Daisy Coleman’s mom grieved for 4 months. Then, like her daughter, she died by suicide
The last post on Melinda Coleman’s Facebook page Sunday was full of family photos, a walk down a happy memory lane.
A photo of herself with her only daughter, Daisy, and several others of Daisy as a young girl, dancing on stage. A couple of old photos showed her late husband, Dr. Michael Wayne Coleman, smiling with their babies. They had four children.
Coleman’s words, though, held no joy, and there had been little happiness for her since Aug. 4, the summer night Daisy took her life.
Daisy had became a celebrated and passionate advocate for victims of sexual violence after she accused a high school classmate in Maryville, Missouri, of sexual assault in 2012. She was 14 at the time and fought to rid herself of the demons haunting her.
Her mother struggled, too.
“There aren’t enough I love yous I could have said when I was holding your cold, broken, dead body,” Daisy’s mother posted Sunday. “I held you like a baby anyway, my baby. The baby I held when you first came into this world. It has always been my greatest honor and joy to be your mother and best friend. Mama bear!”
Coleman, who lived in the Independence area, died by suicide apparently within hours of writing that, her family said, four months and two days after her daughter’s death.
Friends, clearly in shock, have left messages to Coleman and her two surviving sons on her Facebook page. “Prayers for Logan and Charlie,” wrote one.
Coleman was a veterinarian, and people thanked her, too, for taking care of their pets.
This is the third death in the Coleman family in the last two years.
A shockwave
What happened to Daisy Coleman was the centerpiece of the 2016 Netflix documentary “Audrie & Daisy,” a gut-wrenching look at teenage sexual assault, cyberbullying and suicide that won a prestigious Peabody Award.
Daisy went on to help create the advocacy group SafeBAE — Safe Before Anyone Else, working to stop sexual assault among middle and high school students. She spoke to thousands of people through her work with the group and promoting the documentary.
“She turned herself into a walking billboard to make sure that crap didn’t happen to somebody else while she was grieving her own thing,” her older brother, Charlie Coleman, one of SafeBAE’s founders, said after Daisy died. “She was selfless with it.”
The news that Daisy’s mother was gone, too, sent a shockwave through the group, which announced Coleman’s death Sunday night on social media with a “trigger warning,” telling followers, “if you are struggling with trauma or depression, you are not alone. There is always help and support available. We are with you.”
Shael Norris, the group’s executive director, found out in a phone call from Charlie Coleman, who lives in the Northland.
“I wish I could say it was entirely unexpected, but it wasn’t,” said Norris, who watched Melinda Coleman struggle with the grief of losing her daughter.
“This is the collateral damage of sexual violence. It’s so much further-reaching than anyone has even begun to look at.
“But we have to face it for what it is, which is the profound and decades-long impact of what happens when people ‘boys-be-boys’ this shit, and make it out like it’s not something that destroys entire families.”
Norris said she’s been working on setting up a Facebook page, through SafeBAE, for the parents of sexual assault victims.
“I think maybe the lesson is to build communities and provide a space for survivors and their parents to really support one another,” said Norris, who created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Coleman’s funeral expenses.
Coleman’s 19-year-old son Tristan died in June 2018 while he was driving back to Missouri after helping Daisy move to Colorado. Coleman was a passenger in the car, which crashed on Interstate 70 in western Kansas.
Her husband had died in a car crash in 2007. He and Tristan shared a birthday, Nov. 26, which this year happened to fall on Thanksgiving.
Coleman’s last Facebook posts, six on Sunday, were all about her family.
One appeared to be a poem by Tristan, written on a page torn from a notebook. Another was a message for “Catherine Daisy” from her physician father intended “for a time capsule,” written right after she turned 9, a recollection of the Easter day she was born.
On Saturday, Coleman marveled that Charlie, recently engaged, knows “quotes from ‘The Notebook’ that he says to his fiancée that I don’t know.”
Marking the four-month anniversary of Daisy’s death a few days ago, her mother challenged people “to be kind and lift up others in pain, especially sexual assault survivors and those hopeless in this holiday season.
“Send out light and love and protect each other and I will protect and pray for anyone who needs it. Let’s make this a Daisy Day filled with light, hope and love. Let’s work toward a justice system that stops failing the victims of rape.”
‘No words for our sadness’
Just days before Coleman died, Norris had asked her to speak to students during a Zoom meeting run by SafeBAE. Norris thought it would help Coleman see the fruits of her daughter’s work.
“So she jumped on the call and talked to all the kids, and the thing she texted me was how beautiful that was to just be able to see it herself,” said Norris.
“She just said thank you for giving me that, and I love you. And that was her last text.”
On Sunday, SafeBAE posted about Coleman’s death on both Facebook and Instagram:
“We are in shock and disbelief to share with our SafeBAE family, that we lost Melinda Coleman to suicide this evening,” the group’s statement said. “The bottomless grief of losing her husband, Tristan, and Daisy was more than she could face on most days.”
“More than anything, she loved and believed in her children,” the statement continued. “It is no accident that she created some of the most gifted, passionate, and resilient children. Our hearts are forever with Logan & Charlie.”
Four days before she died, she showed her Facebook followers the headstone she had chosen for her daughter’s grave. She addressed the post to Daisy: “Here it is Belle. I hope it’s what you like.”
Carved into the shiny dark marble are two hands reaching toward each other and three Latin words: “Veni, vidi, vici.”
I came, I saw, I conquered.
If you need help
▪ The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The free help is available in English and Spanish. 800-273-8255.
▪ The National Sexual Assault Hotline is free and confidential, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Live chat is available at Rain.org. 800-656-4673 (HOPE).
▪ SafeBAE — SafeBAE.org — is a student-led organization, co-founded by Daisy Coleman, working to end sexual assault among middle and high school students. It gives students tools to become activists and raise awareness about dating violence, sexual harassment and assault, Title IX rights and bystander intervention.
This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 12:05 PM.
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