Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome and thanks for listening. You can stay up to date with Bleeding Daylight by connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media. Links are at bleedingdaylight.net where you'll also find dozens of other episodes. Please consider leaving a five-star review on your favourite podcast platform.
We all face grief and we all deal with grief differently, but sometimes grief goes deeper. Today's guest faced profound grief, but is now helping others face the struggle of losing someone close. In today's episode, I sit down with Kevin Skellett, an ordained pastor and founder of Love Never Ends Ministry, whose personal journey through grief has been transformed into a beacon of hope for countless others.
Kevin has channeled his own pain into purpose, establishing a ministry dedicated to supporting those who have lost loved ones. As an author, speaker and passionate advocate for suicide awareness and prevention, Kevin shares a wealth of experience and heartfelt wisdom. His book, Gracious Grief After Suicide Loss, Feel God's Love After the Worst Day of Your Life, is a vital resource for those facing devastating loss. Kevin, welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thank you very much, Rodney.
It's great to be here. While your ministry is such a help for others, it was birthed out of your own overwhelming pain. Can you take me back to the moment when your world seemed to fall apart? Sure. That was May 18th, 2011. That morning started out just like any other morning. My wife, she had gone to work already. My oldest son, he was living with us and he had gone to work. My youngest son was off at school. I heard the phone ring. I answered it and said, hello, this is Kevin Skellett.
And the person on the other end identified themselves as a police detective and said that they needed to meet with me. I asked, what is it about? And he answered, well, we can talk about it when I arrive. I asked him, did I do something wrong? And he said, no, you didn't. Finally, he said, it's regarding your son, Mark, and I'll be over there shortly. And then he hung up. So I was left with just the thoughts of, okay, well, what's going on here? I tried to figure out what was going on.
So I called Mark's phone, but it went directly to his voicemail and I wasn't able to get ahold of him. So I just sat down and thought about the situation. At first I thought, well, if Mark was in an accident or something was wrong that way, the police would have told me where he was or what hospital he was going to. If Mark was arrested, then Mark would probably be calling me and not the police. He was being investigated for something.
Yeah, I just didn't think that that wasn't really Mark's nature. I didn't think that that was what it was. Then finally, I just thought and said that this is probably a death notification. That's the only other reason I could think of why they would call and not give me any details. I was alone at the house. I didn't have anyone to talk to or to share anything with at that moment. So I just felt that I really just needed to pray and talk to God. I didn't really know what to pray.
So I just prayed what was just on my mind at that very moment. I just put my hands together as I sat on the couch and I prayed, Father, my son is dead. I wasn't expecting anything back. I know it wasn't much of a prayer. It was more like the start of a conversation. It ended up being a conversation. It was probably the most intimate conversation I think I've ever had with God. He quickly responded back in my head and said, my son died too. I know exactly how you feel.
That was very comforting at that moment. It was surprising that I had gotten a response like that back. So he was just letting me know that he was right there with me. He understood exactly what I was going through because his son had died as well. I went from feeling very alone, very cold, very distraught, just to feeling just a little bit level of comfort and peace, just knowing that God was right there with me. But that wasn't the end of the conversation.
After he said that, he said something that surprised me. He said, by the way, he's not your son. I had to think about that for a second and went back. Well, I know I was there when he was born. I know they didn't switch babies out at the hospital or anything. I watched him grow. He looked like me. How can you say that he's not my son? But then God just immediately followed up and he said, it's my son. I gave him to you.
That was just some very powerful words that really stuck with me, really changed a lot about my whole attitude towards this grief. It was some of the words that really changed my life at that point, along with just losing my son. Because really, God says that to each one of us, that we're his son or we're his daughter. He's the one that created us. He's the one that formed us in our mother's womb. He's the one that has the plans for each one of us.
That became very, very apparent at that moment in the middle of that conversation. I just felt that I needed to respond back in the conversation. The only thing I could think to say was, thank you, Father, for the time that you gave me with Mark. That went a long way, I think, also with part of the healing. God showed me another very important part of his word to be thankful in all circumstances, even on the worst day of your life, that I could give thanks to God in that moment.
I didn't really know if Mark was alive or dead because the police hadn't come yet, but I felt God made it very apparent what I was going to be facing, and he was right there with me. So when the detective did arrive at your home, what were his words to you? I invited him in, and there was two of them. They had me sit down at the kitchen table, and he gave me the news that Mark had taken his life. I think one of the big things that they needed to do was have me identify him.
They had pictures that they needed me to see, and I did that part of it. But the taking of his life, that was a surprise, but it wasn't so much of a surprise, just because Mark had some mental health issues that he had been dealing with. He also had some events in his life. He just broke up with his girlfriend of six years, just a lot of other things in his life that probably culminated at that point. That was, I believe, just a really hard time for him. How old was Mark at this stage?
He was 21. He had just turned 21 two weeks before this. So he was living on his own in downtown Richmond. He wasn't living at the house, actually living with his girlfriend. So they had an apartment down there. He loved animals. He had his dog and a couple other furry friends. I'd seen him just four days before, and he seemed like he was in a very good place. That's what kind of surprised me probably more than anything else. He came over to the house.
We just wanted to talk a little bit, just to see how he was doing with the breakup and all that. He seemed pretty happy. He had a whole bunch of plans that he was going to do. He was going to go see his friends. We had a very enjoyable dinner. One of the things I always wanted to know from him, because he favored his mom and she and I went through a divorce, he was supposed to go live with her, but that didn't work out. So he had to live with me.
That was kind of rough going for a little while, but we eventually got to a point where we were good before he moved out and everything. I always wanted to know what he thought about me as a father, something I always wanted to ask him, but that night I didn't have to ask because he told me. He said, I know I haven't always been a good son, but you've always been a great dad. So I was kind of surprised that he said that. That was, again, something I always wanted to know his opinion.
I believe God gave that to me that night, which was really the last night that I saw him in person. I know that there's that comfort that God is providing for you, but I also imagine that in a situation like this, there are lots of questions. What were the questions that you struggled with around this time? Yeah, probably the biggest question is why. I always wrestled with that because there was no notes or anything like that.
I did finally get a hold of his phone so I could see what kind of was going on that night and people he called. Then at the memorial service, I got to hear from some of his friends. So I did find out that he even had mentioned something about suicide to one of his friends. So I wish that they had told me about that as well. But I think that he was happy because he knew what he was going to do. It was going to resolve all his pain that he was feeling, his emotional pain.
And so he went on a goodbye tour, went to visit a lot of his friends, gave away some of his possessions. I found all that stuff out afterwards. The why question was really the biggest. And then just talking with God about, you gave me this son and why have you taken him away? But that wasn't for me to decide. So I came to grips with that. It took a while, but that was difficult. And then why the suicide, the whole part of suicide?
If that was the end of Mark's time here on earth, why did he have to go by suicide? I think that that later on has answered that question because I think that that was more of direction for where my life was going to head because it completely changed that day. Were there the, if only questions, if only he had reached out, if only we had seen some of those signals he was sending? Oh yeah. Yeah. Those are questions that I asked afterwards. Why didn't I see that?
I was expecting to see it, but I saw a happy child who had plans. It wasn't until later when I learned a little bit more about the signs of suicide that it became apparent that those were all signs of he'd probably made his decision already that he was going to take his life. So he knew that his pain was going to be over, so he didn't have to worry about that pain anymore.
So he could be happy and he could do the things that he wants to do up until that point, because he knew that his pain was going to end. That's a good guess on my part, but I think it's a very good guess of what was going on in his head too. It's interesting that you mentioned there are discernible signs in the lead up to suicide. Most of us don't believe that that's going to happen within our own family, so we're not really looking for those signs.
And I guess that's a big part of what your ministry is about, helping people to understand those signs to prevent suicide in the first place. Yeah, that's a dedicated entire chapter in my book just to the signs of suicide and how to see that coming. I also serve on a county suicide awareness and prevention coalition, so I get to work with a lot of other mental health and suicide prevention organizations just to help raise awareness about the signs of suicide in our community here.
Those signs are, I think there's a lot that are expected and things that you don't want to hear, like people saying that you won't have to worry about me for much longer, or I'm just a waste of time here on this earth. If you hear words like that or see words like that in social media, you really need to be serious about reaching out to that person just to see where they're at, because they may be thinking about suicide. For Mark, he had some mental health issues.
His doctor had sent him to a psychiatrist, but he was put on medication for a little while, and he was pretty mellow and subdued on the medication. Eventually, he decided he didn't like the way it made him feel, and he stopped taking the medication. I believe that he had bipolar disorder. How soon after this happened did you decide to begin the Love Never Ends ministry?
That didn't happen until the 10-year anniversary is when it kicked off, but I had done a lot of other things after Mark had passed that really led up to starting that ministry. The first ministry that I started, I was in the planning stages of doing it, a recovery ministry at our church right when Mark had passed away. I had to make a decision on whether I wanted to continue moving forward with it or not. God really put on my heart to continue with it, so I did.
One of the first parts of it was to go through a deep study into your own past, looking at the events in your life where you were hurt and work through resolving those with the help of God. I went through that, really focusing on this most recent hurt with Mark's suicide. That ended up being probably one of the best things that I could have had at that point, because I had a very safe place each and every week that I could talk about my grief.
People going through grief may or may not have that safe place where they can talk about it. I had a full year of just being able to talk about my grief each and every week, which was very good in my healing. We're still doing that ministry today. After that, I was invited to be a police chaplain with our local police department. That gave me the ability to be right there with other families to help comfort them in the first few hours after the death of a loved one.
I would relive my own experience on those scenes a lot of the times, and I could get to feeling exactly or very similar to the feelings that they were feeling. I felt that I could be more of a comfort to them in those early hours, those early minutes, just by truly understanding at least a glimpse of what they were going through. I'm still a chaplain as well. From there, I got into the county Suicide Awareness and Prevention Coalition.
That really helped me to understand the suicide pieces of it. God was calling me to do a ministry for grief and loss. Love Never Ends started out as a ministry for parents who had lost children. I've since changed it over to covering all types of grief and loss. God had put it on my heart probably two years before that. I talked about it a little bit to other parents who had lost children, and they thought it was a good idea.
Then they started pushing me, saying, well, when are you going to start this? When are you going to start it? Again, I started on the 10th anniversary of his loss. In order to give some form of comfort to others, you're having to go back to the place of hurt for you of losing Mark. How difficult is that to be constantly going back to telling that story again, to feeling that grief again in order to help others? Initially, it was very hard.
Now, I know that it's going to help others, so it's easier to go back to those first few minutes because I can remember it just like it was yesterday. I could feel the way I felt sitting on that couch when I'd hung up the phone. I think that helps me minister to people just because I've got a good idea of how they're feeling, especially with the unexpected loss, the whole surprise element of that, the denial and the anger, all those different emotions that will come with that unexpected loss.
I know what they feel like, and like I said, I go back to them, and now it doesn't hurt so bad and I can return from them pretty quickly as well. I imagine that in such circumstances, it's very difficult for those closest to you, friends, family, others, to know what to say. What did you find at that time? Were people able to gather around you, or did you find that people, just because they didn't know how to respond, just didn't respond at all?
Yeah, that was one of the strange things that I experienced. I think up and through the memorial service, I had lots of support, and a lot of people were right there for me. After the memorial service, it got really strange.
I'm a pastor at the church there every Sunday, but it seemed like no one wanted to talk to me after the memorial service, or the people didn't know what to say, or they felt so uncomfortable, or they didn't want to think about losing a child and what that would feel like, so they opted out to say nothing. That was part of the real deep loneliness that occurred for me after the memorial service. I felt really alone for those first few months.
I did have other parents who had lost children who understood, and they were the people that reached out to me, or those were the people that I ended up talking to, because they were the ones who knew a lot more about what I was about to go through. For those of us who have not gone through that kind of grief, what are some of the simple words that you really long to hear from those at church, those around you at that time, that would have been a help to you? Just that they were there for me.
They loved me. If they had interacted with Mark, just telling stories or saying his name, for me, that was a comfort. I just wanted to hear Mark's name. They didn't have to say that much, but just that they were there for me. So if I knew they were there, and if they wanted to talk to me, we didn't have to talk about Mark. We could talk about anything, but just knowing that they were right there and that they were available to me if I needed them.
I suppose that's one of the difficult things, is that people would naturally shrink back and think, Oh, look, what happened with Mark was a tragedy. Therefore, we don't want to bring it up. And yet, so often I hear from people saying that this loved one who's passed away, through whatever circumstances, they want to continue to remember them. They want to hear the stories. They want that person because they're constantly thinking about that person.
And I'm sure you were still constantly thinking about Mark. You didn't want others to shut down on what his life had been either, did you? No, not at all. We think that the person does not want to hear anything more about the, they just want to get over it and move on when that's exactly the opposite of what we want. We want to be able to remember, and it takes a long time for our brains to catch up saying that their child is not there, their loved one's not there anymore.
We've lived for X number of years for me, 21 years with Mark in my life, and now all of a sudden he's not there. It's going to take me a long time to focus on enough to realize that Mark truly is not here. And all the memories that I have, all the connections that I have with him are not there anymore. Hearing stories about him, hearing his name, I think helps that along a little bit better than not hearing anything at all.
What was the catalyst for you to sit down and actually put your thoughts, your feelings, and understandings into the book, Gracious Grief After Suicide Loss? God had been prompting me to write a book as well. And this book took me two years to actually get started. Once I started, I wrote it fairly quickly in just a few months. That was really God saying, you know, the things that I did for you and with you along this grief journey, you need to tell other people about it.
That's where the book had come from. And what has been the response from those who have been through their own grief and have got hold of the book? Have you had people come back to you and let you know how much of a help it's been? Oh, yes. Yeah. I've had a number of people that have contacted me and said that they were very thankful that they had gotten this book in their hands.
A lot of the advice and the exercises that I have at the end of each chapter really helped them process their own grief. They were really thankful and it gave them some other things to think about from a biblical perspective. Just looking at some of the stories from the Bible of those suffering with grief, it kind of gave them a different perspective on how God views grief and that He wants you to really invite Him into your grief situation and let Him help you.
Right from the first moments when you got that call and they weren't definite about what had happened, but you surmised that it was going to be a death notification, you turned to faith, you turned to God. But I imagine it's very different for a range of different people who might turn away from their faith or just not understand where God is in this. How important is it that we reach out to God in a time of grief like this? I think it's the most important thing that I could have done.
I could see how He's guided me ever since I invited Him into my grief all along my grief journey for the last 13 plus years. He's guided my steps. Had I not done that right from the beginning, I could have just turned away from God, blamed Him for it and gotten mad at Him. But I chose not to. He'd helped me a lot in the past and I knew He could help me through this one as well. And each day, He surprised me with something new. It seems like open doors that I didn't know were even there.
I said, the things I'm doing today, I would never be doing had this not happened. Were there times at all where you attempted to that? Those were some of the questions. It took me a long time asking God, again, why did you take Mark? Why did He have to go at this time? He finally answered that question.
It took a little while, probably a couple months, and then He directed me to Psalm 139, I think it's verse 16, where He says, all the days ordained for you were written in my book before one of them came to be. The way I interpreted that as He gave that to me was, you know, Mark's days were defined before he was even born. The plans that God had for him and the number of his days, they were all planned out. And Mark had either accomplished the things that he needed to do or ran out.
It made things a little bit easier, understanding it from God's point of view. That was just something that I had to accept. And God gave me the explanation. So I was good with that. What would you say to someone who's listening right now, who is going through their own grief? How would you direct them to find comfort in that time of distress?
Yeah, I would tell them, regardless of where they are, if they haven't done so already, to just pray to God and just ask Him to come into the situation with them and to help them and to guide them along in their grief journey. Opening that door, I think will make a huge difference. If they had already, I would expect that they would be telling me how God is working in their grief and the things that He's done for them, the doors that He's opened for them.
I just think that that's the most important starting point. And then let Him kind of guide your path as you move forward. It's been an interesting journey for you, but one that has helped you to help many other people. What is the highlight out of all the people that you've helped, out of all the things that you've been able to do through this? Have there been highlights that have obviously not made you want this to have happened, but to have seen where God has directed you specifically?
I think probably some of the best experiences I've had are those when someone is thinking about suicide, and I've been able to talk with them and change their mind or at least stop what they're thinking about doing at that time. So I've had several opportunities there to intervene with someone who had thoughts of suicide. I wasn't able to save my own son, but being able to save someone else made a big difference.
And what would you say to someone who's listening at the moment, who is going through a difficult time and their thoughts are turning to suicide? What would your thoughts be towards them? I would say to reach out for help, tell somebody what you're thinking. And I know that you may already have been trying to communicate that.
And if no one has heard you and asked you if you're thinking about suicide, then be probably a little bit more specific and say that you're having thoughts of suicide and get help, whether that's a parent, a good friend, a trusted friend, or even a counselor or psychiatrist or pastor. Reach out and get help, because a lot of the pain that you might be experiencing, I think there's ways to correct it in most cases. In some cases, there's not.
But in most cases, the thoughts of suicide are really thinking about a very permanent solution to a problem that's probably temporary or fixable or solvable. And I have heard it said that we should be bold enough to say to someone who we see is in a dark place, are you having thoughts of suicide? And yet we would shrink back from that. How important is it that we are totally upfront with those that we see that are struggling? Yeah, it's very important.
And those are the exact words that you should say. You should say, are you thinking of killing yourself? Or are you thinking about suicide? If you see someone who looks distraught and needs help, if you say, are you thinking about hurting yourself? Well, in their mind, they're not thinking about hurting themselves. They're thinking about ending the pain they're already hurting. Just found my way to end pain is through taking my life.
So their answer would be, no, I'm not thinking about hurting myself. And they'd be truthful in that. So you have to be very direct about the suicide piece. That's a hard question to ask, but then I think a lot of people are afraid, well, what if they say yes? Then really just the thing is to be able to talk with them, find out if they've got a plan already, or if they've got a means to complete the suicide and then get someone else involved as well.
Kevin, I know that your work has helped a lot of people. You have a website, you have the book that's available. If people want to avail themselves of that help, where's the easiest place for people to find you? They can find me at loveneverendsministry.org. They can reach out via email through that. I also have a lot of resources there for grief and loss. We do online groups and online workshops and things like that as well.
Kevin, I will put links to your website, to the book in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net. I want to thank you for being so open and honest about the struggles that you've faced, but also the way in which you're using that to help others. Thank you for your time on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you for having me, Rodney. It's been a pleasure. I hope that someone just uses this information or reaches out. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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