Back From Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick

Back From Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick

Back from Suicide reveals the suicidal mind through the misery of depression and the difficulty of coming out. It’s the enigma of self-destruction after a lifetime of success. It’s for parents, LGBTQ families, mental health advocates, and suicide survivors walking through grief, identity, and hope. It is a mother’s pursuit of the biggest question of humankind. Why do people kill themselves? Marie Lisette Rimer supports her son’s gay life. She’s in awe of his achievements. Patrick Wood is a valedictorian, an AP Scholar, and a National Merit Scholarship winner with perfect SAT scores. A year after he graduates from Stanford with honors, she struggles to understand his suicide. Rimer searches for answers through Patrick’s life, Berlin’s gay scene, and his death after rejection from a boy he wanted. She draws from Stanford psychiatrists, research, memoirs, and her own awakening to confront the painful question of why suicide? She finds answers through therapy and the science of depression to expose the hidden forces behind sadness, perfectionism, identity, and isolation. She weaves guilt and grief with evidence and understanding. Back from Suicide is more than a story of loss. It’s the seeds of depression that lead to suicide. It’s what comes next—how we find purpose in pain and love beyond death. “He would teach me something I never thought possible. He would teach me there was something worse than death. It was the fear of not dying. It was called depression.” –Marie Lisette Rimer, Back from Suicide PRAISE FOR BACK FROM SUICIDE “Rimer’s deeply pained and beautifully written exploration of her son’s death from suicide, is at once a celebration of a life, a reckoning with a death, and an impassioned inquiry in how and why the inconceivable could happen.” - BookLife Reviews " Back from Suicide is a must-read for everyone, at this moment of our sad history, when teenage suicide is on the rise. I did not put it down, except to eat and sleep." - Nancy Cobb , In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living "Back from Suicide is heart-rending and saddening, but it is at the same time a reflective celebration of Patrick. It is precise, real, succinct and thereby all the more expressive–a work of insight and clarity, compassion that does not err on the side of over expression." - Karen Kramer , Ph.D., Director, Stanford Program in Berlin, Academia. Exzellenz hat ihren Preis “How does one pay tribute to a brilliant life that ends far too soon? This gripping book sets out to do just that and, as well, catalog the protracted, difficult attempt at peacemaking that follows the loss of a child to suicide.” - Brad Davis , Short List of Wonders , Sunken Garden Poetry winner “ Back from Suicide packs several gut punches and made me cry. It’s a testament to the heart and soul Rimer poured into more than 15 years of trying to make sense of something so senseless.” - James Hohmann , columnist, The Washington Post Winner, Nonfiction: Prodigy Award, 2025 Storytrade Book Awards, "for demonstrating exceptional literary craft, excellence, and innovation." " Back From Suicide by Marie Lisette Rimer is a beautifully and courageously written memoir that will linger in your soul long after you read it. It is an impactful journey that explores grief, mental illness, acceptance, healing, and the quest for understanding. Rimer writes from a place of emotional clarity, raw honesty, and empathy." -David Jaggart, Readers' Favorite "How can someone who has it all decide to take their own life? Who is to blame for such a tragedy? Could anyone have done anything to stop this? How did they miss the signs? Marie Lisette Rimer writes a gorgeous tribute to her son while grappling with these questions in Back from Suicide: Before and after the Essential Patrick . Suicide and depression are complex and delicate issues that Rimer disseminates with great care and sensitivity." -Jessica Dickenson, Reader Views I didn't want to be a writer. I never wanted to write a book, especially about suicide. But I wanted Patrick to live on in the best form I could manage, and I had to explore the question: Why does an otherwise healthy person turn on himself? In the process, I learned what Pat might have been thinking in the moments before death. I felt a little of what he went through. I learned a lot about why. As Kay Jamison says in  Night Falls Fast , many factors are manageable on their own, but when they come together, "It is as with fire: dry grass and high winds may remain, in themselves, only dangerous possibilities, elements of combustion. But if lightning falls across the grass, the chance of fire increases blindingly fast: it leaps from slim to given."  The most dangerous catalyst in Pat's case was the disease of depression. It worsened in his college years when first episodes of depression are likely to strike. Combined with the genetic background of grandparents on both sides of his family who killed themselves, depression