a grandfather who was the executive officer of West Point during World War II, a great-great-grandfather who stole $4 million from his father’s bank. They were good stories but the wrong subject. Readers wanted more about Patrick. They made me figure out the right subject. They made me face up to the question I had been evading: Why do people kill themselves? They made me prove that if depression could kill Patrick, it could kill anyone.

You mentioned having to face what you missed. How did that process change the way you understand your past?

Learning what I missed brought out my failure to take depression seriously. I had believed good family was the secret to life, that I could nurture children through anything, and that a Stanford math major would know how to get help. That failure was like getting hit in the face with a 2” by 4”. Long-distance family support was not enough to fight the disease of depression. I should have gotten on a plane to Berlin and personally taken Patrick to a doctor.

What does “good writing” mean to you now, after going through this experience?

As an English teacher, I knew to give readers evidence to come to the conclusion I wanted—that Patrick was the least likely person to kill himself. I knew to keep the writing visual, to let my mental camera see the close-ups and the wide angles, and let them make the points I wanted. When the writing made Patrick come alive and brought out the tears, I knew it was working. An example was the first chapter, where I describe Patrick’s apartment as he is killing himself—the cell phone messages from friends, the suicide book he is reading, the charcoal he is burning. Some said it was too graphic, that it showed others how to kill themselves. But no other beginning would make readers care about a brilliant Stanford graduate who seemed to have everything. I had to show the close-up of how depression cancelled a beautiful life.

When the first beta readers wanted more about Patrick, I ignored them. I had too much invested in family history. But a cousin with a PhD metaphorically beat me over the head to face up to that criticism. She convinced me to replace 150 tangential pages with information about suicide. Next, I read all 87,000 words of Back from Suicide out loud twice. Every word. Two times. Good writing means that the book reads well aloud. Hearing your writing gets it out of your thoughts and into your ear. You can hear what you need. Your ear is your gauge on pace, sentence order, missing words, transitions, examples, misplaced modifiers, and excess words. Imagine yourself narrating an audiobook. Will the writing sound good, whether in print or audio? Will it read well, no matter what the format? In my case, the more ways I tested the writing, the better my chances of making Patrick come alive.

Eventually, a professional editor suggested improvements, and another proofread fastidiously. I never wanted to write a book, but if I was going to do it, I would make it worthy of Patrick. He was a perfectionist in everything he did.

Did writing bring any form of release, or was it something else entirely?

Writing got the pain out. It forced me to make sense of it. Pain became organized pain.

What do you wish people better understood about grief, especially the kind that comes with unanswered questions?

You have to answer difficult questions. Suicide cycles over and over because you are always asking why. In my case, I was going to find those answers if it took the rest of my life. I could not reconcile how a handsome, loving genius would want to die. The writing forced me to see him less as a genius and more as a mental health patient. Suicide research made me realize that I was dealing with a biological disease every bit as brain-changing as cancer. It made me realize that the awards, the perfect SAT scores, the piano recitals at Tanglewood, and the long talks about coming out and boyfriends were not enough to stand up to the disease of depression.

When answers failed to ease the guilt, I tried to remember that suicide was not my fault. I did not kill that person. Only one person was responsible. Only one person bought the charcoal, wrote a warning to the police about dangerous gases, taped it on the bathroom door, wrote another note apologizing to the boyfriend who rejected him, plugged up the openings in his bathroom, lit the charcoal with several lighters in the bottom of his shower stall, drank vodka, took sleeping pills, and lay down on a quilt to die.

Was there ever a point where you considered stopping the book altogether? What held you there?

I wanted to stop every day. I hated writing it. I never wanted to be an author. I never wanted to answer why people kill themselves, especially well-loved, popular people with job offers from BMW and Siemens, who were working on their master’s in computer science before they graduated. I didn’t know how to make sense out of the senseless, and when I whined about it, I told myself to shut the f___ up and get to work. My job was easy compared to what Patrick faced. I wasn’t the one dying from depression. Every day I took Donald Murray’s advice. I wrote to discover what I wanted to say.

How did you take care of yourself while writing something so emotionally demanding?

Family supported me even though I disappeared much of the day to write. At dinner, my husband would ask, “What do you do all day?” I told him I learned what I missed about Patrick’s depression, and then I learned how to write about it. I told him I let Pat die one time, and I wasn’t going to do it again.

What do you hope someone going through a similar loss might feel, or find, when reading your book?

I hope readers learn they can come back from suicide. It is a terrible but common occurrence. It is the second leading cause of death for 10-to 34-year-olds, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Stories share learning and help us realize we are not alone. Community and information are antidotes to suicide.

I hope survivors like me learn that mental illness is also a physical illness. It changes the chemicals and the structure of your brain. We don’t ask why cancer, but we do ask why suicide because there is an element of will involved. Both are physical diseases that should be treated medically. Yes, 90% of suicides are connected to mental illness, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. But mental illness has a biological component. It is a medical issue. There is no fault or blame. Both diseases attack organs in your body.

If you could say something to your past self, before writing began, what would it be?

I should have listened to my heart and asked myself the right thing to do from the beginning of the 15 years it took me to write the book. Instead, I danced around the hard question of why. I took the easy route of researching family history because the thought of answering why was overwhelming. I should have let myself be overwhelmed in the right direction rather than struggling to make the wrong direction become right. Thankfully, I did learn and change course. I lived long enough to learn from my mistakes.

And if you could say something to your son now, what would you want to say?

I’ve always wanted to ask him if he regrets his decision. I know it felt right to him at the time, but why was he hopeless when he had options? He had so much to live for. The last night I saw him, I told him he had the strength to handle rejection. And when he wasn’t sure, I told him he would know when he was 89. That’s when he would know. But logic alone is not powerful enough to fight depression. You need medication to stabilize emotions. Without it, patients cannot “hear” the therapy.

I would ask if he should have given himself one more day. I would pose the thought that time would have given him options. Death did not. But I also know that I’m using my logic. Suicidal people use their own logic that suits their needs at the time. The problem is they are relying on an organ that has deteriorated, and it’s giving them unreliable information. Suicide is not logical. It is biological.

Closing Note

There are stories that ask to be told. And there are stories that demand to be carried.

Lisette’s words do not offer easy comfort, nor do they try to. Instead, they offer something far more honest: a search for understanding, a refusal to look away, and a deep, enduring love that continues beyond loss.

If there is one thing her story leaves us with, it is this: behind every silence, there is a story worth listening to.

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