THE WORLD LOOKS DIFFERENT NOW

A veteran journalist shares the anguish of losing a son to suicide in this debut memoir that tracks her painful path to acceptance.

On Aug. 28, 2010, Thomson received a devastating phone call from her daughter-in-law. Kieran, the author’s son from her first marriage, had fatally shot himself. He was just a few months shy of his 23rd birthday, married, and the father of an almost 2-year-old daughter, Ailbe. In January 2009, he had enlisted in the Army. The decision filled Thomson with alarm, but Kieran was convinced this was his best option. He was trained as a medic, and he and his family were living at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, awaiting his deployment to Afghanistan. Kieran became one of 14 suicides at Fort Bragg that year. The narrative shifts back and forth seamlessly between present and past. Everything during the next two years triggered a memory from all the yesterdays with Kieran. The author reviews the pivotal events in his life—his birth in London; Thomson and her son’s move to her home in Tennessee; her new marriage; the birth of her son Matthew; and Kieran’s troubled teenage years. She writes: “Something, it seemed, wasn’t quite right” early on. Kieran was diagnosed with a newly classified learning disability that made social interactions difficult. The author brings readers along with her through the emotionally wrenching ordeal of a memorial service at Fort Bragg, the funeral in Middle Tennessee, and another memorial service at her family church in Memphis—all articulately and painstakingly chronicled. She muses: “Death seems to have a lot to do with logistics, I think. Moving from point A to point B.” But suicide adds its own excruciating dimension to the tragedy, telling “the shell-shocked survivor in the most horrific way imaginable that no matter what you did, it wasn’t enough.” Still, after two meticulously documented years of pushing through a gripping and toxic mix of sorrow, wide-ranging anger, and guilt, she takes a wonderfully surprising “leap” toward the future.

An unflinchingly honest portrait of grief and survival that many fellow travelers will find comforting.