July 29, 2026
“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”
— Henry Drummond
Twenty years later, Sue still vividly remembers the wake for her son who was killed crossing a street in Manhattan. He recently graduated from college and had his whole life before him with hope and dreams. And then it was over. As intense as her grief was, she found comfort when the long line of friends, family members, professors, priests, classmates and coworkers passed by her one by one to tell their personal stories.
“When your young adult child dies, all these people come to offer condolences that you don’t know, and their stories are so healing,” she said. “Receiving a story is a gift. And people need to tell their stories to you.”
“They told me, ‘I worked with Ben’ or ‘I taught Ben’ or ‘He was in my cohort in creative writing.’ People just came out of the woodwork with stories about traveling together, working together, being together. In learning about who this young adult was becoming, I was learning about who he was for them as a man without his mother.”
She believes that healing as a community is very important and says, “It helped me heal to listen to them tell their stories, crying and then starting to laugh. It brings the person you love to the present, to the present moment.”
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