If you as a mother lose your child, it is as if an ash gray blanket has pulled all the color out of life. No matter how much you see your loved ones, no matter how blue the sky can color and how nice the flowers smell. “This is no longer my world, I am no longer happy,” says mother Jessica Verstraaten from Mill. In 2022 she lost her dear son Jis (19) to suicide.
“He’s in my heart and in my head,” says Jessica. “Jis was a nice boy, he could learn well and received enough attention from girls.” Jis was sweet, social, soft and charismatic. “When he came in, you saw: someone comes in. Everything you could wish for was present. But still it wasn’t going well with Jis.”
Jis was not completely made for life. Maybe not for this life, but perhaps not for life in general. He was able to worry very much about what we do here, in this world. Why we are here. And why we have to live a life, while two others actually decided for you that you got there. “Here is life, just live it. You have to exercise, learn, look good, be available, you have to be sister, you have to. He didn’t think his happiness was in life.”
The exhaustion often started during the holidays. Then he mainly felt how much energy the ‘existence’ cost him alone. “Tired tired, still too tired to talk,” Jessica repeats his words. Jis did not understand what was going on with him. He was afraid of a brain tumor, or another doom scenario that Google presented him. Until the doctor, after endless circles of blood, came with the redeeming word. Jis was depressed.
“He didn’t think life was worth it to go further.”
He did not want any medication and actually no help. He had already seen that struggle with other people in the family. And he didn’t want to be a image of that. No polonaise on his body. “He thought: I don’t want this. Not for my parents, not for my brother. He did not find life worthwhile to go further.”
Perhaps Jis made the decision there and his choice was made. Unconsciously, for some, but looking back, he has been planning for a week. He started a kind of farewell tour. “Nobody saw it coming, but he consciously agreed with people for a whole week. He went to the movies, stayed with a girlfriend. But he also took a distance.”
If Jessica thinks back to it, their last moment will assist her together. “Mom, will you be lying on the couch with me?” He asked. “Then I was rubbing him over his back,” says Jessica. On closer inspection, that moment had never actually been allowed to stop for her. Never have to stop. And do you almost want to push him through you as a mother. So firm that it almost hurts a bit.
Jessica can now talk about it well, but the memories ensure that she breaks. From her whole story sounds how she had hoped that she had known it all before. How high it was with him, how he felt. “This is how you get everything in your head as parents. I am not a mother who underestimated everything, but this came as a thunderbolt in clear sky.”
Jis got out of life on October 17, 2022. This was not his world. But since Jis’s disappearance, this is also Jessica’s world anymore. “A child is everything. Losing a child is the worst thing there is. But Jis couldn’t do anything else.”
“Your brain is also an organ. Fabrics are exchanged there and you can get sick there,” she says. At Jis those substances were different, he was already too far away. Moreover, it was genetic and he was not the only one in the family. “That would deserve a little more understanding. If you have diabetes, you also want insulin. Keep your mouth shut, I think.”
“You have to dare to ask the question: is it so bad for you that you would like to get out of life?”
Nothing is what it seems, Jessica wants to put us on our hearts. Talk about it, she says. “The taboo sphere really has to get rid of it. I might not have prevented it, but there are signals,” she explains. “You have to dare to ask the question: is it so bad with you that you would like to get out of life? Talk about it, dare to be vulnerable and say that you are not feeling well. We should not pretend that this is not there. As if these things are not happening.”
Talking about thoughts to suicide helps. You can call 24 hours a day with Stichting 113 Suicide Prevention via 0800 0113 or chat via EN 113.nl.