Book Review: "Scenes with My Son: Love and Grief in the Wake of Suicide" by Robert Hubbard

*Get the book on Amazon here*

While I have read hundreds of books in my lifetime, I have only written about a few. I was a bigger fan of film until recently, having watched about seven thousand feature-length movies and shorts that I remember, and reviewing about a thousand (I'm reconstructing an archive blog of those old film, book, and album reviews here). I'm no expert on writing down my thoughts on a film or book, I sometimes have nothing to contribute to the infinite amount of words online, but I found Robert Hubbard's book shook me from my quiet cerebral life, and tapping out these words at my dining room table at 7AM on a cold North Dakota Sunday morning is among one of the more difficult things I've forced myself to do.

I should preface this by saying that I have known the author and his wife and parents for over thirty years. We went to college together where I majored in Broadcasting and minored in Communication Arts. Bob Hubbard and his then-girlfriend April were in the theater department where I found myself auditioning for plays and scoring some roles here and there. Bob's stepdad officiated my sister's wedding, and I had many conversations with him and Bob's mother- they are two of the most interesting people I have met and I even have a couple of books Dr. Slanger wrote on my bookshelves in my basement home office. I was baptized into the Episcopal faith as an infant, making me a member of the church longer than Bob himself, but since I was raised on Air Force bases around the world, my status as "non-practicing" began immediately. My religious upbringing is as messy and scattershot as my college transcripts (four universities, three different declared majors, one Bachelor of Arts degree that I keep in a drawer in my aforementioned home office), consisting of military non-denominational services, a Roman Catholic First Confession- "forgive me, Father, for I have sinned- my last confession was over four and a half decades ago"- Southern Baptist summer camp, Episcopal confirmation classes, dabbling in Catholicism and Buddhism, and getting married into the UCC faith to my first wife. After I graduated (was freed) from my alma mater, I lost track of Bob and April except a few mentions here and there in the alumni magazine. I went back to school seven years after my first degree to get a second one, but dropped out, my marriage ended, and life continued.

It was on social media, something I quit and rejoin with reckless abandon, that I found out about Bob and April's son August and how he took his own life. I started digging deeper into what happened- I am very good at searching out things that I need to find online, it's a gift I guess, and I was heartbroken for the Hubbard and Slanger family. Aspects of Auggie's story mirrored my own. My oldest child is on the autism spectrum. Clinical depression runs rampant in Bob and April's family, and mine as well (I am a High Functioning Depressive with many hours of counseling under my big giant belt). I ordered this book as soon as I learned of its existence, and started reading it right away. I was 39 pages in when I needed to put it down and take a break from it, for reasons I'll reveal later.

Bob and April's journey with Auggie isn't a cautionary tale because nothing could have been done to stop what happened. Suicide is a taboo subject, despite the fact that it, and sudden death in general, affects everyone in the world no matter how tightly we wrap ourselves in our little bubbles and try to ignore it. Bob is an acclaimed theater director and his memoir jumps back and forth in time, telling the reader about scenes from his life with and without Auggie. I immediately connected with what the family was going through, a connection that I made even if I didn't know the author. I am typing this on the seventh anniversary of my father-in-law's sudden passing. Since that horrible day, my wife has lost an aunt and both her grandparents. My own parents have passed away in the last four years, victims of memory problems and leaving the rest of us with zero closure aside from some journals from one of them that I wished I had never read but am still thankful that I did if only to confirm how they felt about me. The Hubbards tried everything with Auggie, relying on their sometimes-shaky faith to get them through, but questioning that helpful faith in the process.

Bob's tone is very emotional, honest, and conversational. I felt for Auggie, trying to get a grasp on what was happening to him inside his head. When you're in the grips of mental illness, you don't know where to turn, and that "everyone is against me" feeling is constant. Bob plunges head-on into what happened, and doesn't sugarcoat anything. He discovered Auggie's body, but doesn't go into detail about how Auggie died, keeping that as something between his son and himself. I completely understand, and appreciate that. I also understood the constant paranoia of walking in the door and wondering if "everything's okay" with your mentally disordered relative. In high school, I used to get off the bus and literally run a block home- not because Grand Forks Air Force Base was the coldest place on Earth at that point in my life, but to make sure "everything's okay" inside. I just realized I never told anyone that before.

Bob relied on prayer to get him through this, but the book is not preachy treacle. He read a lot of books about grief, with some being helpful and some not. He writes a "What Would Auggie Do?" list of things that get him through what amounts to a lifelong trauma that will never go away. Losing a child is not something that you forget, and it doesn't toughen you up for the next round of tumult in your life. My daughter had to be resuscitated twice in her first three days of life at a children's hospital in Minneapolis, but that didn't prepare us for the George Floyd riots and COVID protocols that were waiting just around the literal corner. It was easy to get despondent about my parents dying without the closure I craved, but I handle it by talking and side-eyeing the ceiling once in a while, asking them what they think of something I am reading or watching on television. I never get an answer.

Scenes with My Son: Love and Grief in the Wake of Suicide is a brutal read, mentally. It's not hopeless and morbid, but it doesn't have a happy movie-type ending because although the book has ended, the grief the Hubbards are going through won't end; but neither will the love mentioned in the subtitle.

This is one of the longest "reviews" I've ever written but I wanted to close by explaining why I had to put this book down for a while. Bob and I had some of the same experiences with our respective upbringings: our children's problems, a supremely flawed parent, academic university life (my grandfather was a Philosophy professor and Dean), and being an Episcopalian in very Lutheran North Dakota. We are polar opposites politically, I laughed when he wrote about the uncomfortable Tea Party sermons in a small rural church as I remembered fidgeting through talks with titles like "America's Greatest Leaders: Carter, Clinton, and Christ!" and pastoral drama in my own decade going to a Liberal church every "visit home" to the now ex-in-laws' (I am very apolitical now).

I was waiting outside my daughter's elementary school one brisk day for her to come out so we could go home. I had my youngest daughter with me, she was practicing a standing long jump, happily playing (my wife and I have three children together now and I get mistaken for "grandpa" on a regular basis). I had started reading this book, and it was swirling in my head every waking hour. It was very windy, North Dakota-windy, and the giant pine trees nearby sounded like jet engines with the cold air blowing through them and us. The school door popped open and a teacher or teacher's paraprofessional came out, leading a dark haired little boy to a waiting daycare van behind me. I heard the door open, turned around, and watched the gal help the little boy into the van and then pause to talk to the driver, yelling to be heard: "This is our new friend August! He goes by 'Auggie' and he's going to be with us from now on!" The driver nodded and smiled, and Auggie sat down and got buckled in. My youngest daughter was clinging to my leg, she's tiny and I think she was trying not to blow away. I was in tears (getting dramatically dried by the wind), and I felt like I was getting confirmation from somewhere that Auggie was a new friend and he was going to be with all of us from now on. I came home, completely changed my writing choices and subjects, hence the archive blog, started writing in a physical journal, and opened up this new blog for new viewpoints and writing. Finally, I picked up Bob's book again, and completed it. Thanks, Bob, April, Auggie, and your friends and family for sharing your story.