Jeremy Liam Ward

Our Boy Jeremy…

It was a night like any other night. I had no idea that life as we had known it would cease to be and everything would change forever. I had had a busy day at work and I was very glad to get home, I heard music playing quietly as I went past his room … I didn’t want to intrude so I left him be … he was always doing something or other … he liked to play Poker on-line … he loved to read … he liked to write … he loved to ride his skateboard … and he liked to just sit and think. His headmaster said to me once that “Jeremy had the capacity to be anything he wanted to be.” His friend Jordan summed him up – “When you spent an evening with Jeremy he spoke about things that resonated for a week in your mind. He just wasn’t wrapped up in the normal things ….” At his funeral I discovered that Jordan and I each called him ‘The Enigma’. His untimely death surprised his friends too.

That fateful day resonates now through our family. It turned us around and smashed us. There is no way to describe how the suicide of your child can humble you but I would not wish it on the most mean spirited of individuals. I found him dead that evening when I went to get him for his tea … he had most probably been dead for an hour … my wife and I went through the motions of trying to revive him but he was gone.
How sad is that; the wonderful boy we had nurtured, loved and shared a life with had chosen not to take part anymore.

People tend to take for granted that he was depressed. Why is that so? I meet sadder people every day of my life. But I know that I don’t have to know why. Trying to work that out will send me down the same path as him.

He was the brightest, funniest, most rugged individual you would ever hope to meet. I have never met anybody quite like him – he was a man you don’t meet everyday.

When you look at his Picture think of a young man who had lived a full life, a young man who was never afraid to go against the grain, a young man who had no trouble thinking beyond the ordinary.

He left us – me his loving Father, his loving Mother and his adoring younger brother. We have all been trying so hard to live without him … we will never get used to it … I just know that we will all be together soon enough down the road apiece and I look forward to that time with all my heart. We love you Jeremy!