With the double whammy of Mother's Day and her son's birthday, May is a difficult month for Carolyn Zahnow, whose only child, Cameron, killed himself in 2005. After two years of mourning, though, Zahnow is taking a new step toward healing by starting a Survivors of Suicide support group in Wake Forest.

Her son, Jace "Cameron" Stephenson, was 18 and had just graduated from high school when he hanged himself in the attic. Zahnow found his body.

"The first year is agonizing - it was flashback city for me ... a lot of what-ifs, what else could I have done?" she said.

Cameron, an amateur photographer who loved to draw, blog and write poetry, became depressed in 2002 after his father -- Zahnow's first husband -- died of a brain tumor. He wasn't sleeping well and started acting out in school. He went to a series of therapists but quit taking antidepressants because he said they made him feel like a zombie.

She later learned he'd bragged to a friend about drinking alcohol before school and experimented with "Triple C," using over-the-counter cough and cold tablets to get high. Then she started finding plastic bags, blackened Q-tips, a broken light bulb - evidence that he'd started using methamphetamines. When he was 17, "he spent spring break in rehab. By Christmas, he was using again," Zahnow said. "He was so sucked in he couldn't stop."

Zahnow, who grew up in Raleigh, was living in Texas at the time but wanted to move back to the Triangle. Her second husband was in Raleigh house-hunting on the night of Aug. 11, 2005. She had gone out for dinner with a friend and returned to find the house quiet. She took a nap but was awakened by Cameron's phone ringing. When she went upstairs to answer it, she found his body. She cut him down, called 911 and gave him CPR until the ambulance arrived. An autopsy later showed he had taken enough meth to overdose, she said.

A leading cause of death

In the immediate aftermath, she found solace in journal writing and finding out more about suicide, depression and drug use. The statistics stunned her.

More than 31,000 Americans kill themselves each year. At least a third of suicides involve alcohol, opiates, cocaine or amphetamines, according to the National Violent Death Reporting System.

Among those age 10 to 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death, accounting for more than 4,000 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seventeen percent of students in ninth through 12th grades report having seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months.

Zahnow and her husband moved to Youngsville in August 2006. Slowly, she said, she started to carve out a new existence -- life after Cameron. She went back to work, as an executive assistant at the nonprofit Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. She volunteered to mentor a Daniels Middle School student through the Communities in Schools program. She also started writing a book, "Tormented Souls: Saving Teens from Suicide," based on her research and memories of Cameron.

Zahnow, who had attended Survivors of Suicide meetings since the week after Cameron's death, was surprised that the closest SOS group was in Raleigh. Starting her own group was the next logical step, said Zahnow's sister, Kristie Rhodes of Youngsville.

"This is just her way of healing," Rhodes said. "Instead of closing off and being away from the rest of the world, she wants to reach out and help others."

Emotions old and new

Their grandfather committed suicide in the 1950s, but no one talked about it, Rhodes said.

Support groups offer an outlet for survivors, who often don't tell others because of the stigma related to suicide, Zahnow said.

"People look at you differently. They think, 'Poor you, how do you live with that?' or they think maybe if your relative was crazy, you're crazy, too," she said. In a group "you can talk openly, and nobody will think badly of you."

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which offers training for facilitators, encourages survivors to pass the two-year anniversary mark before starting their own group. Zahnow understands why.

Her sadness remains: She can't bring herself to get rid of the boxes of Cameron's old clothes and toys. She has yet to watch the DVD taken at his graduation.

Before his death, she was focused on "getting him grown, getting him out of the nest," she said. "Now all those dreams are gone. There will be no grandchildren, which is a biggie because I was looking forward to that. There's no 'What will my kid look like when he's 28, 38?' "

But she no longer cries every day. And she's beginning to enjoy activities that made her happy before his death -- taking photographs, planting flowers.

This year she'll make a strawberry cake, his favorite, on May 29, his birthday, and maybe burn a candle or look through his old belongings.

"Mother's Day is harder. I feel like a crappy mother because I couldn't keep my son alive. You think nothing in the world is going to happen to them when they're little," Zahnow said. "Yes, I'm still a mother. I'm a mother with a big hole in my heart."

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