Obituary for Alan Jerome Hooker 11/21/1998-10/31/2023
The past year has been the most heart breaking of my 60 years of life. Alan was my life! He is my 5th born of 6 and was my special child. I was told by countless doctors and therapist since his birth that he was developmentally delayed with neurological disorders. Many years of different treatments and thearphy he surpassed everything the doctors said he’d never do! He was always a spunky child, but even when he was little, he went through good and bad days of happy and sad.
Then later in mid-teenage years diagnosed with bipolar depression and anxiety. I believed I was doing everything I could possibly do to help him.
He was a very bright and loving boy. He was a Pro BMX rider with several state and national championships! Everyone loved him so much but as with any mental health illness he had his good days and his bad days. I wish there was anything different I could have done or said to change the outcome for his life.
A year ago, November 21 on his birthday I had to have him hospitalized after having a psychotic breakdown. They kept him for three weeks, then turned him loose in the cold dark streets at 9 o’clock at night. The first night he did end up coming back home and slept here but the next morning he got up and packed his stuff in his truck and he left and has been living out of his vehicle ever since. He was so mad at me for having him hospitalized. I tried everything including trying to get guardianship of him. The laws need to change so we can try to save our children!
And I won’t go into detail about how his pos father who has only physically seen him once in the past 20 years of my son’s life (by his choice) tried to claim his body from the medical examiner office on me and I had to go to court to prove custody of my son to stop him!
After my son went missing mid September, we did find his car where he had been sleeping in it at the Walmart parking lot, with all of his stuff in it. It was just as if he stepped out of it and disappeared into thin air. It took them 3 weeks to find my boy in a near by 40 acre woods.
I laid my son’s ashes to rest Tuesday, November 21 on what would have been his 25th birthday in my family’s garden with my grandparents, my parents, my brother and sister so he is no longer alone.
I am devastated, loss, clinging to my children and grandchildren to keep my sanity.
But this is by far over! His life is a legacy which will continue in the BMX community for many years to come. They will be having memorial rides every year in his honor to raise money to help fight mental illnesses! I want to petition the courts to change my son’s death certificate from saying that he died as suicide! I do not like the fact that it also has on there that he had hung himself! My son died of a mental illness! Which is just as bad as any other disease, that any child can die from!
I am mad! I am sad! My brain is on overload from all of my mixed emotions!
Today, I am still numb! 💔💔💔💔
My mind keeps saying I wish I could have saved you but then my heart says you didn’t need saving, you needed healing and that was the one thing I couldn’t do.
You kept saying God was talking to you, calling you home,
I prayed endlessly for him to heal you and I have to accept this was His way. That your story was already written in His book of life.
Until we meet again my sweet boy, I love you!
I am certain he didn't want to leave. He didn't want to die. But suicidal people have extremely distorted thinking. They can't remember ever having been happy and can't imagine being happy again. My baby was in enormous emotional pain.
Tragically, he couldn't imagine another way to escape his all consuming pain. His mind was broken. His thinking was not rational or rooted in reality.
I'm not a mind reader: these are things people who have survived a suicide attempt say.
My son died of a mental health disease. His death didn't mean that he didn't love us and wanted to leave but he just didn’t know how to stay 💔❤️🩹
I said “God I hurt”
God said “I know my child”
I said “ I cry a lot”
God said “that’s why I gave you tears”
I said “God life is hard”
God said “that’s why I gave you loved ones”
I said “but my son has died”
God said “ and so did mine”
I said “but God your son now lives”
God said “and so does yours”
I said “God your son is by your side”
God said “and yours is in my arms” 🙏
I could allow the grief to bury me alive.
Just let the loss of you
crush whatever’s left of me.
But you’re not a memory,
you’re a light still shining.
Burning bright, and something I carry with me.
When I speak of you,
I do so without remorse.
I beam with pride.
I speak of your exuberance.
I give them your energy.
I tell them you were art embodied.
Dancing avant-garde, bold and beautiful. Where you went, sunshine followed.
I tell them that you made life musical.
Every smile, a song.
Every laugh, a celebration.
Your life, your light,
changed me in the greatest of ways.
All the love shared between us doesn’t cease simply because you’re not beside me.
You’re within me.
My skin and bones.
My heart and soul.
The air I breathe.
The sun I stand beneath.
You are all around.
You are everything that made me.
And that sort of light never fades.
I'll take all the love we shared,
and continue sharing it.
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