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"He would teach me there was something worse than death. It was the fear of not dying.
It was called depression."
-Marie Lisette Rimer, Back from Suicide
A Perfect 10 in BookLife Reviews
Rimer's deeply pained and beautifully written exploration of her son's death from suicide, is at once a celebration of a life, a reckoning with a death, and an impassioned inquiry in how why the inconceivable could happen—and what more can be done to prevent it in other cases. Before his death in Berlin in 2006 at the age of 23, Patrick Wood had been a young man of extraordinary promise and charisma. He earned the highest of academic accolades, had developed into a dazzling pianist and programmer, and seemed to thrive, after coming out as gay, among new friends in Berlin, where he served an internship with the engineering company Siemens. Despite an earlier hospitalization as a student at Stanford for depression and suicidal ideation, the news that he had ended his life came as a total shock. "Why?" Rimer asks.
Rimer, an English teacher, writes with grace and precision of complex feelings, as she recounts her and her family
experience of the aftermath, including their efforts to understand Patrick's, such as tours of his Berlin, tearful meetings with friends, and, later, the jolting revelations of reading his medical records. Rimer discovers that Patrick's depression had been much more debilitating than she had known, and she makes an impassioned call for awareness of how parents and schools are ill-equipped to "detect the severity of the disease and, therefore, the likelihood of a completed suicide."
"We rationalize depression and suicide when they are not rational" she writes. "We look for logic instead of anatomical disease. We settle for thirteen excuses why. We need to insist on more." That spirit of bold truth telling is matched throughout by Rimer's frank account of holding herself to blame despite understanding that she's not and her agonized search for answers in literature, family history, and science. It's also matched, with rare power, by love for Patrick. The book pulses with moving testimonials, in memorial encomiums, song lyrics, conversation, and his twin sister's tender, sparkling foreword. It's above all an act of love. -BookLife Reviews
MC Lars
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful tribute... and an act of courage and grace
I knew Patrick Wood at Stanford as a friend, and I miss him deeply. Reading "Back from Suicide" felt like sitting with him again, in all his brilliance, warmth, and struggle. Rimer has done something incredibly brave and beautiful: she’s told the truth. About grief, about mental illness, about how even the most radiant lives can be hidden in pain.
This book doesn’t try to simplify or sanitize. It grapples with the impossible weight of loss while honoring Patrick with love, humor, and unflinching honesty. As someone who tried to process that loss through music (my song “Twenty Three” was my attempt to make sense of it) this book hit me on every level: as a friend, as an artist, and as a fellow human trying to understand the unanswerable.
Lisette’s writing is precise and full of heart. She captures the tension between pride and heartbreak, visibility and silence, and ultimately shows how a mother’s love refuses to vanish, even in the face of unbearable absence.
This is not just a memoir… it’s a guide for anyone who’s lost someone, or who wants to understand the invisible battle of depression. I’m grateful she wrote it. I’ll carry it with me, the way I still carry Pat.