The Backstory
The Backstory
Libby, Stanford Memorial, Berlin, 2009
Suicide was nothing more than a statistic for the Wood family in Pomfret, Connecticut. It became reality when their son Patrick killed himself in 2006 when he was twenty-three years old. He was, or so they thought, the least likely person to die by his own hand. He attended Pomfret School on a full scholarship, winning nearly every book award possible by the time he graduated as valedictorian in 2001. He was a National Merit Scholarship winner and an AP Scholar with perfect SAT scores. The Norwich Bulletin noted his years of piano study at Tanglewood and his love of math, history, and foreign languages in a 2001 “Profile of a Newsmaker” article. He graduated from Stanford with honors and was a programmer at Siemens in Berlin.
Patrick’s mother, Lisette Rimer, said she wanted others to know how a beautiful person could turn on himself. “I couldn’t let Patrick die without telling his story. It’s been a long time in the making,” Rimer said. “I had a lot to learn about sexual orientation and suicide and how depression can lead to death if it’s not treated. I wanted the book to honor Patrick but also explain how a person, who seemed to have it all, can plummet. I wanted to share my journey of understanding with other parents. They may not perceive their children’s chronic sadness as a medical issue. Neither did I, and that meant I had to learn about it after it was too late.”
The result is Rimer’s memoir, Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick, completed eighteen years after Patrick’s death and available on Amazon.
“I never wanted to write a book,” Rimer said, “but I couldn’t let Pat die without telling his story, without keeping him alive somehow. I felt like I let him die once, and I wasn’t going to do it again. The book had to be written, and it had to be done well. It had to go beyond other suicide stories, which describe the tragedy but not enough about the reasons behind it. My book had to go further so that readers could understand depression. The most important answer I came up with is that depression is a physical disease. It changes your brain. If it’s not treated, suicide can creep in as a solution.”
Patrick is survived by his twin sister Libby Wood, his older brother Colin, and his parents Robert Wood and Lisette Rimer. Libby became a therapist in Santa Cruz, California. She said, “It’s been a coming together of my life and Pat’s so that both of us can go forward. But I’m still suffering. Daily. Grief is not something we go through in the past. It is today. It is yesterday. It is tomorrow.” Colin is a software sales executive. He and his wife Jennifer live in Londonderry, New Hampshire with their two daughters, Addison and Raegan.
Libby, Stanford Memorial, Berlin, 2009
Suicide was nothing more than a statistic for the Wood family in Pomfret, Connecticut. It became reality when their son Patrick killed himself in 2006 when he was twenty-three years old. He was, so they thought, the least likely person to die by his own hand. He attended Pomfret School on a full scholarship, winning nearly every book award possible by the time he graduated as valedictorian in 2001. He was a National Merit Scholarship winner and an AP Scholar with perfect SAT scores. The Norwich Bulletin noted his years of piano study at Tanglewood and his love of math, history, and foreign languages in a 2001 “Profile of a Newsmaker” article. He graduated from Stanford with honors and was a programmer at Siemens in Berlin.
Patrick’s mother, Lisette Rimer, said she wanted others to know how a beautiful person could turn on himself. “I couldn’t let Patrick die without telling his story. It’s been a long time in the making,” Rimer said. “I had a lot to learn about sexual orientation and suicide and how depression can lead to death if it’s not treated. I wanted the book to honor Patrick but also explain how a person, who seemed to have it all, can plummet. I wanted to share my journey of understanding with other parents. They may not perceive their children’s chronic sadness as a medical issue. Neither did I, and that meant I had to learn about it after it was too late.”
The result is Rimer’s memoir, Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick, completed eighteen years after Patrick’s death and available on Amazon.
“I never wanted to write a book,” Rimer said, “but I couldn’t let Pat die without telling his story, without keeping him alive somehow. I felt like I let him die once, and I wasn’t going to do it again. The book had to be written, and it had to be done well. It had to go beyond other suicide stories, which describe the tragedy but not enough about the reasons behind it. My book had to go further so that readers could understand depression. The most important answer I came up with is that depression is a physical disease. It changes your brain. If it’s not treated, suicide can creep in as a solution.”
Patrick is survived by his twin sister Libby Wood, his older brother Colin, and his parents Robert Wood and Lisette Rimer. Libby became a therapist in Santa Cruz, California. She said, “It’s been a coming together of my life and Pat’s so that both of us can go forward. But I’m still suffering. Daily. Grief is not something we go through in the past. It is today. It is yesterday. It is tomorrow.” Colin is a software sales executive. He and his wife Jennifer live in Londonderry, New Hampshire with their two daughters, Addison and Raegan.