There is no way to adequately describe the pain a mother feels when she loses a child to suicide, and Payson resident, Cherri Gressmen has lost three children.
It was in February of 2005 when Gressmen’s youngest child, Cameron Cunningham,18, made the decision to take his life. 13 years later, in October 2018, his older brother, Weston Cunningham, 36, also died by suicide. Three months later, another brother, Russell Cunningham, 40, followed.
“Cameron was the baby of the family and he was a funny kid,” she said. “He was sweet. He was easygoing. He was just a likable, lovable kid. Weston was super smart. He had a very high IQ and he was super handsome and had a reserved mannerism and could figure almost anything out. He was just so smart. Russell was just that person everybody loved. He’d walk in the room and he’d come and give you a hug and make you feel like everything was going to be OK.
“When I start thinking about them and talking about them, I get sad.”
Gressmen said she has opened up about what her family has gone through, with the hope that it might help others.
“When my youngest son died, he was going through some rough things and was kind of in a bad place,” Gressmen said. “He was with his friends and there were people there when it happened, but they couldn’t save him.”
Not being able to save a loved one from self-harm, is something’s that many suicide survivors like Gressmen grapple with. And with recent data showing that suicide is the second leading cause of death for Utahns ages 10–44, the fear of losing another loved one becomes very real.
“My second youngest son, Weston, had been going through divorce and he was really struggling with alcoholism, and he ended up taking his life,” Gressmen recalled. “It was one of those things where we kind of worried about him and thought he was really fragile. We worried that he might do something and we tried to help prevent it as much as we could, but then one day, he was gone. Then 2 1/2 months later, we got the call that my son, Russell, who was living down in Texas, had killed himself. It’s devastating because Russell was probably the last person we ever expected to do that.”
After her third son died, Gressmen described feeling herself going down that dark tunnel of depression and suicide ideation, herself, but said that there was a pivotal moment that turned it around for her.
“After my last son died, I just felt like it was so much more than I could handle,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know. I can’t. I can’t go on. I just can’t. I can’t pull myself out of this one. (At this time) I had grandchildren, my (surviving) children, and my husband, and I realized that I would never ever want to impose that pain on someone else even though this was really hard for me. … I think sometimes when we get to dark places, we forget that other people won’t be better off if we’re not here.”
“I remember I was writing in my journal, and I wrote in there, ‘I want to die,’” she continued. “And then I sat there and closed the book and put it in the drawer. I sat there for a minute and I thought about how much power there is in your words, and when you write them, they’re even more powerful, and when you say them, they’re even more powerful. I pulled the book out and I crossed it out and I wrote, ‘I’m going to live.’ That just became my mantra for when the thoughts would come into my mind. I’d say, ‘I’m going to live.’ I just had to repeat those thoughts in my mind to overtake the thought that said, ‘This is too hard, I don’t want to be here.’ To me that was helpful.”
Gressmen hasn’t just said those words to herself, but has taken that message to others, with the hope that they, too will take on the promise to live. In fact, she has worked with an organization called Promise2Live, which is a nonprofit that is bringing awareness to suicide prevention.
“Promise2Live’s whole mission is to get people to promise to call someone (when they have thoughts of self-harm),” she explained. “They give out little coins that have a message and a number they can call for suicide prevention.”
Gressmen remembered that even after making the pledge to live, that there was a time when she had to make an important phone call.
“I could tell I was getting in a really dark space, so I called my doctor and I went and saw him and I asked for some help,” she recalled. “I remember telling him, ‘I don’t wanna live, but I don’t wanna die,’ so he got me on some antidepressants for a while. I was able to get off of those after a couple of years, but I did have to get some help for a little bit to get myself where I could push forward through my life without three of my children.”
Gressmen said that while it is so important for individuals struggling with suicidal ideation to take ownership, that friends and loved ones opening up dialogue around suicide, can help, too.
“If you feel like somebody’s struggling, check on them,” she said. “It does make people uncomfortable when you start talking about suicide. They get really skirmish a lot of times. I would venture to say that there are a lot of people who think about it or have thought about it, and we need to be not afraid to ask, ‘Have you thought about hurting yourself?’ I think sometimes we need to ask it a couple of times. We need to ask them, let them answer, and then maybe ask them again because they might confess if you ask again.”
Gressmen said that more than anything, she wants people to be aware that this could happen to any family or anyone, and that talking about it — even if it’s just to yourself — could very well be the first step toward getting help.
“I don’t exactly know how to prevent suicide from happening,” she said. “But, for me, the biggest message I have is that you always have to guard your thoughts and your mind and we need to check on people who we think might be struggling. And make sure to check on yourself.”
If you or a loved one is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.
