Stroke of fate at Escher-Wyss-Platz: The mother speaks about the loss of her boy

“I just screamed. I screamed for a very, very, very long time,” Susanne Schmetkamp answered in the SRF program “Sternstunde der Nacht” when the moderator asked her how she reacted to the news of her little son’s death.

Tony, not even six years old, was hit by a truck on his way to kindergarten on Escher-Wyss-Platz shortly before Christmas 2022 and died. An accident that shook the city – and almost tore the mother apart. Because that is exactly how the news of the death of one’s own child feels, as Schmetkamp describes in a SRF interview with philosopher Barbara Bleisch She said she ran to the scene of the accident and acted like a wild animal “who had part of her heart ripped out of her body.”

“You live in different realities”

Then comes the feeling of helplessness, “horror and unbelievable pain,” says the mother. During this time, people around the patient are especially needed to help them do the everyday things that they can no longer manage themselves. “For example, I couldn’t go shopping alone. Or take the tram alone. That was all very problematic,” says Schmetkamp in the program. In the interview, she speaks not only as a victim of a tragic stroke of fate, but also as a philosopher and ethicist. Schmetkamp is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Fribourg.

Especially in the case of a sudden death, the mind can no longer keep up. It is as if one lives in different times and realities, she describes. In one reality, life takes its orderly course. In the other reality, there is a standstill or even a sense of loss because something has been radically interrupted.

Not her first loss

Susanne Schmetkamp has had to endure many losses in her life. For example, her father died when she was 13 years old. And almost eleven years ago, the mother of five lost a boy. He also died unexpectedly and suddenly – just one day after birth because the umbilical cord broke. Losing your own children is “like a birth with the opposite sign,” she describes: “As if the child you were physically connected to was being taken out of your body again. But not to live, but to die.”

The fact that the death of one’s own child feels so much more painful than the loss of other people has to do with the unconditional love that parents show their children. “And with our responsibility to care for them,” says the mother and philosopher. It is not just the loss that shakes the parents, but also the feeling of not having been able to protect the child. “That shakes our identity. Feelings of shame and guilt arise.”

«It is not possible to get away from it, at most you can cope»

The grief over Tony’s death a year and a half ago is still very intense. “I don’t even want to say ‘still’, because it may always be like that,” says Schmetkamp. But she is no longer quite as desperate and can work again and focus her attention on her children, her partner, her family and friends. She will never get over Tony’s death – “you can’t get over such intrusions of fate. You can only, if at all, cope with them.”

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