Patrick Wood was a valedictorian, an AP Scholar, and a National Merit Scholarship winner with perfect SAT scores. He graduated with honors from Stanford University and was a top programming intern for Siemens. He was popular in Berlin's gay scene when rejection from a boyfriend plunged him into despair. He left his job without notice and wandered the streets of Berlin in a daze. He told his mother suicide would be easy. She had no idea he meant it. Six weeks later, he plugged every opening in a small room in his Berlin apartment and lit three pans of charcoal. A lifetime of academic success and job offers at BMW and Siemens disappeared. He was twenty-three years old.
Back from Suicide is a memoir of the least likely person to kill himself. It is a decade-long search for answers that explores depression and the difficulty of coming out. Patrick's mother, Lisette Rimer, turns tragedy into understanding how suicide could be easy, how brilliance could turn into ashes from charcoal. She traces Patrick's journey through the misery of depression and the deception of permanent relief. She learns what she should have done, what she should have said, what parents need to know, and, in spite of mistakes, how she emerged Back from Suicide.
"He would teach me something I never thought possible. 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
PRAISE FOR BACK FROM SUICIDE
"Back from Suicide is a must-read for everyone, at this moment of our sad history, when teenage suicide is on the rise. I did not put it down, except to eat and sleep." -Nancy Cobb, In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living
"Back from Suicide is heart-rending and saddening, but it is at the same time a reflective celebration of Patrick. It is precise, real, succinct and thereby all the more expressive-a work of insight and clarity, compassion that does not err on the side of over expression." -Karen Kramer, Ph.D., Director, Stanford Program in Berlin, Academia. Exzellenz hat ihren Preis
"How does one pay tribute to a brilliant life that ends far too soon? This gripping book sets out to do just that and, as well, catalog the protracted, difficult attempt at peacemaking that follows the loss of a child to suicide." -Brad Davis, Short List of Wonders, Sunken Garden Poetry winner
"Back from Suicide packs several gut punches and made me cry. It's a testament to the heart and soul Rimer poured into more than 15 years of trying to make sense of something so senseless." -James Hohmann, columnist, The Washington Post
"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 and why the inconceivable could happen." -BookLife Reviews
