4 ideas
Daniel, the poet Piedad Bonnett's son, was an art student diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties. He then spent years on antipsychotic treatment, alternating between relapse and fragile stability, while pursuing studies in New York. In 2011, aged 28, he jumped from the roof of his building in Manhattan, and his mother reconstructs his last years from memory, his notes and paintings, and conversations with doctors and friends.
Language has names for the child who loses a parent (orphan) and the spouse who loses a partner (widow). It has none for the parent who loses a child. Because this loss has no word, it has no recognized social place or script. The mourner has to build a vocabulary for an experience the culture has chosen not to categorize.
Antipsychotic treatment controlled Daniel's psychosis but also dulled him, changed his body and threatened his capacity to make art. His mother therefore refuses to read his death only as an act of the disease. She considers that it may have been a clear-eyed refusal of a diminished life, which gives back to the dead person the dignity of having chosen.
Families and societies usually respond to mental illness and suicide with euphemism and secrecy. Stating plainly what happened, including the diagnosis, the method and the doubts, becomes a moral act that breaks shame. It also shows where words fail.