Lacey Hoffman

“Here are a few statistics: Someone in the world dies by suicide every forty seconds. For every death by suicide there are more than twenty others attempting it. It’s the tenth-ranking cause of death in the United States. One of every sixty-two Americans is a suicide loss survivor. Those were taken from the World Health Organization and the American Association of Suicidology’s official data—the most recent available at the end of 2018 (the time of my writing this updated note).”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“I’m…I’m sorry, I’ll keep this short. There is now a big gaping hole in our lives where a week ago there was our smart, funny, outgoing boy with his big personality. Andy always made us laugh and he made us…so proud, every day. He was an amazing son and loving brother, the best we could have ever asked for. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how to keep on living like this, without him, with that huge hole in our lives where my son is supposed to be. He was taken from us,…and I don’t know how anything will ever make sense again without him.” Daddy looked down at the piece of paper like he was trying to find the spot where he stopped reading earlier. I could see his chin was shaking. He kept looking at the paper and said: “I want to ask all of you to please keep Andy and the memories you have of him close and carry him with you always.” Mommy started shaking next to me. She let go of my arm and crossed her arms in front of her belly and leaned forward, so her head almost touched her legs, and her shoulders went up and down from crying. All around us people cried, and the sadness was like a big heavy blanket all around us and on top of us. I thought about Daddy’s speech, and I watched Mommy and everyone else cry, and it all didn’t feel like real life. Because Daddy did it, too: he didn’t talk about Andy like how he actually was. And so it was like everyone was crying and being sad, but not about the actual Andy, just a version of him that wasn’t the right one. It was like no one was saying good-bye properly to him. I felt like I wanted to stand up and yell at everyone to stop lying about my brother.”
― Rhiannon Navin, Only Child

“People start to forget about you after you die and they can’t see you all the time anymore. It was already happening with Andy. I started to notice that at his funeral that was on the day after the wake. Everyone was talking about Andy, but they talked about him like they only remembered some parts of him, not all the parts. “Oh, Andy was just such a darling, such a pleasure to have in class.” “He was hilarious, wasn’t he? What a character!” “He was so bright, incredibly smart.” It was like they weren’t really talking about Andy or they were starting to forget about what he was like.”
― Rhiannon Navin, Only Child

“People often ask me if the book was emotional or difficult to write. Emotional, yes. I typed through a lot of tears. But it was the opposite of difficult. Some of that transcendent grace from the days after the tragedy returned. Maybe that was because I was creating characters somewhat based on friends I loved and so I was deeply ensconced in their world again. It was as if they were right there in the room with me as I wrote. And in a way they were. In a way they have never left me. And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s how we manage to survive loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it. Love can make you immortal.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay