Stephen “tWitch” Boss and his mom Connie.Photo:courtesy
courtesy
“Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday, and then other times it feels like it’s been so long since I’ve seen him,” his mom Connie, 59, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. While she still grapples withher son’s suicidelast December, the city supervisor, who lives in Phoenix and has two other sons, finds comfort in her unshakeable faith that she will see Stephen again.
“When I think about him, I try not to dwell on how he left this earth,” she says. “This is not totally the end. That is where my peace comes from.”
Stephen “tWitch” Boss and his mom Connie.courtesy
Connie last heard from her son the day before he died and had no inkling he was troubled. “I’d been sick, so he texted to ask how I was feeling,” she says. “That was the last time we talked. To the extent that Stephen may have been in aBlack depression— no, not Stephen. He was so in tune with analyzing and trying to make himself better, reading self-help books, so this came as a complete shock.”
Even when she realized he was gone, Connie says suicide “was not my first thought — that it had been his hand. I really thought something had happened to him.”
Jesse Grant/Getty Images
On Tuesday morning, Dec. 13, Connie received word that Stephen was missing. “I immediately started placing calls to see if anyone had seen or spoken with him,” she recalls. “Finding that nobody had, my brother and I bought plane tickets.”
Because she’d been ill, she went to get a rapid COVID test before traveling. “And my brother called to ask where I was. Then my sister-in-law called: ‘Hey, we’re just checking on where you are.’ In the pit of my stomach, I knew something was wrong,” Connie says.
“I went to my parents’ house and walked in. They were just standing there looking at me, and I said, ‘Have you heard something?’ All I remember hearing was, ‘Connie, he’s gone.’ And I remember screaming or falling to my knees. The rest of the day is more of a blur.”
Connie wrestled with the truth of what had happened in the days and weeks to come. “You find yourself in a lot of introspection, a lot of looking back.Did I miss something? Did he mean something when he said this?” she says. “At this point, I’m in realization, I guess. When I wake up in the morning, it does hit me that,oh my God, he really is not physically here. But then in my head I can hear him say, ‘Hey, Mom. I’m OK.'”
In quiet moments, Connie will still pick up her phone to text Stephen and she’s holding tight to their final words. “He started that last text with, “I love you, Mom,'” she says. “And I responded, ‘I love you more.'”
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
