JUDY
My son died by suicide April 5, 2003. The words spoken at his funeral gave me the strength to come back here and make some meaning out of this terrible experience. Frankly, I still cannot deal with the loss. I can talk about suicide awareness and prevention, but I can’t express the feelings that I have over what happened to my son—it’s too painful for that. Hopefully, I can prevent another mother from getting the call I got two years ago. We don’t talk about suicide enough and it’s because of the stigma attached to it. So I give talks and have written articles on the subject to educate others. I can give you statistics. I’ve done a lot of reading and I can tell you thirty-seven people in Alachua County died by suicide in 2003. These are numbers and you don’t necessarily think about these people as thirty-seven individuals who were loved. At minimum, they had a mother and a father, and two grandparents; they had friends, and coworkers. One out of every sixty-four people that are walking around us is a survivor of suicide and nobody talks about it. There is a stigma; people are afraid if they talk about it that might give somebody the idea. As if someone who is depressed hasn’t already thought about it. Not only have they thought about it, it’s probably all they’re thinking about. So this is what I can do--I can talk about it. I can tell my story and try to tear down the walls that keep us from talking about mental illness and suicide.

I got the idea for this quilt when I went to a survivor’s conference in Miami and saw many quilts including a quilt from SOLES (Survivors of Law Enforcement Suicide). I was motivated to make a quilt like this for Alachua County and I wanted my son and others to be in it. I went to the survivors group and I told the members I really wanted to do this. People said it was a good idea, but it took a while. I really started working on it three months ago. I said, “I’m going to get this done.” I began by working on the square that is now at the bottom. I knew I wanted to write Alachua County Survivors of Suicide, but I just needed to think of a design. I thought about an Oak tree, but then I kept coming back to the Shaker tree. Initially, the colors of the tree were red and green. Later, with the help of my son’s girlfriend, the colors were changed to purple and turquoise, the colors of suicide survivors.

I sent out a request to our email list. I asked families to create an 8 1/2 x 11 square. Nobody responded. So I did my son’s square first. At the same time, I went to a quilters group at church. They meet on Monday nights at seven. At first, I was going to do the quilting myself and I went to the quilters group to learn. I can’t even sew a straight seam; I came back and I tried to do a square. The woman who organizes the quilters group told me I was going to have to take it out and do it over again. I said, “I just can’t do this. If I can get the squares together can you do this for me?” She said yes. Her name is Carol Stanley. Since I didn’t get much response from families, I asked them to send me the name of their loved one and told them we’d do the squares--we got a couple responses. Then, I met Dianne Walsh. Her husband was the former president of the local NAMI chapter. Their son also died by suicide. I found out she was great with graphics and soon she joined the efforts to make the quilt. Eventually, people submitted a picture of a loved one along with a description of what to do with the square. Some just submitted a name. Other families wrote a poem under the name. Carol works at an amazing quilt shop called Suwannee Valley Quilt Shoppe. They have all sorts of fabrics along with a cafe. Carol asked another lady to find some bolts for me and she picked one out right away that we all really liked a lot. It’s almost like the stars aligned for us to complete this quilt.

There was a man who sent me a picture of his wife and some material. He asked me if I could do something with that material. It was black and white, but it also had some purple orchids on it. And I thought to myself “this isn’t going to go at all.” I asked Carol if she could do something with the fabric, and she did. She cut out the orchids and sewed them around his wife’s square. She said each orchid took over 2 hours to complete.

I took the quilt to Tallahassee for Florida Suicide Prevention Day. For the last three years on this day, there has been a gathering at the capital. Regardless if you’re Republican or Democrat, you can see this is more than just any issue to Jeb Bush. His compassion for survivors is moving.

I’d like to go to the Alachua County Commission and request that the quilt be put on display at the Alachua County Crisis Center. That’s where the suicide survivors meet. 1-800-SUICIDE is the nation wide hotline number. The operator connects you to the closest Crisis Center; in this case, it’s the Alachua County Crisis Center.

If someone finds a lump in their breast, they’ll get a mammogram, but it’s hard for people to make that call and get the treatment they need when they are thinking about suicide. That’s why we need to talk about suicide more. It’s a preventable tragedy.