Before My 15-Year-Old Died, I Never Said The S-Word. What A Grave Mistake That Was

Early in the morning of Nov. 10, 2017, I got the phone call every parent dreads and none of us are ever prepared for.On that November morning, my oldest daughter, 15-year old Parker Lily, lost the battle with her mental health that wethought she’d been winning. Since that call, my family and I have been trying to rebuild our lives.

For years, I carried around the same tacit misconception many people do about suicide: if someone seems depressed, dejected or hopeless, you don’t say the S-word. You definitely don’t ask if they’re thinking about taking their own life. The worry behind this misconception is simple: you don’t want to put the idea of suicide into their head.  

I’m here to tell you, as a father whose life was split into “before” and “after” by that phone call, the opposite is true.  

If you take nothing else from what I’m about to say, take this: you will not cause suicide by asking someone directly if they’re thinking about it.

The mental health world has firmly renounced the idea of not asking someone directly. And I’m hoping to get as many people as possible to understand this and to jettison silence. You might be the lifeline they didn’t know they were allowed to grab.

Parker wasn’t a “statistic.” She was mydaughter. She was also a force of nature.  

Even as a little girl, she was formidable: curious, larger than life and constantly creating. Almost from the time she could walk, teachers were telling us how gifted she was as an artist, how she possessed a level of abstract thinking way beyond her years.

She was a protective, loving big sister to her siblings Rory and Hudson. She was fiercely loyal, cared deeply about her family and friends and had an antipathy for injustice that would light up a room, or a dinner table argument.

She was also very funny. At four, she was already asking big questions like, “Why can’t I eat ice cream for breakfast?” and delivering them with a level of confidence that made you think, “Honestly, why can’t you?”

In later years, you would have seen a bright, artsy teenager who was thriving at her Maryland high school; a place structured specifically for kids battling mental health issues. She made friends, acted in plays, created art and seemed, finally, to be hitting her stride. From the inside, there was a lot more going on.

Parker struggled with her mental health. There were moods we didn’t understand, self-harm, a stay in a psych ward. There were shifts in medications, potential diagnoses (bipolar? borderline personality disorder?) that were terrifying to hear attached to your child. There were stretches when she seemed to be climbing out of it – when we allowed ourselves to think, “She’s winning. We’re over the worst of it.”

We wanted that to be true so badly.  

The morning she died, my phone rang with a Maryland number I didn’t recognise. I almost didn’t pick up. But I did pick up, and I heard an officer tell me Parker had taken her own life. Her roommate had found her. The police hadn’t been able to reach her mother, Deb, my ex-wife. I heard a voice come out of my mouth that said: “I’ll tell Deb.”

My brain split. Part of me was insistent that this had to be a mistake, asick joke. The other part was already running toward the house where Deb and the kids were sleeping, knowing I had to wake them up and say the words out loud.

On my way there, I found myself standing on a corner, outside of myself, waiting for a traffic light to change. The bus stop, the police precinct, the blue sky: None of it made sense. Parker was gone. There was no right side up.

Then something overwhelmed me, rushing past the horror. It was the first of many to follow. It was a wave of grief. Grief that manifested itself as pure love. 

I’m not ascribing any mystical significance to the experience. I was reacting to massive trauma. Adrenaline, flooding brain chemicals, my emotions, my memories, all working together to keep me from completely losing my grip. That’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.

But in that moment, Parker came to me – from my heart, my mind, my soul – and gave me the courage to go to her mother, to her siblings, and tell them that she was gone. 

That was the beginning of “After.” 

In the months after Parker’s death, I started going to support groups for people left behind after suicide. I walked into those rooms feeling thatmy story was unique, my pain singular. I walked out realising that suicide is heartbreakingly common, and that most people don’t talk about it.

I heard story after story, each different indetails but similar in impact: the shock, the guilt, the endless replaying of “What did I miss?” and “Why didn’t I…?” and “If only I’d said X, or done Y.”

The numbers are brutal, especially for young people. Too many of our kids are battling suicidal thoughts, and far too many of them are doing it in silence because they’re ashamed or scared, or because the adults around them are too terrified to even think about, let alone name what might be happening.

Then, in the spring of 2022, my daughter Rory wrote a college essay about living in the shadow of Parker’s death and her own mental health struggles. Reading her words – raw, direct, courageous – awoke something in me.

She talked about not knowing how to be anyone but “Parker’s sister,” about trying to figure out who she was in the wreckage. It knocked something loose in me.

I realised I couldn’t keep expecting my kids to tell the truth about their pain if I was going to stay quiet about mine. It was time to confront the silence and guilt that take over after suicide, and to make sure that people who feel pulled toward that edge know they are not alone. There is zero shame in asking for help.

So, I started telling my story.  

At first, it wasn’t a show. It was just me, at a table late at night, scribbling memories and fragments: Parker as a little girlinsisting on ice cream, Parker drawing on every surface in the apartment, Parker in a hospital gown apologising for being sick, Parker onstage at school and absolutely owning it.

I wrote about the day of the phone call and the immediate aftermath: the wake,and what it feels like to stand over your child’s body. What it feels like to see your grief mirrored by the family and friends surrounding you.

Over time, those pages turned into a script – a one-man show about a family punched through the heart by suicide, and the love that somehow keepsflowing regardless.

It’s a family portrait and a love letter to Parker. It’s also a survival story. Not a triumphant “and then everything was fine” survival, but the kind where you limp forward, fall down and keep getting up because there are still people who need you, who love you. I called it “Bent Through Glass” because life is unspeakably fragile, the world a place of broken shards despite our best efforts. And also, and more importantly, because even when glass fractures or breaks, it never ceases to refract the light around us.

If Parker can no longer be here, then what I want is for her story to help someone else stay.  

If you’ve lost someone to suicide, you might beinthe same loop I was:  

How did I not see itcoming? How did I let it happen? What kind of parent, partner, friend does this make me?

I don’t have answers that make those questions disappear. What I’ve learned is that the questions themselves are a vacuum. “Why?” is eternal, possessing an infinite array of answers. I spent years asking why, only to be dragged deeper into a lightless hole, every time.

The only thing that has any consistency for me now is this: don’t turn away from it. Turn toward it. That means turning toward your own grief instead of stuffing it down and pretending you’re “fine.” It means turning toward the people around you who are hurting, instead of looking away because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.

And it especially means this: if you think someone you love might be suicidal, say the word. Ask the question.  

You are not going to “give them the idea.” If they are in that kind of pain, the idea is already there. What you might give them is permission to tell the truth out loud. Ask directly: “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” If the answer is yes:  

• Stay.  
• Tell them you’re grateful they told you.  
• Help them reach out to trained support: a crisis line (in the U.S., you can call or text 988), a therapist, a doctor, a trusted adult, whoever is available and trained to help.  

You don’t have to fix them. You’re not a superhero. You’re a human being saying, “I see you, and I’m not going anywhere.”  

If you’re the one in that dark place right now, hovering on the edge of thoughts you don’t want to admit even to yourself, this is what I want to say as a father:  

Stay. Stay long enough to tell one person. Stay long enough to make one call or send one text. Stay long enough to get through this hour, and then the next one.

You are not weak for needing help. You are not a burden for feeling this way. There is no shame in saying, “I can’t hold this alone.”

When I step out under the lights and tell this story, I’m not doing it because I enjoy reliving the worst day of my life. I’m doing it because, in the aftermath of Parker’s death and Rory and Hudson’s struggles, it’s clear to me that silence around suicide is killing people.

We cannot afford that silence anymore. We never could. 

Alex Koltchak is a writer, filmmaker, actor, performer, and stand-up comedian. His one-man show, Bent Through Glass, is being staged at The 30th Street Theater in NYC from April 1-25, 2026, with the aim of performing the work nationally.

Help and support:

• Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
• Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
• CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
• The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
• Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.