Navigating the Tides of Grief: A Conversation on Surviving Suicide Loss

The Call That Split a Life

It begins with a phone call no parent should ever receive. For Rick Thomas, it was his eldest son on the line, his voice flat with shock: “Dad, Aidan’s dead.” Just a week after his 21st birthday, Rick’s middle son had taken his own life. That moment split his world in two—the before and the after—and set him on a journey he never imagined: learning to live with Suicide Grief.

Elle’s Own History of Loss

Sitting across from him in Mexico, author and advocate Elle Fisher listens with the empathy of someone who knows this terrain all too well. She lost her mother at 16, suffered a miscarriage years later, and then endured her partner Christian’s suicide. Grief, she says, doesn’t arrive in tidy stages. It detonates, shatters, and leaves you to rebuild in fragments.

“There aren’t five stages. There’s one big, unruly package called suicide grief—and you learn to walk with it.”

The Fog That Follows

Rick recalls the fog that followed Aidan’s death—walking into his youngest son Tristan’s room to deliver the news, driving hours to face the space where it happened, then shifting automatically into “dad mode.” In those first days, logistics masked despair. It was only later, in the quiet of his backyard, that the weight sucker-punched him to his knees.

Elle nods. She too once believed she was coping, only to realize she was merely disguising her collapse. “I masked pain with productivity,” she admits. “That wasn’t strength—it was hiding.”

Finding Meaning Through Plant Medicine

Their conversation drifts into the ways survivors search for meaning. Both have turned to plant medicine—ayahuasca, San Pedro, psilocybin—not as escapes but as doorways. In carefully guided ceremonies, they discovered moments of forgiveness, glimpses of presence, and a sense that those they lost were not gone but transformed.

“With intention, ceremony didn’t erase grief. It helped me hold it without breaking.”

The Signs That Tether Love

For Rick, the most healing moments are often smaller: the comfort of hearing Aidan’s name, the sudden appearance of a Cat Stevens song on shuffle, or even the sting of yellow flies on a morning walk when he swore he heard his son’s voice reminding him to use the buff in his pocket. Signs, whether imagined or real, matter because they tether grief to love.

Lessons for the Yachting Industry

In an industry like yachting, these lessons carry weight. Long hours, back-to-backs, and relentless demands make it easy to miss the warning signs in colleagues. Elle is blunt in her appeal to captains and heads of department: don’t dismiss exhaustion, don’t tell crew to “toughen up,” and don’t mistake silence for strength.

“Be kind. It costs nothing and saves lives.”

Carrying, Not Curing

For those outside the industry—and outside the circle of loss—the advice is equally simple: say the names of the dead, ask “Are you okay today?”, offer practical help, and above all, stay. There is no timetable for grief. It lingers, it resurfaces, it changes the bereaved forever.

Rick admits he is not who he was before August 21, 2024. He never will be. But as Elle reminds him, that is the work: to carry grief alongside gratitude, to recognize that rebirth is not a return to the past but the creation of a new self forged by love and loss.