Jordan "JJ" Maye
Age 178 Mar 2025
Ocean Springs, Mississippi (USA)
Suicide
JJ died by suicide.
According to her obituary JJ was born in New York and eventually moved to Georgia. She was a city girl at heart and hoped to move back to New York to become a stylist.
There are many kinds of deaths. The “good death” that we promote in palliative care in which the patient and family are at peace. I see traumatic deaths in the ER, and deaths following weeks of futile ICU care. And then there is suicide.
I had never experienced this kind of death up close until March 8. My transgender, mixed race granddaughter, JJ, committed suicide at our daughter's home nearby. JJ was a troubled soul, likely bipolar with oppositional defiant disorder, but under the care of a therapist and psychiatrist. She transitioned as she started her freshman year in high school, and as a family we did everything we could to support her. Gender confirming care is illegal in Mississippi, so her mom, Kera, took her to Louisiana, and when Louisiana outlawed it, she flew JJ to New York to see a physician there. JJ had just been in the psychiatric unit. Her ongoing out of control and dangerous behavior had us at a loss. Many camps and long-term facilities wouldn't take her unless she went as a male. We asked the psychiatrist for a hospital stay at an inpatient unit, and they said it was unnecessary. Three days later, her mom found her.
The wailing of a mother who has lost her child is unmistakable, and it was audible from outside Kera’s front door. My husband and I, our other daughter Emilee, and a close family friend held Kera and stood vigil at the house. We all know from crime TV that the coroner must come to the house for a dead body, but on a Sunday morning in a small town it takes a very long time. A long time for my dead grandchild to be hanging in the garage. A long time for the neighbors to hide the five and ten-year old siblings at their home. A long time waiting for the authorities to take pictures of the house, interview Kera, and take down JJ’s doctor's names. A long time to finally cut her body down and remove her from the house in a body bag. A long time for my husband and I to untie the pink satin sheet and hide it and the step stool from Kera. A long time to look over the suicide notes before the coroner took those away too.
In my 30 years of medicine, I have relayed death to a lot of people, but never children that young. Kera, Emilee and my husband couldn't do it, they couldn't get the words out. We brought the kids home from the neighbors, but kids are intuitive and had seen the police cars outside, and their little somber faces as they climbed up onto the couch were heart wrenching. I told them JJ had a sickness, and the doctors tried to help her, and they couldn’t, and she died. Pretty abstract for the five-year-old. Pretty painful for the ten-year-old. Tears and vague explanations followed. And as it approached afternoon, the kids were starving.
Kera needed to sleep. The ten-year-old requested Olive Garden. What else do you do when your grandchild commits suicide? Take the other grandchildren out to Olive Garden, of course. We thought it would be a good distraction anyway. Emilee, my husband and I quickly ordered drinks, and the whole lunch took on a surreal experience. More questions from the kids, multiple texts and phone calls for us to answer. And then social media. Within a day our local Facebook page had posts about JJ. Strangers, talking about MY GRANDCHILD’S DEATH, on social media, speculating about the bullying and blaming the school system for not doing enough. Some people blaming us for not doing enough. Some people blaming us for allowing her to live as a female. Emilee kept Kera’s phone, and I played whack-a-mole with Facebook. Every time a post came up, I would kindly ask the person to respect our privacy and give us time to grieve. And then another post would pop up. By Tuesday, Kera made her own announcement and most of the people stopped. We had the funeral to prepare for anyway.
A funeral for a 17-year-old is horrific. Picking out an urn, flowers, music, none of it felt real. Fortunately, JJ had been to church with me on Christmas and commented that the pastor was “a cool chick,” so I knew who to ask. And Pastor Betty helped us through it. Kera asked everyone to wear pink, JJ’s favorite. My husband and I worried that given JJ’s issues, no one would come. We were so wrong. Hundreds of people lined up to pay their respects, tell their stories, and we stood there for 2 hours receiving them. She had so much support at school, several teachers had a safe space for her. Other members of the LGBTQ community came by who didn't even know her. And Pastor Betty had a mis speak-instead of asking for a “moment of meditation,” said a “moment of medication,” bringing a moment of levity. Many in the crowd raised their hands to say they needed medication.
It still doesn’t seem real. This year is so hard. The first Mother’s Day, her birthday, her would be senior year of high school. And my husband and I are still mad. Her suicide is really the ultimate f*** you to us, her family, with whom she fought so much. And now it is Pride Month. Really, Pride month is just about being kind to all people, but why shouldn't all humans be like that every day and not just in June? In her suicide note JJ asked us to tell her story. Kera spoke at our local Pride festival last week. And this is JJ’s story.
https://news.cuanschutz.edu/graduate-school/in-loving-memory-of-jordan-jj-maye
https://www.bradfordokeefe.com/obituaries/jordan-maye
