NATCHEZ — The dead are never further than a memory away, and when you lose someone, it sometimes feels like you’re carrying their memories deep in your skin.

But for Hank Cooley, that’s a reality.

Cooley lost his son Patrick to suicide on Patrick’s 22nd birthday in February 2012. In their effort to memorialize a young man gone too soon, Cooley and 12 other friends and family members went to get tattoos  of a ribbon wrapped in angel wings framed with Patrick’s name and birthday. For eight of the group — including Patrick’s 68-year-old grandmother and 17-year-old brother — it was their first tattoo. The ribbon was orange, Patrick’s favorite color.

“My son had Asperger’s syndrome, and his world was very black and white; there were no shades of gray,” Cooley said. “He was having some problems, and we think he might have developed bipolar disorder, and knowing his personality, he would have researched it and decided it was something he could live with or not, and apparently it was not.”

Six months after his son’s death, Cooley became involved with Out of the Darkness, a national organization dedicated to suicide awareness and prevention. But the members of the local chapter later found out that the national organization did not disburse funds raised in the Miss-Lou back into the area, he said, and have instead opted to form a local group, the Miss-Lou Suicide Survivors.

Starting at 9 a.m. Sept. 7, the group will host its first major fundraising event, a memorial walk at the Concordia Recreation District No. 3 Complex in Vidalia. The walk will end with a balloon release.

The group has applied for non-profit status, and is waiting approval from the IRS, Cooley said.

“We want to work with some organizations to provide counseling services in the area, we want to do some things to help raise awareness — something like billboards — and we want to get involved with the schools to see if we can approach the different clubs or groups to see if we can spread the message of education or prevention,” he said. “We are looking for some type of group or person who can come in and take calls or talk to someone on an as needed basis.”

And just as the group wants to prevent as many suicides as possible, it also wants to be there to help those left behind.

“After a suicide, you feel like you are all alone and this has never happened to anyone else, so we want to be a place we can get together and share stories of our loved ones and remember them in a positive light and encourage each other,” Cooley said. “Since we have all been there, if there are any other suicides in the area, we feel like we want to be available should the families of any other suicide wish to reach out and have someone to vent to, talk to, to be there with them — we are available.”

“We don’t want to intrude on anyone’s privacy, we want to know that we are available if they just want to sit and talk or whatever.”

Since start of efforts to form a Miss-Lou group, the community has been receptive, Cooley said, but the biggest hurdle is that most people were unaware that the former Out of the Darkness group even existed.

“Suicide is still kind of a taboo subject and one that no one wants to talk about or hear about, so education is still going to have to be one of our biggest pushes, to let the community know it is a problem that does exist,” he said.

As the group works to raise money, members are selling yellow and teal memorial bracelets that read “suicide survivors” on one side and “You are not alone” on the other. T-shirts are also available with the group’s logo,  photo of the Mississippi River bridges shrouded in fog.

“I chose the bridge because there is no better symbol of the Miss-Lou, and the fog for the fog that these people who do harm to themselves must be coming out of,” he said.

In addition to the T-shirts and wristbands, the group is also encouraging people to form teams for the walk, Cooley said.

For more information or to order a wristband or T-shirt, contact Cooley at 318- 228-5434, misslousuicidesurvivors@yahoo.com or at www.facebook.com/#!/groups/360675074035897/.