Derek William Ramsay

September 5, 1986 - September 30, 2024

This year, I am walking for my boy who lost his battle with mental illness and substance use disorder last year. In honor of remembering his spirited life AND for his upcoming birthday, I am including an excerpt of the talk I gave last year at his funeral. 

As I was reflecting about what I wanted to say here today, I realized that it is a most challenging task to encapsulate in a few short minutes, 38 years of loving Derek.

We want Derek’s life to be about how he lived and NOT how he died. That becomes a difficult thing to parse out because how he died was very much a part of how he lived. But the fabric of who he was as a person from the time he was a baby was tightly woven into Derek’s mental illness and addiction. I will always remember him as Passionate Joy. When I pull back the curtain and look back at all the various challenging experiences we had with him in his illnesses, there was always a piece of his adventurous, mischievous, kind, and humorous personality shining through. The Derek we knew as a child was always present, often on the surface and at other times buried deep below his mental illness and addiction.

I was Derek’s Person. I know that he knew that. But it was together that Robert and I were faced with the incredible task of learning how not to enable his substance use while at the same time, trying to understand the complexities of mental illness and addiction ravaging our son. We didn’t get it right a lot of the time. Frustration, anger and living on the edge waiting for the next crisis seemed to be our way of life for so long.

But when we reflect on all of the stories and experiences we had with him, and believe me there are many, we can’t help but laugh and smile.

• Like the mischievous Derek. When the boys were around 4 or 5 years old, they got into our bedroom where I had a bunch of acrylic paints and paint brushes. Derek was always the leader in their dynamic duo and this particular time, proceeded to take those paints and paint all over our bed quilt and walls. When I walked in to discover what they had done, he was so excited to share with me about their newly created artwork. 
• Or like the CREATIVE Derek: when he was in high school he was prescribed Adderall. Derek loved stimulants, always his drug of choice, and he became very creative as to how he was going to get that entire bottle as I had his prescription under lock and key. So, one morning I came down to find our kitchen window open and his prescription gone. The window wasn’t broken, the screen was not ripped and there were some words written on the inside of the window, although I cannot recall what they were. When I went outside, I saw that my husband’s cruiser also had the word PIG written on it. It did not take much investigative work to figure out that it was Derek who staged a break-in to our house to get that bottle.
• Or the ADVENTUROUS Derek: he loved big cities, and he loved being in Boston. But this particular time he had the urge to take it up a notch and got on a bus to Washington DC. I received a phone call from Derek stating that he got picked up by the secret service in front of the Whitehouse for acting strangely and that they took him to George Washington Hospital where he spent two weeks on their behavioral health unit. The next thing I know, I’m receiving a phone call from the secret service! Derek had just gotten discharged and went right back to the Whitehouse. They remembered Derek from two weeks before so this time they were doing their vetting, making sure he wasn’t a threat to the President and once they felt sure he wasn’t, they put him on a bus back to Boston.
• Or the CURIOUS Derek. Imagine our surprise when we heard about an article in the Boston newspaper about Derek Ramsay from Topsham. It didn’t take long to do a search and bring up the article online to find out what happened. At this point in his illness, the voices that Derek was hearing were fairies, like Tinkerbell. Derek had stolen a 28-foot boat from a marina on the Charles River. Derek had never driven a boat in his life! But there he was, driving the stolen boat up the Charles River near the museum of science when State Police and Coast Guard got him to stop. When troopers asked who the owner of the boat was, Derek said he was. When asked his name, Derek replied, “Peter.” When asked for his last name, he said, “Pan.” Oh, how we laughed about that in later years.
• Or lastly, the KIND, HEARTFELT, ALWAYS TRYING Derek: My daughter, Kristyn, reminded me of the one Christmas when Derek wanted to give us all presents so badly. But he was well on his way into his addiction and mental illness and couldn’t hold a job and didn’t have any money. So, what did he do? He wrote us all checks but told us not to cash them!

These are the stories along with so many more, which we will carry in our hearts as we remember Derek. And I share them NOT to make fun of his mental illness and addiction but IN SPITE of them. He survived and thrived and fought for so long. Derek cheated death so many times, he had a100 lives. He just didn’t have 101.

Lastly, mental illness and addiction. Its impact on the individual as well as the family and caregivers that love them is far reaching. We know our family is not unique. There are so many people, so many families that are living the journey we have been on and continue to be on. I don’t stand in judgement on how someone else may choose to navigate their own experience. Some people choose to do it quietly. Others might want to share but don’t know how. And lastly, there are those of us who need to do something, make some kind of purpose from the pain. That is the path I have chosen. I thank my husband and daughter, being the private people they are, for letting me share our story so openly. I’ve been open about our journey for one singular reason: when we choose to share our vulnerability, we open the space for someone else to share their own. That has happened for me time and time again in sharing our story throughout these years. Inevitably, someone will come up to me and share their story for the first time. And it’s in those moments of shared vulnerability that some healing can happen, and people will know that they are not alone.

And finally, I’m sure everyone here in some way has loved and lost and grieved. We all have a story. Grief strikes a painful blow to our hearts no matter who we are grieving for. But it’s in that space of grief where we can all unite and be there for one another.  

Rest in peace our beautiful boy. You finally found your Neverland.