Heather Wright/The Independent

Debb Pitel still thinks about what might have been had she trusted her gut.

Pitel’s son, Tyler, died by suicide at the age of 15 in 2001. It devastated her family and drove her to write about suicide and to develop a booklet featuring local mental health services called No One Stands Alone.

On World Suicide Awareness Day, Pitel, who is also a Petrolia town councillor, was carefully stacking books into a bright green and white ‘little library.’ On the top shelf, Pitel placed some of the No One Stands Alone guides. On the back is a mural of Pitel with her four sons, including Tyler, complete with angel wings and a halo.

The little library with a purpose was the brainchild of Ava Horwood. Pitel got to know the LCCVI grad a year ago on the town’s youth advisory committee. When Horwood heard Pitel’s story and found out about the booklets, she started bringing them to high school events. She even helped convince the school board to put them in the hands of guidance counsellors.

Before she went off to college in New Brunswick, Horwood built and painted the library. It was Pitel’s job to stock the shelves on the day meant to open discussion about suicide.

It was clearly a difficult topic for Pitel as she stood in front of the arena her son once played in.

“It means a lot,” she said of the library as she looked at the mural on the back, wiping tears from her eyes. 

The day always brings memories of her son and the three other students in Petrolia who died by suicide that year.

Pitel says she knew something was wrong and the family got her son some help.

“He was in care with seven different agencies when he lost his battle. So, he was two months before his 15th birthday that he died by suicide, and he struggled with the resources, just they were very hard to navigate,” she said.

The other Petrolia families, she said, were unaware of their child’s struggles before their death. “You’re angry and you’re frustrated and you’re just so completely devastated.”

And the what-ifs about Ty still come to Pitel’s mind.

“It was just a matter of we waited too long to get him the help that he needed so things were able to manifest themselves and get worse. So had we taken that gut instinct when things were off and followed through at that point? Yeah, who knows?

And so, on World Suicide Awareness Day Tuesday, Pitel counsels parents to “trust your gut. You can’t afford to be wrong.”

Many people, she says, wait to broach the subject, worried their child might be mad. “That might be true, but I’d rather them mad than gone.”

She also encourages people to take the Safe Talk course to give them the tools to recognize their children’s needs.

Pitel hopes the little library will bring joy and help. And she says, people will find her son’s much cherished collection of Goosebumps books there. 

“I’ve kept it all these years because I just knew what it meant, and the excitement on his face whenever he got one,” she said adding now she will share them with others.