Search results for mother (202)
When a son commits suicide and his mother writes his obituary, this is what it looks like.
Spencer Watson Seupel
High Falls – The Details:
My beautiful son, Spencer Watson Seupel, of High Falls, New York, took his own life in his fraternity room at Penn State, State College, PA early in the morning of Friday, February 17, 2012. He was 21 years old. Spencer is survived by his brother, Taylor, his mother Celia, his father Herbert, and his grandmother, Genie Watson. Spencer’s funeral will be held at Copeland Funeral Home, Inc., 162 South Putt Corners Road, New Paltz, NY 12561 Thursday, February 23, 2012. Friends and relatives may visit at the funeral home from 2-4pm; a Celebration of Life Service will begin there at 4pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Spencer’s name to www.benspeaks.org, an organization founded by my in-laws to help prevent teen suicide.
The Story:
Spencer loved to be always moving. As a baby, he could be held close only in sleep. As soon as he could stand, he was jumping. As soon as he could walk, he was running.
Once, when we were in New York City’s Central Park, we came upon a ring of people listening to the haunting Peruvian flutes. Spencer, who was two, ran into the empty space and began to dance. He turned round and round, he jumped, he rolled on the ground and came up waving his arms. Spencer loved to dance and later even studied dance in New Paltz.
But he gave up dance for baseball, the more manly sport. Later it was lacrosse and football. Spencer, like all boys in our society, began looking for ways to be a man – as if being himself were not enough. I remember the rage and frustration he felt in Little League when he struck out; the unbearable self-hated. My unending gratitude to Frank Coddington, a coach who saw something special in Spencer and helped Spencer develop what he could be good at – his speed. Spencer was always fast.
It seems early on Spencer felt he was not good enough. I don’t know why, but I do know it is something many young people feel today. How much teen and youth suicide do we have to endure? In 2007, suicide was the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24. There is despair among the young of our society that springs from a misapprehension of what it means to be human.
Every human needs to feel special, to feel that he or she belongs as a valued member, to feel appreciated and honored by others. But so many of us don’t. In our huge anonymous schools and conformist youth culture, in our adult world of fame and wealth, social climbing and cool, competition and winning seem to be the only means of finding what we need. We have lost our way.
Love and tolerance is the way – the antithesis of teenage culture. As adults, we preach love and tolerance at school, then fail to lead by example. In business, in sports, in entertainment, in personal relationships and in the media … how often do adults place people before profit, a helping hand before blame, caring ahead of winning, others ahead of self?
Spencer’s true nature was one of extreme sensitivity. He was easily and deeply wounded; he cried when others were cruel. When Spencer was in sixth grade, he told me he thought he should see a doctor because at times, “water” came out of his eyes. Of course, he was not crying; that was not manly.
But Spencer was very smart, resourceful, ambitious and determined. As he grew, he built a new and tougher personality: a personality of cool, of fun, of hard work and goals. He built stubborn walls to protect that fragile self. He constructed a defensive, brittle confidence. He made friends; he gave parties; he got drunk; he achieved Eagle Scout; he drove fast.
What Spencer really wanted, more than anything else, was closeness. He wanted to be a doctor so he could help others; he was an EMT. How ironic; how typical: His own walls and drive to be the best kept him apart from the closeness he craved. Ever determined, he worked hard on understanding what he was doing wrong, how he could be a better person, a better friend. And I think he was really beginning to get it.
Drinking sabotaged all that: seductive, deadly alcohol. The drug that brings down the walls and helps us feel close – as long as we’re drunk. The drug that circles back and rakes out your heart.
The afternoon before Spencer died, he called me between classes. He was thrilled and excited about a lecture he’d just heard about nanotechnology and medicine. “This is the future,” he said. “This is what’s going to pull our country out of recession.” Spencer had just won an internship for the summer. He was planning on applying to a med school that emphasized the special relationship between doctor and patient. He was excited about his future.
That night, Spencer got very, very drunk. Binge drinking at college has been a regular thing since freshman year. Why didn’t he get the proper help?
Thursday night was one of those binge nights at the frat. He had a fight with his best friend. He said he was going to kill himself. He locked his door and did it. He did not leave a note. He did not look for help. Alcohol brought down those prefabricated walls, and all that was left was thoughtless pain.
It was stupid and impulsive and he would not have done this thing if he had not been drunk. Spencer had plans and goals and family that loved him. He knew this. We talked about it -Spencer said he would never do such a thing. But he did. Because of alcohol. The drunken impulse in a moment of despair that can never be taken back.
Kids drink this way because they need to escape their own false personalities. They strive to be the best, to be cool, to be popular and successful. Underneath, it’s all about the same old human needs: to feel valued, to feel important and special, to belong, to be loved.
Lectures and platitudes to the young will never change their society. We must all be the agents of change. Our society, as it gets bigger and more global, must evolve just as our species has evolved. Each of us, at work in the office, at home, in the post office, at the grocery store and in the government, must honor and value each person we encounter. How would your day be if, instead of trying to be right, you were trying to help?
In the media, we must pay homage to the ordinary hero: not the superstar, but the man who goes to work and loves his kids, the person of integrity who has the courage of his convictions. The culture of children in huge schools should not be left to run amok with misguided values, churning out young men and women who believe that social status is the measure of their worth. It is more than destructive; it is brutal, a de-evolution of humanity.
Now Spencer, finally, is at rest, and I hold him close within me. Please hold him close, as I do, in your mind and your spirit. Remember the meaning of this tragedy. If a young man or woman says maybe I’ll kill myself, tell someone. Don’t leave him alone. If a young man or woman drinks too much, say something. It’s not a game; it’s a symptom. And let us find and encourage within ourselves, within our society, those gifts that make each of us special: not star power, not intellectual prowess, but the ineffable mystery and extraordinary beauty of the simple human heart.
– See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/poughkeepsiejournal/obituary.aspx?pid=156015525#sthash.b8XuZ42Y.dpuf
What NOT to do when your mother-in-law dies
An angry husband locked his wife in a garden shed during a row when she insulted his dead mother.
Andrew Salmon, 42, admitted attacking Beverley Salmon, also 42, at their home in Truro in a rage after she chanted ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead’ when his mother died.
Salmon, who has no previous convictions, told officers he had locked her in the shed to ‘p*** her off’, but said he knew she would be able to climb out of the window.
He told police he had been suffering from depression and said: ‘I was provoked, but I am sorry for what I have done to my wife and regret everything I did.’
Speaking after the court case Salmon said his wife of almost twenty years acted ‘extremely unsympathetic’ after his mother passed away on December 27 last year.
Andrew said he has suffered from depression and stress since the incident on February 6.
He said: ‘She never really got on with my mum or any of my relatives and when my mum died she was horrible and offered me no support – she was extremely unsympathetic.
‘She would sing “ding dong the witch is dead” from time to time and didn’t even come to her funeral.
‘It was a really difficult time for me and my family.’
To read the entirety of this story by HARRIET ARKELL and SAM WEBB, click HERE.
A mother added this sand to her sons grave, so that his brother could play with him when they visit.
A grieving Florida mom has added a sand box to her newborn baby’s grave so his older brother can spend time with him.
Ashlee Hammac, 24, from Lake City, was left devastated when tiny Ryan Michael Jolley died just five days after being welcomed into the world.
The infant passed away on Oct. 16 from hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy — after complications during his birth led to a lack of oxygen to his brain.
Pondering how best to remember her tragic tot’s death and help his 3-year-old brother Tucker grieve, she decided to turn his black-granite memorial slab into a play area.
“He always wanted to play in that dirt around the grave,” Hammac told the Daily News on Friday. “I want to have a happy memory of it — not just memories of crying. I wanted him to have a happy memory of it, too, not just of me crying.”
Read more and see more photos HERE
Mother’s Day Silly Death Joke
I heard this joke today at church:
An old Italian woman lived alone in the country. It was nearing Mother’s Day and she wanted to dig her tomato garden, as she had done every year, but it was very hard work for the aging woman as the ground was hard. Her only son, Vincent, who used to help her, was currently in prison because of his affiliation with The Mob. The old woman wrote a letter to her son and described her predicament:
Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If only you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love Mom.
A few days later she received a letter from her son:
Dear Mom,
Not for nothing, but don’t dig up that garden. That’s where I buried the BODIES.
Love Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived at the old woman’s house and dug up the entire area. However, they didn’t find any bodies, so they apologized to the old woman and left.
That same day the old woman received another letter from her son.
Dear Mom,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Happy Mother’s Day,
Vinnie
