Wow---back from suicide prevention week on Aberdeen Proving Ground military post. The first speaker, Tammy Woodard who works at the official suicide office, spoke about the worth of people. She had a $20.00 brand new bill. Asked who wanted it? Then wrinkled, folded, stepped on it, smashed it up, now who wants it? Still worth $20.00. Good visual example. She had a great power point with risks, danger signs to look for, resources (I want to take a photo of that slide on Friday, when she repeats her talk, and we do our 2nd one). She threw the bill out into the audience, and Amy Landbeck Snyder caught it with her left hand!
John spoke first, then we showed Emma slideshow with Maryland State Boychoir singing, then me. These are my notes, mostly followed, or paused and came back and read things. I didn't know how emotional it would be, so I needed complete sentences to read, just in case...
1. There are a lot of good memories in those photos.
Thank you for listening so respectfully to my husband.
I appreciate what Tammy
said, grateful to be here today. Max's
youngest sister and brother are here, Roxie Jane & Sam, and his
grandparents, John & Sandy Landbeck and one of his aunts, Amy Snyder. Thank you for being here today, all of you.
2. Bodies are precious gifts. After Max was hit by the train they sent his
body to Baltimore for autopsy and investigation. When the funeral home picked him up, washed
his hair & beard, let us come see him and say goodbye. The funeral home pulled out one of his arms
so we could hold his hand, hand a towel over the right side of his face and
warned us to leave it in place and not move it.
I stroked his cheek, kissed my son, ran my fingers through his hair that
was never that soft and full bodied in life. When your
baby is born, you count all his toes, and fingers, make sure he is all
there. I touched his feet through the body bag, made sure he was all
there by feel.
I gave him life. We helped create that body, and it hurt me
when he abused it, smoking pot, getting high, he picked up cigarette smoking in
rehab, tripping out is scary---not just the crazy things he would say and talk
about seeing.
His self-medicating took him
away from me. Drugs hurt you. They hurt my son.
Suicide affects the whole family--siblings, cousins, we all miss him. And we need to keep talking about him.
Our youngest daughter, Roxie, was able to go to a grief camp with other children who lost a loved one recently. They had a volcano room, where they could rip apart magazines, pound pool noodles against the wall, scream if they needed to, just to release the angry feelings that come. Parents talk, but we need to remember the children that are affected by the suicide or death, too.
I have become a SOBRIETY
ACTIVIST to try and help other parents know what to do when their children
choose to use drugs.
3. People ask all the time if DEFIANCE really is his middle name--and yes, it is. Our firstborn son inherited the John Stewart
Landbeck IV name of his great grandfather.
Defiance=openly resist or refuse to obey
-not a sy-fy game, custom
bolt rifle company
-The show takes place in the
future on a radically transformed Earth containing new species, some having
arrived from space,
The story begins in the year
2046. re-built ruins of St. Louis. ALIENS = VOTANS
-Fort Defiance is a restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn,
-Defiance College, OHIO yellowjacket mascot, -and a town in Missouri, beer company in Hays, Kansas,
We needed a good, strong
name for son #2. Nothing whimpy. He needed a strong name, with meaning! We gave him Defiance as a middle name with the prayer that he would defy
the bad stuff in the world and that he would stand up for what is real and true. We wanted him to fight for goodness.
I don't know everything our
son was feeling; I have read through his
journals and papers he kept carefully in a traveling file folder as he went
from rehab and place to place. Some of
his struggles included worries about money & jobs, his love life and lack
of confidence worrying that he was ugly, questions about God and where he fit
into the world. A lot of things we all
have to deal with.
4. Everyone feels self-doubts and insecurities,
or trying to wade through grief or trauma, sadness, disappointments, depression
to some degree. That is normal part of
life.
I absolutely know that if I
had talked more, during tough times, I would have been better off
emotionally--in high school, struggling with postpartum depression…
FIND someone who will listen
to you, and TALK and be a better listener! A conversation can change your life! Reach outside of your security zone, help
someone, and be better at asking for help.
5. T-shirts are kind of a thing in our
family. When Max died he had no $ in
bank, he had lost a lot of his possessions, but he still had some really cool
t-shirts. His 5 siblings divided them
up, and I made a quilt for each of them, so they could all have a Max hug anytime they needed one. They still smell like him.
(show quilt) They opened them up
at Christmas, and we had a lot of moments of silence, all wrote letters, what
we would say to him and want him to know.
This is a Defiance t-shirt, homemade! We make these t-shirts with
a stencil in our kitchen, using bleach, and then quickly rinse in vinegar to stop
the bleaching process.
You can show DEFIANCE of the complacency and acceptance of drugs, defy the
people who can't remember how many inhibitions they let go of while under the
influence. Rebel against drowning your
sorrows, be bold in being sober, challenge the drug humor, revolt against
smoking pot. Confront society's fear of
talking about suicide. THIS is what this
t-shirt means to me.
We have one for each of you
today. Thank you.
