I have spent years trying to understand why my children suffered as deeply as they did.
That question stayed with me. It showed up in different forms.
What I missed.
What I should have known.
What I could have done differently.
Over time, another truth came into view. It didn’t replace those questions. It just existed alongside them.
They were loved.
They knew they were loved. They said it. They wrote it. They gave it back. Love was present in their lives in real ways. It wasn’t absent. It wasn’t withheld.
And still, they suffered.
For a long time, I couldn’t make sense of that. Love is supposed to protect. Love is supposed to save. Love is supposed to be enough.
It wasn’t.
Looking back now, I can see that both of my children carried a sense of responsibility that had no clear boundaries.
They believed that caring meant watching themselves closely. That watching meant restraint. And that restraint, taken far enough, meant removing themselves before they could cause harm.
They were good people.
My son believed harm had to be prevented, even if that meant removing himself. I learned this when I read his suicide letter. I learned how far his sense of responsibility had stretched, and what he feared he might become, even though there was no realistic path for him to become that person. The fear itself was not grounded in who he was. He believed removing himself was a way to protect others, when what I saw, and what others saw, was a deeply kind, thoughtful, and caring human being.
My daughter turned that same sense inward. Not through words. Through punishment.
I don’t know where that belief took hold, or why it felt so certain to them.
What matters more than whether they wanted to die is that they seemed to believe dying was the most ethical choice left to them.
That sentence is hard to write. It’s harder to live with. I don’t offer it as certainty. Only as the closest truth I can reach from where I stand now.
They were not careless people.
They were not cruel.
They were not indifferent.
They felt deeply. They noticed too much. They carried more responsibility than was survivable.
Love reached them.
But love didn’t teach them where responsibility ended.
I feel I failed to teach them where their responsibility ended. I know I did my best with what I knew at the time. I also know that understanding more now doesn’t undo what has already happened.
They had the most beautiful souls.
I know they would say that about me, too. They told me that. And I am trying, slowly, to honor it by how I live now. By loosening responsibility that doesn’t belong to me. By learning where my care ends, and where another person’s life begins.
Love mattered. It mattered deeply.
But it wasn’t enough to save them.
And accepting that doesn’t mean love failed.
It means love, by itself, can’t carry everything.
