Turning Pain into Purpose
Author shares the story of a life ended far too soon --- and the lessons learned since
Local author set to visit library to discuss story of son’s suicide
Patrick Wood had the world at his fingertips. The Pomfret native could read at the age of 2. He excelled in academics and music, becoming a top scholar at Pomfret Community School. He earned perfect SAT scores and was the valedictorian of his graduating class of Pomfret School in 2001, earning a scholarship to Stanford University, where he graduated in 2005 with honors and worked as a programmer for Siemens in Berlin, Germany.
But underneath all the success, Patrick was struggling.
“He was a miracle child,” said his mother, Marie Lisette Rimer. “He did everything you asked. He played well with others. He was a sterling person. It’s hard to put it into words. Everything about him was [impressive.] You could not fault this person; he did his chores, he ran upstairs after school and did his homework, didn’t watch TV, and was always working. He was filled with curiosity. He had this desire for knowledge all the time. There was no stopping this person. He was voracious about learning. … but Patrick began to realize that the sadness he was feeling wasn’t normal. He wrote in one of his essays that he would wake up not knowing if he was going to be OK that day or be miserable that day. It was unpredictable. It was the unpredictability of his own character that was scary — that you couldn’t even control your own personality, even if you were doing everything right.”
Less than a year after graduating from Stanford, in January 2006, Patrick died by suicide.
The journey Rimer has been on since is chronicled in her 2024 book, “Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick.” Rimer will visit Eastford Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 6 p.m. to discuss the book, which Rimer admitted is a combination of Patrick’s story and an explanation of her “lack of understanding” about the mental health issues that led to her son’s death.
“I wanted people to know that you can think you are doing everything right, but all of a sudden you get hit right in the face with a 2x4. That’s exactly what it was,” she said, adding that both her mother and father-in-law also died by suicide. “When my mother died, she used to say it was family that made her drink and go into a manic depression. I thought that was the secret to life — have the best family you possibly can, that will guarantee that things will turn out the best they possibly can. I had no idea what I was talking about. I felt like that was the safeguard.”
Rimer said her thinking about suicide began to change once she began doing research on mental health and depression, and began to see it as “not logical, but biological.”
“It’s the interpersonal theory of suicide, and three components — isolation, being a burden on others, and having the capability, which includes losing the fear of death, which I know now that I heard in Patrick. I heard him lose that fear in his tone of voice. I felt when I was writing the book that I had to go beyond Patrick’s story, that I had to offer readers something that was information they could take away, and it was basically my journey about learning the biology of suicide and depression and how Patrick got to the point where he wanted to die. I could not reconcile the fact that this brilliant person who had the world in the palm of his hand would want to do that, and I realized after it happened that there was no other explanation other than that suicide is a disease. It’s the culmination of mental illness, and in his case, major depression.”
Another important aspect of Patrick’s story revolved around his sexual identity. Rimer reflected on the struggles he faced in his own mind, grappling with his homosexuality, a struggle that would lead to hospitalization at Stanford for suicidal ideation after a potential relationship ended in disappointment.
“He called me up one night and said, ‘I think I’m depressed,’” she said. “I took him to a psychiatrist. He went on medication and regular therapy. When he got to Stanford, we were 3,000 miles away. That’s where he wanted to be. I think he figured that California would be more liberal. At the same time he was realizing his depression, he was realizing he was gay. … Depressed people cannot handle disappointment.”
Coming to terms with Patrick’s death was an exercise in humility for Rimer, who admitted that she was “naïve” and lacked understanding about suicide, mental health, and depression. The decision to write a book chronicling her journey after her son’s death was born not only to pay tribute to her son, but also to share what she has learned since.
“I felt like I let him die one time and I wasn’t going to do it again,” she said. “Despite all his success, I didn’t understand that that is no obstacle against depression. I didn’t understand. I thought depression was bad family or an abusive family. I thought good family could nurture anybody out of anything. I had no understanding of the biology and the genetics involved. No matter who you are, no matter if you are a failure or the most successful person, it doesn’t matter, because it’s a medical issue. … I was so naïve about that. I figured you go away to college, you figure it out, and there you go. I didn’t understand. And that’s what the book is about.”
Work on the book started in 2014, and Rimer said she spent nearly a decade working on it.
“It was hard for me,” she said about the writing process. “It’s because I am nothing close to a scientific person. I was a total ignoramus about it, and every day I have to claw my way back into understanding how that works. … I needed people to know my ignorance about mental illness. When it happened, I thought I missed everything. I realized I missed all the signs, because I was relying on this brilliant person who was way smarter than me, and I thought if anyone could push through it, it was this brilliant person. I remember my father saying, ‘Emotions are not always solvable.’ You don’t solve them like a math equation. It doesn’t work. I hated writing it. I hated it. I felt like such a dope. But it was right. I knew that I owed him that.”
Since the book was released, Rimer has visited local establishments such as the Putnam Public Library, the Coventry Public Library, and the Windham County Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and has enjoyed interacting with people who have shared her experience.
“From the presentations I’ve given so far, the best part is people’s reactions,” Rimer said. “The best part is sharing the stories. As I say, you don’t often get the opportunity to start talking about your personal version of what happened. I love the fact that people take advantage of this at these events. Oftentimes the Q&A is longer than the presentation, and I love that. It’s my favorite part. You can tell a bunch of stats, but that doesn’t work for me. What works for me is learning from other people’s stories. Maybe it’s anecdotal, not scientific, but I think the stories really help you understand how you came back from suicide. And you can do it. I think that’s the takeaway.”
For more information on “Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick,” visit www.backfromsuicide.com. To register for the Sept. 16 event, call the Eastford Public Library at (860) 974-0125, or e-mail [email protected].
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. You can call or text 988, or chat with 988 Lifeline, in the United States and Canada.
Adam Minor photo
“Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick,” by Marie Lisette Rimer, explores the death by suicide of her son in 2006 and her journey to understand the reasons behind it.
Author Marie Lisette Rimer will visit the Eastford Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 16, to discuss her book, “Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick,” which chronicles her journey through the death by suicide of her son, Patrick, in 2006.