Feature article in March 2020 RFM

Channeling Grief Into Action

Anne Moss Rogers on Living with Your Child’s Death

• February 28, 2020, by Joan Tupponce

It only took a moment for Anne Moss Rogers’ life to change direction; only seconds for her to move from years of fear and dread to a life committed to service and education. That moment, when she learned her younger son, 20-year-old Charles, had died by suicide, was the most devastating moment of her life. But the heart-wrenching experience fueled her desire to help others.

Rogers and her husband were eating dinner in a restaurant on a Friday night – June 5, 2015 – when the Richmond police called. The call sent a shockwave through Rogers, who had been parenting Charles through issues of anxiety, depression, and drug use for several years. “It hit me that they were coming to say my child is dead,” she says. “I thought, This can’t be happening.”

Rogers immediately thought Charles died of an overdose, but the police told her he died by other means and that it was a suicide…..

Grief: Going all ‘hallmark’ on you