Day by Day
The piano that used to trill “Fly Me to the Moon” sits unused in the Guajardo living room in Fairlington. A picture of the handsome football player and honor roll student who used to play those notes hangs nearby.
Alicia Guajardo finally tossed out the bin of college pamphlets that came from all the schools that wanted to offer her son Lucas a future. Lucas will never attend college, get his driver’s license or pet his Yorkie, Roxie. Because he couldn’t see any kind of future through the pain of bipolar disorder. Three years ago, as a junior at Wakefield High School, he killed himself.
Now 56, Alicia lives with the anguish that is left behind. She is willing to talk about her loss and her son’s life and struggles, she says, because she hopes it might help another family avoid that devastation. She sits with Roxie curled up next to her in a living room crowded with boxes from a recent move, wearing a Wakefield sweatshirt, a streak of purple in her long hair.
The journey began with a call from a middle school psychologist when Lucas was in eighth grade. One of Lucas’ friends was concerned that Lucas was talking about not wanting to live. The girl fretted about making him mad, but was too worried to keep quiet.
Alarmed, Alicia and her husband, Rodrigo, set out to build a support team for their middle child. (Their youngest, Gigi, is now 17; their oldest, Antonio, is 24.)
Many parents are afraid to ask their kids if they are thinking about suicide, but Alicia plunged ahead with the query. When things got really bad, she had Lucas hospitalized to keep him safe. For several years, it was a delicate dance of trying different doctors, therapists and medications.
Today, Antonio harbors strong feelings that medication may have contributed to his brother’s death.
Alicia is equivocal. “We’ll never know. He’s gone.”
Left behind are a tribute to Lucas in the school yearbook, and reams of devastated family and friends. “The pain I feel, his family feels, his friends feel, is deep and immense. But it was worse for him,” says Alicia, who works at the American Red Cross. “Lucas would say, ‘Mom, I don’t think I can ever be really happy.’ They don’t see the hope. It’s not about ending their life, it’s about ending the pain.”
The Guajardos did many of the things experts say can help prevent suicide. They asked Lucas about his mental health and got him therapy. They reduced his academic stress by encouraging him to forgo some Advanced Placement classes so he could have more downtime. Lucas was gay but didn’t need to hide it. His mother believes it wasn’t a factor in his suicide.
Three years later, the grief still lingers like a fog over the Guajardos’ townhouse. Gigi has found some solace in a camp for kids who have lost family members to suicide.
But for Alicia, the complicated grief of suicide has meant some friends won’t even say Lucas’ name. “As a mom, that’s one of the hardest things,” she says, “because it means you are forgetting the person. Our family has been shattered. Everything we were as a family is gone.”
Antonio, a waiter with curly dark hair hanging below his shoulders, is working to keep his own mental equilibrium. He says he considered killing himself before Lucas’ death and dropped out of college afterward.
When Antonio struggled with suicidal thoughts, he says he found it helpful to make a list of all the things he needed to do first. Some items on the list were as simple as “go out for ice cream.”
“Make a list that doesn’t allow you to get to that last option of killing yourself. That’s what works for me,” he says. “Things are always changing—they can’t stay bad forever, if you can manage to give yourself time.”
Now Antonio has the excruciating knowledge of what happens in suicide’s aftermath. He offers it as a warning. “Whatever pain you think you are ending, you are just spreading it tenfold—you’re leaving behind your pain for others.”
Sitting in his living room, he observes that the sun is shining. Upstairs, he has saved every note his mother has ever written him, even if it was just a thank-you for doing the dishes. “It’s the validation,” he says. “I am kind of worth it. I need to stay around for a little bit.”
Tamara Lytle is a Northern Virginia resident and frequent contributor to Arlington Magazine.