When I asked my son Noah if he'd make his Aunt Sheri's macaroons for our Passover Seder, he paused just a beat before saying yes. This was a week before Passover and three weeks after he'd come home from college on medical leave, suffering from major depression and anxiety. The “yes” was more than my husband and I had been able to get out of Noah when we implored him to see a psychiatrist.
Our family never had that Seder. Noah took his life on March 19, 2013. Instead of 10 people around a celebratory table, we had 100 people jammed into the living room for a shiva minyan. Instead of the usual Four Questions, we had new ones that could never be answered: Why did a plague of darkness descend on our son? Why didn't the angel of death pass over our house? What do we tell the child who is too ashamed to speak his pain? Will this once-precious holiday always be tainted for our family? And the question that would torment me far past the holiday: What if … ?
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