About Portland: After Her Son's Suicide, A Mother Keeps Living

Be aware. This is the story of a 15-year-old boy who was so afraid that one afternoon he went into the basement of his home, took a gun belonging to his father, put a bullet in the chamber and killed himself.

It is not a happy story.

What the story of Nikolaus Alexander Rustigan can be, however, is a story with a happy ending. His mom thinks that if even one person hears the story, reaches out to someone, and that person is helped, things will be better.

“I was so heartbroken and devastated,” Nikki Rustigan says on the phone from her driveway in Southeast Portland. “It’s only recently that I am beginning to come out on the other side, able to talk about what happened.”

It was Feb. 3, and Nikki was at her home in Tigard.

“I was in my home office,” she says. “I was working as a corporate travel agent and the phone rang. It was the school telling me that Nick was in trouble and I needed to come in right away.”

She dropped everything and went to the school where her son, 15 years old but already 6-foot-4 with size 14 feet, was outside the office of the school resource officer — the in-house police officer — sitting quietly, terrified.

“He really was such a gentle giant. Always smiling,” she remembers. “But not this time. He was afraid and he was shaking. I was very upset with him.”

Inside with the resource officer was Nick’s girlfriend. No teacher. No counselor. No parent. She had shared some photos that one day she may wish she hadn’t, and word had made it to the resource officer. She wanted to know if she had shared the photos with anyone else.

Yes, she said, with her boyfriend, Nick. He was pulled from class.

“I was so angry with him,” Nikki says. “I wasn’t thinking straight. The officer had told him that possession of these photos was very serious stuff and he could be prosecuted, that it was a sex crime.

“It didn’t even occur to me to ask the officer why she was talking to students about crimes without a parent present. When she asked him to turn over photos, it didn’t occur to me to ask for a warrant. There’s a lot I wish I had done.”

Nikki made it clear to her son that he was in trouble, that he was grounded, that what he was being accused of could lead to him being forced to register as a sex offender.

“He was so shaken up,” she says. “This was a kid who always had a smile, who was was always so happy. He understood that he was in trouble, that he had done something wrong.

“The thing is, what did he really do that was wrong, that was so different than what teenagers have always done? The real difference is that they have technology that we didn’t have when they were age.”

These are thoughts that have come to Nikki recently. Back in February, she was mad — she told her son he couldn’t see his girlfriend again, he would have to miss some basketball games — and she wanted him to know that.

“At the same time, I made it clear that whatever it took, we would get through it,” she says. “If we had to get a lawyer, we would get a lawyer. We would do what it takes.”

Apparently, it wasn’t enough.

“He came home from school the next day and he wasn’t happy,” she says. “I could see that. What I couldn’t see was how unhappy he was.”

Nikki asked her son to take their Chesapeake Bay retriever outside and brush him out.

“The dog was shedding everywhere,” she remembers. “I saw him leave his room. And that was the last time I saw him alive.”

A little while later, Nikki — who had been working — went looking for her son.

“I started calling for him,” she remembers, sobs making it hard to get the words out, filling the conversation with sorrow, regret. “I was so afraid that he had run away. I started thinking about how much more he had been hurting than I realized.

“Then I went into basement and turned the corner and saw my baby lying there.”

Her son had good grades. He had good friends. He had hobbies.

“It wasn’t just basketball,” she says. “He was interested in so much. He had started to learn how to cook. He wanted me to open a food cart.”

She says her BBQ steak and asparagus was his favorite.

“He had found a recipe online for a really special mac and cheese that he liked to make for his friends. He had so much.”

What he also had — that she could not see — was a sense of despair and fear that he could not vocalize.

That’s why on Saturday, Nikki and her family will be walking by the waterfront as part of the Out of the Darkness walk for Suicide Awareness and Prevention in Portland.

“Since he died, I have worried about his friends,” she says. “That’s how teenagers are. One does something and you never know whether others will follow, what they will do. I’ve made it clear to them all that as long as I have a roof, they have a roof. If they need a place to stay, someone to talk to, I am here.

“My phone is always on.”

Nikki says that some of her son’s friends take her up on it, that they sometimes find it easier to talk with her.

“I may have lost my son, but I have gained all these people,” she says. “They have been here for me, and I am there for them.”

Photos courtesy Nikki Rustigan