For Marc and Kristen Coe of River Forest, the suicide of their son Hunter in 2015 was an entry into a club they had never anticipated joining. At 24, Hunter had graduated from college, was engaged to be married and happily employed. Kristen recalls, “This was not on our radar screen for him. Not to be trite, but he had the world before him. It was quite unexpected.”
Other family members had struggled with depression, so Kristen says they had a fluency with the language of mental illness, but compares their fluency to learning French in the classroom and then actually being in France and having to order a meal. “Death by suicide is so jarring on so many levels. Fluency doesn’t mitigate how jarring that experience is for survivors of the loss.”
Over the past two years, the Coes have sought out a variety of methods of dealing with their grief. Coe credits therapy for the family, which includes Hunter’s three siblings, and long walks with her husband, as well as the presence of family and friends, with helping them on their journey.
Kristen notes that it was incredibly beneficial to have friends and family alongside them who did not try to repair the unrepairable. Calling the outpouring of love and kindness humbling, she says “It takes a unique soul to be able to sit with someone else’s sadness and not be compelled to try to fix it.”
For Kristen, it also helped to attend Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide (LOSS) meetings. Now holding monthly support groups in River Forest, the group offers meetings for adults and teens as well as individual counseling for those touched by suicide. Kristen says one of the keys to support is recognizing that everyone’s journey with suicide is different.
“Individuals who have lost a loved one to suicide need to be patient with themselves and allow healing methods to take whatever form they need to take.”
For Marc and Kristen, one of the ways to work through their grief was to honor Hunter’s memory, and they reached out to the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation for guidance. Remembering what she calls Hunter’s huge personality, and his ability to engage others with his quick wit and kind heart, they sought a productive way to stake a place for his legacy.
On what would have been Hunter’s 25th birthday, they founded Be the Boat (www.betheboat.org.) Inspired by a prayer of St. John of the Cross read at Hunter’s memorial service in their family room, Be the Boat not only ties in the idea of suffering and love, but the family’s love of boating. With a handmade canoe hanging from the family room ceiling and a kayak crafted by Hunter on display in the house, boating has a special significance to the Coe family. Hunter taught swim lessons and was a life guard, and the Coes decided that providing swim lessons to at-risk children would be a fitting legacy for Hunter’s memory.
Kristen says of the effort, “I don’t expect this will be seed money for an Olympic swimmer, but the idea that a light bulb could go off and this confidence could be parlayed into other experiences – we’re trying to seed positive life experiences for others, which is a lovely legacy for Hunter.”
Kristen says that their family will always be irrevocably changed by what happened, but recognizes how important it is for her and Marc to help her children continue to live. “It’s important to Hunter’s siblings and to Marc and me to model forward movement and find joy where possible. We are absorbing our love for Hunter and his death into a narrative that allows our children to find joy and move ahead. They have long lives ahead of them.”
Today, she hopes that sharing their story will help those facing grief as well as young adults facing challenges. She keeps in her heart the lovable young boy who set off a fire alarm at Logan Airport as a toddler and kept her on her toes the rest of his life. She says that shortly before his death, he ripped a page out of a magazine with the quote, “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” She says, “It’s a great takeaway. He loved passionately. We still have maraschino cherries and truffle oil in our kitchen because he loved them.”