Waterboy Making sense of my son's suicide

‘The hole gapes still. It always will. And I fall in periodically.’ Durban-based journalist Glynis Horning and her husband Chris woke one Sunday morning to the devastating discovery of their 25-year-old son Spencer dead in his bed. Surrounded by loving family and friends, Horning pieces together the puzzle of his death, writing with a visceral intensity of loss and grief, but also of the joys of celebrating her son’s life. Waterboy will touch anyone who has directly or indirectly experienced this ultimate heartbreak. Her wisdom and insight are extraordinary.

Glynis Horning is an award-winning freelance writer whose assignments have taken her from the townships of apartheid South Africa to the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, from the Amazon jungle to ice floes in Patagonia. Horning is the recipient of the Discovery Health Journalism Award for Best Health Consumer Reporting and Feature Writing, the Pfizer Mental Health Journalism Award and a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She was Galliova Health Writer of the Year in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Nothing could have prepared her for the loss of her son at 25. She lives in Durban with