Navigating Life After Suicide with Melissa & Todd Shaffer, Tristan’s Parents

A teen can look like he is just “being a teenager” while he is privately fighting for his life. We talk with Todd and Melissa Shaffer about the loss of their 18-year-old son, Tristan, to suicide after a long, confusing road that included isolation, anger, depression, and warning signs nobody around them could clearly name. Their story is honest about what it feels like to miss what you did not know how to see, and what happens to a family when clinical depression and suicide risk finally break into the open. We also dig into the complicated realities behind mental health diagnoses, including how OCD can fixate on a person, how bipolar symptoms can be overlooked, and why emergency rooms and short evaluations often fail families in crisis. From antidepressant warnings to the stigma that still lingers in our culture, we discuss the tension many Christian families feel between “spiritual bandaid”  advice and the need for counseling, specialists, and wise medical care. If you care about teen mental health, suicide prevention, or supporting bereaved parents, this conversation offers language and perspective you can carry into real life. Most of all, we talk about the grief journey after suicide loss and what actually helps: finding other parents who understand, living one day at a time, and learning to pray again when words disappear. Todd and Melissa share how Scripture, journaling, and the often-neglected practice of lament became lifelines, and how they now serve others through ministries like Christian Suicide Loss and Surviving Child Loss while building Sparrow Falls Ministry. Tune in for more conversations like this, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with one thing you want the church to understand about mental health and grief.

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Transcript

Speaker 2 0:48

Welcome back. I'm Greg Buffkin, and on today's episode, I'll be talking with Todd and Melissa Shaffer as they share the story of losing their 18-year-old son Tristan to suicide after a long battle with clinical depression in 2020. Mental health disorders continue to rise in our culture, especially in the teens and young adults, all too often ending in suicide. In our conversation, we'll talk about some of the complexities surrounding suicide and the trauma to parents in the aftermath. While this is a heavy subject, I believe that Todd and Melissa's openness and transparency are very inspiring and offer encouragement and hope as they share how Jesus met them in unthinkable pain and suffering and is now using them to minister to others on their own grief journeys. And now here's my conversation with Todd and Melissa. Well, Todd and Melissa, welcome to our podcast. It is so good to have you guys with us today. Thank you for having us, Greg.

Speaker 1:52

Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 1:53

Pleasure to be here. Well, the pleasure is all mine. And guys, before we dive into your story, I would love for you to take a couple of minutes and just tell us what whatever you would like about you guys personally, where you live, what you do, and anything about your family that you'd like to share.

Speaker 1 2:09

Ooh, that's that's a tall order. We are in a transition period right now, moving out of Montreal, Quebec, back into the States. We think we're going to be moving down to Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm currently working in Maryland, around the Frederick area where my family is. Our boys are down in Charlotte. And we've God has had us in a major transition period in the past few years. Our house burned down. We bought a new house in Montreal, and then my industry collapsed in animation, and there's no been no work. And so we've been transitioning to move down here. We're trying to start a ministry called Sparrow Falls that we've been working on and trying to raise money for that. But we're also, in order to pay bills, I've been doing real estate video and photography. And so it's it's keeping me in my skill set. But it's a lot of work, it's a lot of driving around, a lot of late nights uploading and stuff like that. So we're we're in a weird place right now where I mean, right now Melissa's in in Montreal getting her house ready to sell. But we're excited about moving down to Charlotte and getting started there. There's a lot of unknowns, a lot of a lot of things we have to trust God for at this point, but we're we're just forging ahead.

Speaker 2 3:22

Yeah. Well, after six years of a grief journey, you guys are quite accustomed to weird and and the a lot of unknowns, right? Yeah. And and I love that you guys are possibly moving to Charlotte. That means that we're going to be not quite, but almost neighbors. Because yeah, we live in the middle of South Carolina. So Charlotte's about a two-hour drive from here. Fantastic. Yeah. That is great. What city is that that you're in? We're in Florence. We're about an hour west of Myrtle Beach.

unknown 3:57

Okay.

Speaker 2 3:58

And about two hours from Charleston.

Speaker 1 4:00

Wow. That's a nice area.

Speaker 2 4:03

It is a good place to live. We're close to the mountains and we're close to the to the ocean.

Speaker 1 4:09

Yes, you are.

Speaker 2 4:09

Yeah. Yeah. So how about you, Melissa? Anything you'd like to share?

Speaker 4:13

Yeah. Well, we moved to Canada about 20 years ago. We actually didn't really plan to move to Canada. We thought we were just going there for a year because Todd's job moved us up here. We thought, how hard can that be? And then the contract just kept renewing and renewing. And I think if I had known that I was going to live for 20 plus years in Canada and raise my children there, I would have been too scared to do it.

Speaker 2 4:38

Yeah.

Speaker 4:39

God just kind of only revealed the next year at a time. So one of our kids was even born here. So he is a citizen. We're still citizens of the U.S. And now going back home is still a real exciting journey for me to be back in my home country. I'm really excited about that.

Speaker 2 4:58

Good. Good. Now, where are you guys originally from? Where were you guys born?

Speaker 1 5:03

I was born in Maryland. She was married.

Speaker 5:05

Kansas. And then we met in California, the church we were going to and got married there.

Speaker 3 5:11

Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 5:12

Well, we're glad that you guys are in process of coming back to the States. I know it'll be great to get back to, especially close to your to your Yeah. Now all boys, right?

Speaker 1 5:25

We got one girl in Montreal.

Speaker 2 5:27

I apologize to your daughter who's probably listening right now. McKenna. McKenna.

Speaker 1 5:33

She wants to stay in Montreal right now, but I think she's she's leaning towards, you know, coming following us down to Charlotte. We're hoping. We're we're working on that.

Speaker 2 5:42

Okay. Well, cool. Yeah, I think I actually saw her on Facebook not long ago. Yeah, because I remember the name. It's uh it's not a common name, but I love it.

Speaker 5:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:52

It's a beautiful name.

Speaker 5:53

Thank you.

Early Signs That Felt Like Teen Angst

Speaker 2 5:54

Well, guys, why don't you, whoever would like to start, take us back to 2020, because this is where your grief journey began. Tell us a little bit about that time in your lives and tell us about Tristan, your son. He was 18 years old. So just tell us how this grief journey started.

Speaker 1 6:14

I was gonna let you do that, Melissa.

Speaker 6:16

Okay. Well, I kind of have to go back a little bit further because I saw a stark contrast between the beginning of the grief journey and what life was like before that. And we were a homeschool family, so the kids were really, really close. And um, they they had a lot of fun together. And I just loved, I loved having them in the home with me and us being that close, tight-knit family. And because we lived in Canada, I kept our family up to date with a blog, and I would just take pictures just about every day. I would take pictures and just create this story of whatever we were doing that day. And I noticed one day when I took the picture of Tristan that he just had a different spirit about him. And I I just made a note of it. I thought, huh, that's different.

Speaker 2 7:08

Melissa, how old was he at the time? Just out of curiosity.

Speaker 7:12

He was 12.

Speaker 2 7:13

Okay.

Speaker 7:14

Twelve years old. And over the, let's see, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. So I would say it was a journey of six years of him doing what would probably be considered a normal, a normal isolation and kind of underwriting anger that most people would say, Oh, my teenage years. No, everyone goes through that. And, you know, this kind of this breaking of fellowship with his younger brother. And they say, Oh, sibling rivalry, everyone goes through that. But as a mom, you know, I knew this was not what they were talking about. So I put it on my prayer list because it really affected our family.

Speaker 2 8:00

Yeah, a bit.

Speaker 8:01

I didn't chalk it up to him being unhappy, I or anything other than this is a mystery to me, because I'd already had McKenna and Grayson go through those years, and that didn't happen at all. And he was the first one, and I didn't have anything to pin it on, but it greatly worried me. So I think I first went to, I thought we had all been afflicted with Lyme disease, and I knew that there was part of it that could affect your brain. And it given us, I'd given one of my sons OCD. So I thought, well, this is such a mystery, this isolation and anger, maybe it's Lyme. So I took him to our Lyme doctor, and that wasn't it. I took him to our pediatrician, and then I took him to a child psychologist, and no one could find anything, any reason for this.

Speaker 2 8:57

So, so there was no indication that it could be clinical depression?

Speaker 9:01

No, no one mentioned that.

Speaker 1 9:04

And the funny thing is that that her family, her side of the family, does have a history of of mental illness, and we've seen it firsthand in in some of her her family members. So we knew what it was. She knew what it was better than I did. So we were always on the lookout for any kind of mental illness, but this just we just did not see it.

Speaker 2 9:23

Yeah. And uh that did did the psychologist and the physicians did they ever ask about if there was a history of depression?

Speaker 9:32

No. Really? Because it wasn't depression, it was anger and isolation. And why teenager isn't angry and isolating in their room with the door shut and playing video games, right?

Speaker 2 9:45

Yeah, right.

Speaker 9:46

But that didn't fit our family profile because none of none of us did that. They were out, they were in the family, they were interacting with each other.

Speaker 1 9:55

Of course, they had squabbles and stuff, but no one went in their room and shut the door and shut down and the irony is that Tristan was the most jolly, gleeful, happy, full of joy, exploding more than any of our other kids. He was really over the top in that. We we called him our sunshine boy because he always brought sunshine everywhere he went.

Speaker 2 10:16

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, there we have some definite similarities in our stories because Ryan suffered with depression and anxiety and OCD a little later in his teenage years. But yeah, I think it really kind of started showing up in him. I would say probably around the 15 to 16-year-old Mark. And again, like Tristan, Ryan was he was the out really outgoing one who, you know, walked into a room and he would be kind of become the center of attention and loved to make people laugh and you know, knew no fear. And there's there is family history of depression with with Kathy's side of the family as well, but still we didn't see that. We didn't recognize it. And to make it even worse, for me as his dad, I was a pharmaceutical rep. And part of what I did was representing antidepressants, and I still didn't recognize it. But anyway, back to your story.

Speaker 11:23

Yeah, yeah. So it got to be I think I do want to mention one more thing in case in case anyone else recognizes this and their family and it's a mystery to them. We didn't find out till till later what this behavior was. But his younger brother was three three years, there's a three-year gap, and they were like best buddies. And then when Tristan began to change in his behavior, you would say that I would I don't I didn't have this word at the time. But when I look back, it was a shunning. It was a it was a flip on his younger brother that he didn't want to see him, he didn't want to talk to him, he didn't want to sit next to him, he didn't want to have anything to do with him.

Speaker 1 12:09

Didn't want to breathe his air, and you couldn't put your finger on it. No.

Speaker 12:12

No.

Speaker 1 12:13

Nobody could.

When OCD Looks Like Shunning

Speaker 12:13

Nobody could. And I'll explain it now so the mystery is solved. Is later we found out that OCD can manifest itself towards a person. And just like OCD can be you're afraid of germs, Tristan did not want his younger brother's germs, didn't want to be around him. He was obsessive over not being near his younger brother. And I had never heard of that. I only heard about that from an OCD specialist later. Yeah.

Speaker 3 12:42

Nor have I.

Speaker 12:43

Yeah. To us it was heartbreaking because it was the breaking of fellowship between the two of them. And his younger brother didn't have any explanation why his best friend was suddenly just gone and suddenly hated him. You know, it was heartbreaking, heartbreaking to see that happen. But it I'm very thankful that it didn't manifest itself in in fighting, like they never fought each other or had aggression towards each other. It was just a shunning, which was really, really sad. So I wanted to mention that before we moved on in case anyone experiences that.

Speaker 2 13:16

No, I'm glad you did, Melissa, because there may be somebody listening today who is as baffled as you guys were. And maybe that will be like a light bulb coming on for them. And maybe that can provide an opportunity to see a specialist.

Speaker 13:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1 13:33

I think one of the things that I we were learned recently, we know a couple who lost a daughter. She was 26. She was bipolar one. Bipolar one is very, it's not like bipolar two where it's sort of seasonal and whatever. It can be, it can flip on a dime between manic and and depression. And when he was telling us his story, he was saying things, I was like, Tristan did that. Tristan was like that. And I explained to him some of the things that Tristan was doing. He says, Oh, that's classic bipolar one. And Tristan only had two weeks with mental health specialists. And the first thing they'd always diagnose everybody with is manic depressive disorder, major depressive disorder. That's like the entry, the gateway diagnosis of everything else. So, I mean, any kind of mental illness is like a spectrum of all kinds of things. It's it's like a color that changes. And so Tristan, we we've we've since figured out that Tristan had some sort of bipolar one something going on there. He did have delusions at times. Even his his best friend said that yeah, there were some delusional aspects to Tristan where things just didn't connect like a normal person.

Speaker 2 14:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:41

And those would be momentary things. So we had seen that as well. So, anyhow, that's just to give a diagnosis. Yeah.

Speaker 14:48

But how we got to that point where we had the two weeks with the specialists was I had just put on my prayer list. Um, I was begging God to show me, I have the date on my prayer list when I wrote down what what is wrong with Tristan. Help me find out what's wrong with my son. So the journey to finding out what was wrong with him was two weeks. And he had steadily gotten worse and worse. And what that looked like in our home was just never really wanting to be with us, shut in his room, coming late to dinner, not wanting to sit at the table with us, not wanting to go anywhere we went, playing video games all night. And later we found out that he played video games all night to distract himself from wanting to die. At the time, you're not thinking that. You're just seeing my son's playing video games all night. That's bad. Why is he doing that? So we try to stop him from that behavior by shutting off the router. Well, first of all, you do things like saying, you can't do that. Please don't and then shutting off the router, giving him no access. But after a night of playing video games, he had an opportunity to work at Todd's studio and he just couldn't get himself out of bed. And he wasn't really speaking to us that much. It wasn't, it wasn't like someone who I'm not I'm not talking to you because I'm angry at you or I hate you. It was just someone who was shut down, who had nothing to say, who didn't really want to interact.

Speaker 2 16:24

That's so hard for a parent.

Speaker 16:26

Yeah. It broke my heart because I knew who he was before, and I didn't know why he was this way now. What had happened? What had happened?

Speaker 2 16:37

Yeah, that's that's hard when it's like a switch flips.

Speaker 16:42

Yes.

Speaker 2 16:43

And their personality changes or everything about their behavior changes. Because you feel like as a parent, you know, I should know my child and I should be able to protect them and help them and figure this out, you know, and the list goes on and on and on. And when you can't, you feel very helpless.

Speaker 17:01

Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't just Tristan, because a mom is only as happy as her saddest child. So our whole family was affected. And I'll be honest with you, now I would never say this, but in the middle of it, when his dark cloud was affecting the whole family, I would think this is ruining our family. Because I thought he was choosing to be that way.

Speaker 3 17:30

Sure.

Speaker 17:31

I thought this has to be removed to protect the other people's peace and joy and happiness. But that seemed impossible because how do you remove that? It's your child. You can't. Right. You love them. So I did briefly think about well, maybe there's like a place he can go, like um, a boot camp that'll whip him into shape and we'll get a break. So our home has some a breather and space from that for a while. And I did look into that. And he was interested in all those kinds of things, survival things. And but going on in his mind that we didn't see was, I'm in so much pain, I want to die. I'm in so much pain, I want to die. And so when I would show him the videos of the really cool camp with the survival and da-da-da, he would look at the videos and say, Mom, why would I want to do that? So it's really mixed signals. Yeah. We couldn't see the real, real recording in his voice, in his head that was going on.

Speaker 2 18:33

Yeah. And I think sometimes when people on the outside who are looking in at our life that you're describing now, what it was like then, probably find it hard to understand that, you know, how how could you have missed that? How could you have missed this? Because we were there at one point as well. I know what it's like, like you guys, to be on both sides of that. But we I mean, what parent suspects that their child or thinks that their child is going through something so horrendous inside that they don't want to be here anymore, that they might contemplate taking their own life. We don't think that way. And let's face it, we don't come as parents with a how to parent book. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of people who've written books about, you know, parenting and all that, but we don't really come with an instruction booklet for every little detail. And when something like that happens, you know, we I think if maybe you guys were like us in that we felt like we were constantly trying to put out little fires. And every time we would get one put out, another one was popping up. And it was interesting what you said a minute ago, Melissa, about the survival school and stuff like that. We actually threatened Ryan once with with a military school. Yes. And we actually laid a pamphlet out on the kitchen counter so that he couldn't miss it.

Speaker 19:54

Yes.

Speaker 2 19:55

But he had zero interest.

Speaker 19:57

Yeah. I understand.

Speaker 2 19:59

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I I say I know. I can only uh imagine the turmoil that that was going on inside of you guys and within your family dynamic. And, you know, what do you do? You know, what what do you do? Did he ever directly express or were there ever any symptoms that might have led anybody to believe that he might have suicidal ideations?

The Question That Changed Everything

Speaker 20:25

He'd even been discipled by our the youth pastor at our church that had had a background in being able to recognize that because he to help kids that were on the street from broken homes. And so he knew the signs of that. And he never saw that from Tristan. Going back to what you said about we never think that they can be in so much pain they want to die. The morning that I went down to try to wake him up to go to the studio to work is when I found out how much pain he was in. And he told me, I actually prayed for wisdom because whenever Tristan was talking, which wasn't often, I would just pray almost like a mantra in the back of my head, give me wisdom, give me wisdom, give me wisdom. Like the Lord says in James, if we ask for wisdom, he'll give it to us. So he said, I prayed for wisdom, and I sat down on his bed and I waited. And he said, Mom, is it against the law to kill yourself?

Speaker 2 21:27

That must have been like a knife through your heart.

Speaker 21:30

Not yet. Not yet. Because I couldn't even go there. Yeah. I get it. More like, what do you mean? I said, Tristan, I don't think so because you'd be dead. And he said, Well, is it against the law to try to kill yourself? And I said, I don't know. Why, why are you asking that? And then he told us that he had tried eight times just in two weeks. Like it wasn't a series of trying over years and years, just for the past 14 days. So that would have been like just about every other day.

Speaker 3 22:00

Uh-huh.

Speaker 22:01

And I think I asked him how or why, and not why. I asked him how, and he said running the car in the garage with trying by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Speaker 3 22:13

Yeah.

Speaker 22:13

It didn't work. And he had taken, tried to overdose on Tylenol and Advil, like 40 pills, worked. And I said, he said, I am, I want to live now because I know how much it will hurt you and dad if I try that again. So I'm I want to live now. And that's all my mom brain absorbed. I wasn't thinking, oh, he tried to die. That's all I heard was, I'll never try again. I know it'll hurt you guys. So the concept of how much pain it took to get to that point did not weigh on my soul. I wasn't thinking He's still in that much pain and he's gonna live in that much pain because it'll hurt us. So I'll stay alive in this horrendous pain. That never occurred to me. I just thought, I know what's wrong with my son. Now I know he's opened up to me. He's talking to me. I was so thankful that now, like the door's open. I have a door. Yes. There it was a breakthrough. Yeah. There was no more wall. The wall was broken. He'd opened up because if he'd confessed that, that was a connection to my heart that I've been missing for six years.

Speaker 2 23:26

Yeah. And of course, yeah, any parent would would want to latch on to that as opposed to thinking that your child might be thinking of taking their own life. Who wouldn't shove that to the side and and just try to block it out and accept what he just said? I want to live now because I don't want to hurt you guys.

Speaker 23:49

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:50

How did that impact you, Todd, when when you found out about that? Because you know, as dads, you know, we automatically go into dad protection mode when things like that happen. And I don't know about you, but I tend to be, I tend to like to feel like I'm in control of things.

Speaker 3 24:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:07

And when that happens, you know, you feel like you have zero control.

Speaker 1 24:11

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was shocking. I don't think I understood the gravity of it yet, but we tried to get him as much help as we could. We Melissa took him to the ER because somebody, one of the social workers who was at our church, said, take him to the ER, have him looked over. We got him into the Douglas, which is a mental health hospital, just to have an evaluation there. And that's where he got his first diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which we didn't know. They didn't release that information to us at the time. They just released him back home. And so we were just scrambling, trying to figure out, you know, trying to get him the help he needed and help him get through this. I thought we had dodged a bullet and I was grateful for that. But it was we were really in high, heightened alert, panic mode. He was sleeping in our bedroom on a mattress on the floor just so we could watch him at night. And so we were doing everything we could to help him at that point.

Speaker 2 25:04

Yeah. And it's hard to live for a lengthy period of time in that mode where you feel like your your senses are always on that heightened alert because it's a trauma response. And it's hard once you go into that mode to be able to get out of it. And sometimes you feel like, you know, even it as you pray for the Lord to release you from that, it just feels like in some respects you don't want to let it go because you're afraid if you do let it go that you're gonna miss something. And it it will be your fault because you didn't stay at that heightened alert mode, in that heightened alert mode. So, guys, what age are we talking about now? Like you were hearing this from him, Melissa.

Speaker 25:49

He was 18.

Speaker 2 25:51

Okay.

Speaker 25:51

About to turn 19.

Speaker 3 25:53

Okay.

Speaker 25:54

And we did see changes in him. So suicide wasn't even on like I was doing the suicide watch, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking, well, this is just what you do, but I see what he's gonna live now because God answered my prayers. It was on my prayer list. Show me what's wrong with Tristan. And he did, and now he wants to live. So this is the path we're taking to life. Yeah. He's reading his Bible, he's doing working in his journal, he's apologizing to his brother, he apologized to us.

Speaker 3 26:28

Oh wow.

Speaker 26:29

This is the answer to my prayers. God's doing it.

Speaker 2 26:34

So Melissa, in retrospect, do you think that all that you just described, do you think Tristan was at a place where he had already made the decision that he was going to take his life and he was just trying to make amends and trying to take some of the pressure off of you guys?

ER Visits And A System That Fails

Speaker 26:52

That's a really good question. It could go either way because now at the time I didn't know, but now I know that once they try, they're more likely to try again. And before they do, they want to get their life in order. So it could have been that. But what's confusing to me is there is a sign for the other side where he really did want to live. And that was the note that the last meeting he had with his child psychologist was she said, I think you should do the art therapy. I think you'd really like it. And at this point, he was still really tired. He was willing to go and always went to the appointments, but he also wanted to do as little as possible. So when we got all the way back down, down the elevator, through the lobby, all the way down the stairs, through this long parking lot to the car, and he said, Oh, I forgot to sign up for the art therapy, and actually had to go reverse that whole process. If he was thinking of, I'm gonna end my life, I'm not doing that. He wanted to do it. So he put all that effort into it. So that's evidence that he was still thinking, I'm gonna keep trying, keep trying.

Speaker 2 28:00

It sounds like there was a real battle going on, you know, in in his heart and mind.

Speaker 28:06

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:07

Y'all, I I know that this may be a personal, very personal question, and and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. Did any of those medical professionals that Tristan saw ever put him on an antidepressant or an anti anxiety or bipolar?

Speaker 1 28:25

They tried to. They they wanted to they prescribed something for him, but he he didn't want to take it, which we didn't.

Speaker 28:30

Well, actually, they gave it to him. So we had we took him to four different people in a series of like four days. And we landed with the what's the name of that hospital he was at?

Speaker 1 28:45

Douglas?

Speaker 28:45

No, the one where he saw the psychologist all the time.

Speaker 1 28:48

Shriners. Shriners.

Speaker 28:50

Shriners. Shriners.

Speaker 1 28:52

Okay.

Speaker 28:53

Who is that shriners? So when the mental hospital had given him or the emergency room had given him medication, we took it to her because he was going to be in charge of her care. And we said, This is what they gave him. What do you think about it? What should we do? And she looked at it and she said, I think that you should just leave this with me. And she either kept it or she gave it back to us and said, I would not recommend that for him.

Speaker 1 29:18

So Because it it creates suicidal ideation.

Speaker 2 29:22

Was it an antidepressant? Yeah, that that is in the package insert of every antidepressant. It seems like an oxymoron that you give you prescribe a medication for someone who is depressed because we know that with clinical depression, often it can end in suicide. But you're you're seeing the words in the package insert that it can cause suicidal ideation. I don't understand how that works, but it is, it is. I'm so sorry that they were not able to find anything that really could help and that he was willing to take. But you know, it's not unusual for for young people that age not to want to take a medication because I think they like to they believe that, you know, they they can control this. Or on the flip side, that I don't want anybody to know that I'm taking something like this because it's a sign of weakness.

Speaker 1 30:15

It they're gonna think I'm crazy and you know, we have seen our son, our older son, he was given some of the same kinds of medication when with his OCD, and it just it didn't work well with him. He just hated it. He just could not and he just stopped cold turkey on the stuff that they had been giving. And so we, you know, we had a complicated experience with with pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 2 30:36

Yeah. Can be especially with with mental health disorders. It it can be very complicated. It can be a long process to to find the right medication.

Speaker 30:46

And at this point, we're still in the dark because we haven't been told, we haven't given a diet, we don't know he's depressed, we don't know how much pain he's in. We think it's something he's choosing. It's a choice he's made to be isolated and angry and stuff. And so now we think he's making the choice to build the bridges back. We still don't know the depth of his pain, right, hen?

Speaker 1 31:10

Right. We didn't know. We had no idea.

Speaker 31:12

We had no idea how much the only time I saw how much pain he was in. And at the time, I didn't say to myself, oh, this is the depth of his pain. At the time, I thought, what's wrong? We had been at the ER and the the system in Canada is is horrific at the time. I actually had to call 911 from the ER because they wouldn't see us. That's how I'm bad.

Speaker 2 31:37

You are kidding.

Speaker 31:38

So we left. I thought, I can't sit here with him any longer. It had been like seven hours or something, and I this is not good for this is making him worse. So we walked to the parking lot, and on the way to the car, he collapsed onto me and I held him and the weight that he was carrying. At the time, I just thought, no, what's wrong? Is he gonna faint? He collapsed onto me and I just grabbed him because I haven't been able to hug him for six years. I grabbed him and I thought, my boy, my boy. But I think I just said to him, say, it's okay, it's okay. And as soon as he realized that I was invested in supporting and helping him, he stood straight up and straightened his shoulders and just acted like the wall went up again. And I I thought, what happened? Was it his heart? Did he almost faint? But looking back, he finally let me personally see I'm in so much pain, I want to die. But he didn't say it.

Speaker 2 32:43

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 32:44

It's a brief window.

Speaker 2 32:46

Well, I I know that was it was a moment you'll never forget, but that you would probably like to forget. And and I think it's uh unfortunately a lot of times they don't let us in at that level where we can where we can even begin to try to comprehend the level of pain that that they're in, because for somebody to get to the point where the only way out they see is to end their life and that it the pain will stop, it'll be better, and I want, you know, my parents will be better off, my siblings will be better off, everybody will be better off.

Speaker 3 33:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2 33:25

But uh I mean, it's it's so sad that so many do get to that point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:31

And he left us a note where he said, I'm sorry, he apologized. He was very sweet note, apologizing for what he was doing, but he said, I'm I'm just I just can't do it anymore. I've tried and I'm giving up. I just can't do it anymore. It's too painful.

Speaker 2 33:47

That's heartbreaking to hear as a as a parent, you know. Like he said, it would it was sweet because he didn't want you guys to hurt, but he was just weary from the battle. That's right.

Faith And Mental Health Stigma

Speaker 1 33:59

Yeah. I think we don't, I mean, it wasn't until after he committed suicide that I had to, I had to find out what took my son because I knew it wasn't his right mind. So I I started I spent six months reading books on suicide. And what I learned was just horrific. I mean, it is such a dark, horrific thing that they're going through mentally that they're they're completely out of control. They're they're just overwhelmed with things you and I would never understand. I understand them now, now that I've lost my son and I've been through depression myself, and I've been to those places where it's been so dark where, you know, I just thought, why, why go on? Yeah. Yep. I the Lord has allowed me to taste a little bit of what Tristan has gone through. And it's it's horrific. It really is. I think there needs to be more awareness and understanding of that kind of thing, just so we know what we're dealing with. And I think the church in general has well, not in general, but I think there are certain circles of the church where they just say, well, there's no mental illness, it's just all sin. I'm like, I'm sorry, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You just don't know what you're talking about, right? So I mean, the the brain is uh is a complicated machine, and to think that it's never going to have a problem is just the most naive thing.

Speaker 2 35:21

I'm so glad that you brought that up, Todd, because I agree with you. Number one, mental health treatment for mental health, both I'm sure in Canada and and in the US, are very lacking. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. And we unfortunately there is in some circles, there's still a s a stigma. And as you said a moment ago, what we fail to remember is that the brain is an organ like your kidney or your kidneys or your liver or your stomach or your skin. It does sometimes there are there there something can trigger a chemical imbalance, whether it's an hereditary issue or whether it's something that happens in their life that that triggers that. And we wouldn't think twice. The majority of people who would be quick to judge, as you said a moment ago, particularly I think in Christian circles, mental health is just a matter of you can you you you can you can pray it away, you know, you if you read your Bible enough and the list goes on and on and on, then it'll get better. And as a Christian, you know, you shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't have, you shouldn't be dealing with stuff like that. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. And I would be willing to bet that some of those people would not hesitate to take a drug to treat their cholesterol or their blood pressure or anything else involving another organ. But for some reason, the wall goes up when we talk about mental health issues. And that is, I think it is shameful. And uh and as you said, it's not like that in all churches, but it's too prevalent. I've heard too many stories. It's you know, that's not how that's not how Jesus deals with people who are battling any kind anything. He you he always showed kindness and compassion to people, regardless of what they were going through. Sometimes he, you know, he healed them. And, you know, with him there there is always hope.

Speaker 37:21

Also, I think it goes beyond that to there the church that we went to held to a level of biblical counseling that said, if you are in a place where you are so sad, they misapplied that verse in Genesis where the Lord is talking to Cain and says, Why are you why are you angry? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted? And they're saying it's your responsibility, if you think the right thoughts to get out of the dark place. You got yourself into the dark place. And if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted? However, I don't know how they can skip the verse where the Son of God Jesus Christ, who was sinless, said, I am sorrowful, sorrowful. That means you can be so sad, you can die from the sadness. Now he wasn't talking about taking his life. You can die from a broken heart.

Speaker 2 38:16

Absolutely.

Speaker 38:17

So I hope that they take the whole counsel of scripture when they're addressing people who are so sad they feel like they can die.

Speaker 3 38:25

Sure.

Speaker 38:26

And use all the tools available to them and not say, well, you got yourself there, let's get you out. Sure, use scripture, but use all the tools that God has given us to help you get out of that sorrow.

Speaker 2 38:39

Yes, which includes modern medicine.

Speaker 38:42

Yes.

Speaker 2 38:43

It includes specialists, it includes counseling, it includes medications.

Speaker 38:47

Yes.

Speaker 2 38:48

You know, it's it's not as it's not as easy as people sometimes make it out to be. It's not a feeling. Yes, the feelings are the emotions are involved, but clinical depression affects us physically as well as mentally, as well as emotionally. And yes, it can have a tremendous impact on us spiritually as well.

Speaker 3 39:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2 39:09

You know, you can't make your, you can't make those chemicals go back into balance by willing it to do so. I mean, you just you can't. It's like willing a broken bone to heal itself. Yes, yes, the Lord can do that, but God also gives us physicians. He gives us psychologists. And those are those tools and resources that you're referring to, Melissa. And we also forget sometimes that in scripture, when when Lazarus, one of Jesus' best friends, died, scripture records that Jesus wept. And in the original language, wept to us, it means, yeah, Jesus shed a few tears. But in the original, it meant that Jesus broke down in tears because he was sad that his friend Lazarus had died. He was sad because he saw the impact on his two sisters, even knowing that within a few minutes he was going to raise Lazarus back to life again. Yeah. But he still allowed himself to experience those emotions that he knew we all experience. Yeah. So he can he can identify with us in those horrendous places that we find ourselves.

Speaker 40:28

Yes. In that same account, the mourners that were there, like you know how they would hire professional mourners at that kind of a thing.

Speaker 3 40:35

Yeah.

Speaker 40:36

When he broke down, it says they stopped and said, Look how he loved him. They said that about Jesus crying over Lazarus. So they recognized there was a difference between what they were doing and what he was doing, the depth of compassion. And I like to think at that moment, because as you said, he was going to raise Jesus from the dead, that he was crying over the curse of the earth that brought this about. And therefore, he was crying for the death of Tristan in that moment. He wept tears over the death of Tristan.

What Helped Us Survive Grief

Speaker 2 41:09

Yes, he did. He did, indeed. Guys, for people that are listening today that are in an earlier season of grief. And you guys aren't that far out. It's only six years this year. Is that is that right? Yeah. What are some things that you guys have found helpful? Some resources on your grief journey that you could share with with those who are listening today. We don't give advice on this podcast because everybody's journey is different. But what we can offer is experience. We've walked there before them, we're walking with them. So what would you say were some things that looking back now were more helpful than than others?

Speaker 1 41:49

I think the first thing I would say is that one don't don't have expectations of how the church or others should handle things because they're going to disappoint you and you're going to set yourself up for problems. They haven't experienced what you've experienced, and even though they're trying to be compassionate, they really don't know. And that's a good thing that they don't know. You don't want to the pain that you're you're in. So you're you're automatically, you know, you're you're going to feel isolated, you're going to feel alone because nobody's going to understand you. And they need to have the humility to recognize that they don't know that. But beyond that, you just you you just need to know that they're not you're not going to get help from them like you thought. Which leads me to the second thing, which is you need to get around other early parents who have walked this road because they are going to know what you're going through. They're going to connect with you. And you're going to speak the same language, you're going to have the same accent. So you recognize one another. And that's where you begin to heal, where you realize I'm not alone. What I'm facing and what I'm struggling with is not unusual. It's common. And you can really identify with other people and you get people to pray with you. So there's lots of resources for that sort of thing. And then I'd say the third thing is for me, I had to be in the Word every single day. I, in fact, you know, the day after we Tristan died, I woke up that morning to get into my Bible and I was like, I don't know what to think. I don't know what to do. This Bible is unfamiliar to me. Start over from day one, foundation. So I just opened my Bible, Genesis, and I got a journal, and I just started praying scripture back. So I would just read scripture, whatever was in there that was appropriate for me to pray, or if there were words there that were helping me say something that was on my heart that I was that was heavy on my heart, I would use the words there, even though it had nothing to do with necessarily the scripture. But it kept me in the word, learning how to pray all over again because I I realized I I don't even know how to pray now. And I did that for like five and a half years. And that really was one of the main things that helped me get through this.

Speaker 2 43:55

Yeah. That's really good. And I can identify there, Todd, because that's that's what I did the day after as well. I didn't know what else to do. I mean, it was it was just the way that I live every day. And you know, I knew that I desperately needed him. And he's so good to meet us in in those moments when when we don't know what to do and we feel so totally overwhelmed and as you said, to so totally isolated and broken. How about you, Melissa? Anything you would add to that?

Speaker 44:27

I would say don't be surprised if you feel like you want to die too. Because I would wake up and think, how did my son take his life? How is this real? I don't I don't want to live in a world where that's true. You've got to help me, God. And I went straight to scripture and I just said, Help me. And I wouldn't leave until he did.

Speaker 3 44:51

Yeah.

Speaker 44:52

And it was helpful for me to see that God understood the depths of Tristan's sorrow. So I would highlight places in the Bible that described where other people wanted to die. And I was really surprised to hear very, very strong people of the faith that wanted to die. Moses saying, kill me now. I came across that. I don't know how I skimmed over that before. And also Job saying strangling and death to these bones of mine. Job, the wrote the most righteous man on earth, wanted to die by hanging. How did I that before? So it helped to find Tristan in there and also the depth of Tristan's sorrow in there. And I just highlighted it. I highlighted it all. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. And at the time, I'm sorry to say that I thought suicide was something that happened to other people. I thought we were untouchable.

Speaker 2 45:45

Melissa, I I can remember feeling and thinking the exact same thing.

Speaker 45:51

Yeah. We're Christians. We're we have this strong family. We're we love each other. Everyone is involved and has a relationship with Jesus.

Speaker 2 45:59

Things like that happen to other people. Yes. Not to us.

Speaker 46:03

Yes.

Speaker 2 46:03

Yeah. I know.

Speaker 46:04

So the rug was just pulled out from under my feet, and I thought, am I the only one? What if I just what if I just do a search? Like, I don't know, Christian suicide family. What would happen? Someone's got it. Someone else. The thing I wanted to hear from the most was a mom like me that had lost a son or a child to suicide. I needed to talk to her because I thought it was impossible. And I also didn't know how long my pain was going to be last because it felt so intense and so crushing. I couldn't imagine if 20 years from now I feel like this, how do I get through 20 years of this pain?

Speaker 2 46:42

And do I want to?

Speaker 46:43

And do I want to? And if it doesn't feel bad, how could it ever get better? The fact that my son took his life gets better, that didn't make sense either.

Speaker 2 46:57

Yeah. No, it does not. Did did you find that woman?

Speaker 47:01

No, I didn't find it. And that's when I decided there's got to be more people that are searching for this. And if I ever get to the point where I can put it online so that if you type in Christian suicide loss, something comes up, I'm gonna do it. And the journaling in my scripture, I just started typing out into posts and put them on a website so people could find it. And that lasted for two or three years. I just continually did that. I had to process it. I had to write it out. And then someone introduced me to while we're waiting. And that that's the first ministry we found. And then they introduced us to Our Hearts Are Home.

Speaker 2 47:44

Yeah. Two wonderful ministries.

Speaker 47:47

Yeah. And I think uh the retreat was the first time we met face to face with someone, right? Honey?

Speaker 2 47:53

Yeah. Was that with that with Brad and Jill while we're waiting? Yeah.

Speaker 47:59

But we were scared. We didn't want to go in. We sat out in the parking lot for a long time before.

unknown 48:04

Yeah.

Speaker 48:04

How do you know what's gonna happen? We're scared. We just lost a son. The last thing we want to do is meet people.

Speaker 1 48:11

Like us. Yep. Yep.

Speaker 48:13

Strangers. We can't do this.

Speaker 3 48:15

Can't do this.

Speaker 2 48:17

Why are we doing this?

Speaker 3 48:19

Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 48:21

I know. And then you discovered after you had been there why you did do this, right?

Speaker 1 48:27

It was it was a breath of fresh air. It was really like, oh, we can relax now. You know, there's people who understand us, they're like us. They under, you know, they've experienced the same things we have and they're struggling with the same things we have.

Speaker 2 48:41

You don't have to explain it. They just get it.

Speaker 1 48:43

Yeah.

Turning Pain Into Ministry And Lament

Speaker 2 48:44

Yeah. That's that's what I love about connecting with other people like you guys who have lost a child. Because I, you know, I hear the the story of uh of your journey and how you processed it, how you tried to process it, how you're still trying to process it and navigate life now. But I see the the joy that's returned to your lives. And it's not because you willed that, it's because you can't. Believe me, you can't. It is not something you ever get over. It's something that you get through one day at a time. And you guys know that we get through that because we have the hope that only Jesus can provide, and we have we have we have the grace that he offers to get through things like that. And so I'm glad that you guys have have shared all that you have today. And I do want to touch on something too, because we we know, we understand, and I think Melissa, you may have touched on this far earlier in our conversation that God doesn't waste anything. And there is another podcast called Nothing Is Wasted by Davey Blackburn, which is another great podcast for grieving anybody who's grieving. But God does not waste anything. And so I want you guys to talk just a little bit about something that you actually you actually mentioned by name a minute ago, Melissa, and that that is one of your ministries called Christian Suicide Loss. Yeah. And you guys also have another ministry called Surviving Child Loss. And you're working on a new one that you mentioned a few minutes ago, Todd. So why don't you guys tell us about what God has done in using the absolute worst that anybody, I think, could experience in bringing good out of that? Romans 8.28. Refer to that verse all the time. How God brings, He can bring good out of the absolute worst for us. Losing our son is not a good thing. That's not what that means. But we know that God can bring good out of what was meant for evil. So talk to us a little bit about what you guys are doing to help other people now.

Speaker 50:57

Yeah. I think it started with the blog that I wrote, which was just using scripture to process. I knew I could never figure out why. The why does not belong to us.

Speaker 3 51:10

No.

Speaker 51:11

And I think part of the reason God does not reveal the why to us is because it would dishonor our grief. We need the depth of that grief and that grieving process. And the why is removed because it wouldn't make it any better.

Speaker 2 51:30

And it wouldn't change anything.

Speaker 51:32

No. But I like to say we don't know the why, but we know the who. Who determines the length of our children's lives, who determines their story from the beginning to the end, who has 10,000 things that he's accomplishing with our children's story. And he may grant us to see one or two. I borrowed that from another pastor. I just heard that this week. Really liked it. So the Christian Suicide Loss is a blog that I would take what the truth that I found in scripture and apply it so that God was still God and I was not. I could trust him through the worst of my pain. And not because it was something someone had told me, but because I found it in his word and it was real.

Speaker 2 52:21

Yeah. You experienced it.

Speaker 52:23

Yes. I experienced it. And I mean, I loved God, the sovereignty of God long before this was before I was even married. God sits on his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. I loved that verse and I applied it to everything. So when Tristan took his life, was that true or not? Is that scripture? Am I gonna blacken that out of my Bible? How can that be true? How can I reconcile that with what happened to me, the worst thing in my life? And so my blog is a process of working through that and applying God's sovereignty to the worst thing in my life.

Speaker 2 53:01

Yeah. Yeah. I I love that. I also want you guys to talk about the surviving child loss, because that that's where you guys, I think, interviewed I think 11 couples who had lost a child to a lot of different things. But you sat down and interviewed them. And I believe it was while you guys were at the retreat.

Speaker 1 53:25

It was during the period where we were our house had caught on fire. We were displaced. The insurance wasn't able to find a place because there had been some floods in Montreal, so there weren't any places available for us. So we used the time to travel, and my job had I was doing my job remote, so that was an advantage to us. So we just started traveling to stay with family across the country and to attend some film conferences, because I'm a filmmaker, Christian film conferences. And I had I had this nagging desire to put what we had learned into a documentary. You know, there has to be something that people can go to where we can share our story, where we can learn from other people who've lost children, other Christians, and how do they walk they walk themselves through all that with God? How did God work with them? And so we called Jill because we were traveling and asked Jill, we told her where we were going and said, are there any parents along the way that we could stop on our journeys and just record interviews with them? And she said, I can do something better. All of our facilitators are going to be at a a weekend retreat at in Arkansas at their facility for uh four days. Wow. What a coincidence! You can come down and record them all. Anyone who wants to, you can sit there, we'll make we'll make room for you guys and record that. So that's how that started. And it was really in any documentary, you begin with interviews because you're not really sure what the shape of the story is, and especially with my our grief brains and everything, we just saw, let's just get the movement going and interview people and see what what we can construct out of this. And so we started doing that. You know, I think where our hearts were, where my heart was, was helping people who have experienced other things because we knew other people who had lot their lives were completely turned upside down, sort of in the same place we had been, but for other things, you know, including Tristan. Like Tristan was he he was struggling with depression. He didn't know how to handle handle. So that's where Sparrow Falls came in, because that's where I wanted to deal with suffering. How do you deal with that with because the Bible talks about it so much? So during years of going through scripture every day, praying scripture back to God, I was seeing that God's word was speaking to me in a different way than it ever had before. I was seeing things in his word that I just skimmed over before because I had no way to process it. Yeah. So it sort of gave me new eyes to seeing God's word. And there's so much there that I think, man, why isn't anybody talking about lament, for example?

Speaker 3 55:58

Right?

Speaker 1 55:58

Because lament is something that we put aside, you know, it's for those rainy days, you know, maybe we'll we'll get to it. And if we do tap into it, it's sort of on a surface level. But when we really get into those laments, it's powerful. And even pastors preaching through Job, they tend to do three or four chapters at a time just to get through it quickly, quicker. But I'm like, you gotta slow down in there. There is so much in every verse of Job that you're just missing. And I just feel like we're so unprepared as a Christian culture today because one, we don't sing the psalms. You know, there are so many psalms that even if we were singing them, the church would not want to sing them because they're so depressing, they're so dark, they're so imprecatory or whatever. We just we can't relate to so many of those psalms.

Speaker 2 56:44

So it's yeah, like Psalm 88 is a good example.

Speaker 1 56:47

Yeah. Exactly. So, but they're so helpful for us in life because God said, You're gonna have suffering in this life. You know, be prepared. And we don't sing psalms. We he we sing hymns and spiritual songs, but we don't sing the psalms. And so for me, I think there is such a cavity, a chasm of emptiness, theological emptiness, because we have not grown up singing the psalms in the church. We don't know how to do it. We'll take a bit, pick a few verses here and there and make a song out of it, out of the psalm, and then say, Oh, that's Psalm 40. No, it's not. It's a fine song, but we're not singing the full songs in their entire context. They are designed beautifully. And for us to not sing a full song psalm in some context in the church, to me, I think, I think our generation, our age, especially the past however many 200 years, we got a lot to answer for to God about why we're not singing those songs and supporting God's people with that thing that He has created for us. And so just imagine how much differently we would have responded to all the things that even child loss in our lives had we grown up knowing those Psalms. Because the thing that fascinates me most about the Psalms is when you take a the uh theology proper course about God, most of the verse references come from the Psalms and they come from the Lament Psalms and the Darkest Psalms. God reveals Himself through suffering. There's aspects to his character that we don't really understand because we don't see it through the lens of suffering, which we would have had had we sung the Psalms. So that's one of my little bully pulpits that I get on quite frequently, but I think it's so important. It's something so dramatic we have missed.

Speaker 2 58:31

Oh, I listen, I completely agree with you, Todd. And you know, it's interesting. God included a book in the Bible called Lamentations. So, yeah, I think he thought that it was important.

Speaker 3 58:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 58:45

Well, those are good words. I so appreciate what you guys are doing to help other people who have been through suffering, like we have. And you know, it's uh what what an incredible way to honor Tristan by keeping his memory alive. And today, six years later, Tristan is still touching the lives of people that he never met, never would have met, because his parents are willing to give God their pain and suffering and let him use it to touch the lives of other people. So thank you guys for doing that. Thank you for the ministries that you have in place already. I look forward to hearing more about Sparrow Falls because Todd was very gracious to send me a little uh video clip of that, and it was so good. So you guys be on the lookout for that. I don't know what the time frame is, but I know in a previous or earlier in this conversation before you guys joined us, Todd was talking about they're still trying to to work on perfecting it. Don't wait till it's perfect, Todd.

Speaker 3 59:50

Yeah, it'll never get there.

Speaker 2 59:52

I know.

Speaker 1 59:55

I mean, it's just uh I know. I know. I I will perfect things to death if I don't stop myself.

Speaker 3 1:00:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:00:01

Well, that's okay. God can use our imperfections, I think.

Speaker 3 1:00:05

Yes.

Speaker 2 1:00:06

Yeah. Quite well. Quite well. Well, guys, thank you for listening today. You've heard an incredible story from Todd and Melissa Schaeffer, and we will look forward to having you back again in two weeks.