Six foot one at 13 years old. Dark blond hair and his eyes the clearest chartreuse, like spring water filled with tiny green flowers. Yet it was not those attributes that made him beautiful; it was his love of life, the way he lightened up a room with laughter...and the trail he blazed on a foundation of suicide.

On March 22, 2011, Jason Paul Legere, 13, went upstairs, took out his mom’s gun, and shot himself. Shot himself at just before eight a.m. on a random Tuesday morning, with his mother and three other brothers downstairs.

The aftermath that follows is that of being completely overcome by the loss and stigma of suicide. In the wake of darkness it leaves behind as a family, a mother deals with the ever-present question of why. This is the story of how, one day, his mother looked in the mirror and said, “What are you doing? Stop the pity party. Choose. Do you choose to wallow in your sorrows until it completely destroys you? Or do you choose your son, to live and take his light and make a difference, make a stance, and be the change?”

I chose him; I chose my son; I chose my family; I chose life.

This is my story on how I was overcome by suicide but then had the guts to overcome suicide.

“It is not what you go through, it is how you come through it.” (Kimberly Tocco, a.k.a. Tenacious T)