Still Dead, Here: Long Grief After Suicide

Grief has a schedule. Nobody asked the grieving.A month. Six months. Certainly no more than a year.Caleb Lloyd died by suicide in June 2018. He was twenty-one. Eight years later his father is still here, still grieving, and still being told those two things should not both be true.Still Dead, Still Here is not a recovery story.It is written from inside a grief that did not end, by a father who is still in it. The police on the porch. The question of whether to say how he died, and what it cost to tell the truth. The neighbor who decided there was a dark cloud over the house. Five months of silence from family. The friend at church who said, three months in, that it was time to be getting over this.It is also a book about faith that did not survive by being comforted. Job is handed ten new children at the end of his story, and this book refuses to call that a happy ending. The questions are not resolved here. They are asked honestly, and left open.Written for the ones nobody knows what to do with anymore.The survivor in year three who is being told to move on. The father whose grief has no language. The parent who stopped crying and got treated as healed. The believer who is furious with God and has nowhere to say it.Six closing chapters take on forgiveness, one target at a time, ending with the one that reframes everything before it.The book includes a practical guide for anyone trying to support a grieving person, and a resource section for survivors.You are not on anyone's schedule. You are still here.David A. Lloyd is the author of God Is In the Doubt. He writes at davidalloyd.com and co-facilitates a Survivors of Suicide Loss group.