Scenes with My Son: Love and Grief in the Wake of Suicide

by Robert Hubbard, Nicholas Wolterstorff (Foreword by)

Overview

A father’s stirring and tender tribute to the son he lost to suicide 
 
After years of battling clinical depression exacerbated by autism, Auggie Hubbard died by suicide at the age of 19. In this poignant tribute to his son, Robert Hubbard—a theatre scholar and actor—stages Auggie’s life in a series of vivid and tender scenes: Auggie’s insatiable hunger for Accelerated Reader points. His tireless lightsaber practice in the local park. His sonorous tuba practice in the ward of his inpatient program. Through these anecdotes of Auggie’s life and the days following his death, readers journey with a family shaken by mental illness and share in their hard-won joys in defiance of depression. 
 
Refusing easy answers and clichés about “God’s plan,” Hubbard unflinchingly asks: Does faith matter amid such tragedy? What do you do when awareness isn’t enough? When you’ve tried so hard to keep your child safe, but your efforts fail? His honesty and vulnerability—and his tender portrait of Auggie—are gifts to all who live with their own questions in the wake of a loved one’s death.

Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award in Grief/Grieving Finalist (2023)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802883445
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/31/2023
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert Hubbard is professor of theatre at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. In addition to his scholarly work, he also directs plays and has written and performed one-person shows across the Midwest.


 
Nicholas Wolterstorff is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. Before going to Yale he taught philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for thirty years. His other books include Justice in Love, Educating for Shalom, The God We Worship, and Lament for a Son.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff
Prologue
Act I: Beautiful Boy
Act II: The Family Monster
Act III: The Life After 
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes

Editorial Reviews

09/04/2023

Northwestern College theater professor Hubbard debuts with a haunting elegy to his late son, who died by suicide in 2020 at age 19 after enduring a tortuous five-year battle with depression. Initially unable to write about Auggie (even the social media updates Hubbard posted in the days immediately afterward were “a steaming hell”), the author eventually decided he needed “to let the world know about Auggie’s great soul.” He divides the book’s vivid collage of vignettes into three acts: “Beautiful Boy” chronicles Auggie’s childhood, which was “lived mostly in a state of joy,” though occasional out-of-the-blue fits of rage “hinted at dangerous imbalances to come”; “The Family Monster” probes the depression that’s afflicted the author’s other son, George, and wife April; and “The Life After” captures the bewildering weeks and months that followed the tragedy, as the devoutly Christian author wrestled with his faith (“Adoring the God who allowed my son to die seems false or disingenuous at times,” he muses at one point, and elsewhere wonders, “Will I really see my boy again? Or is my belief just a fairy tale?”). Hubbard holds nothing back in sketches that vacillate between gut-punching grief and passionate celebration of life—often in the same sentence, as when he relives “the sensation of how the house literally vibrated from the soulful, mournful, masterful bellows of Auggie playing his tuba.” It’s a heartbreaker. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

The Christian Century
“Robert Hubbard, a theater professor and father of three, writes with deep vulnerability about his son Auggie’s gentle beauty and passion for life—as well as the clinical depression that afflicted Auggie for most of his teenage years. The portrait that emerges is of a family learning how to love one another through difficult times—and then through the unthinkable and its aftermath.”

“I cried as I read Scenes with My Son, reliving our own beloved son’s journey with serious mental illness and his death by suicide. It’s almost impossible to find words that explain this complicated journey for any unfamiliar with mental illness, but Robert Hubbard has done it. He captures Auggie in all his maddening, lovable quirkiness, his musical and theatrical passions, as well as his valiant efforts to evade the dark specter of major depression that led to his death. I liked Auggie from the first paragraphs; my affection for him grew stronger as each scene unfolded, leaving me to weep at his death. One day soon, I’ll introduce my beautiful boy to Robert’s beautiful boy. What a day that will be. . .” 
—Kay Warren, cofounder Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California 

“Every family touched by clinical depression should read and discuss this marvelous book. It captures with style and grace the joys and heartaches of loving one another in the midst of faith, doubt, and fear. It’s a balm for our souls. I couldn’t put it down.” 
—Quentin Schultze, author of Communicating with Grace and Virtue

“Suicide is set apart as perhaps the most grievous form of loss there is. . . . It is almost impossible to reflect on such a loss with any degree of dignity, restraint, honesty, and insight.  But Robert Hubbard has somehow done just that. Painful, yes. How could it not be? But also riveting, full of grace and goodness, and authentic without being maudlin. If for no other reason, read this memoir for the sake of learning about what it means to be human in a fallen world that is bleeding and groaning. God bless Robert Hubbard for taking the risk to write it.” 
—Gerald L. Sittser, author of A Grace Disguised

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