25/08/2026
When we lose someone, there is one thing we wish for above all:
That they stay in loving memory!
That they aren’t reduced to the way they died.
We want people to remember their laugh.
Their funny gestures and their strange sayings.
All the little things that made them who they were.
A life is so much more than its ending, and still, sometimes that’s mainly what we see.
How someone died. Of what. Why.
What the last weeks or months were like.
The illness.
Johanna’s mum was a preschool teacher. One of those the children came running to in the morning. She loved peonies on the kitchen table and baked the best strawberry cake in summer for Johanna’s birthday.
She was warm-hearted. Full of life, and simply a beloved mum.
But she was also mentally ill. Ever since her husband’s death she had struggled badly with depression. In Johanna’s childhood too, her mum’s depression was stronger in some phases and better again in others. She went to therapy, she took medication. She did what was possible for her.
When Johanna’s father had died of cancer some years earlier, there was a lot of talking. About his illness. About his death. About him.
When her mother died by su***de, everything went quiet. Many people didn’t know what to say. The room was filled with the uncertainty, the helplessness and the speechlessness that still surround su***de today.
At some point Johanna felt: she doesn’t want that silence to stay whenever her mum comes up.
That’s why she talks about it today. Her mum was not only her su***de, and not only her depression either.
She was a loving person.
With a story.
With love.
With a laugh.
With bright days and heavy ones.
Those things are allowed to stand side by side. Su***de and depression, and the speechlessness around them, shouldn’t swallow that humanity. Shouldn’t silence it.
Say their names. Out loud. Tell people about them. About the bright moments. About the beautiful memories. A person is so much more than their last day..🕊️
