Suicide: When the Unbelievable Happens
I have been numb and in a state of shock ever since receiving an ominous email last Thursday from our senior minister. It gave the elders of our church a heads up about the death of one of our well-known, well-loved charter members.
Word of the death spread quickly, both through formal and informal means. Soon I began seeing statements of grief on Facebook, friends openly shocked and hurting.
You see, our friend was young (49), active, deeply involved in church ministry and community efforts, always smiling, obviously in love with her husband and daughters, and always doing things for others. She had spent a week this summer cooking at a youth camp, had helped with VBS, and had started Facebooking.
The idea that she was no longer alive was frankly unbelievable. As word spread, with the family’s permission, that she had taken her own life, that unbelief was taken to still another level. My mind, like the minds of my church friends, was filled with questions, filled with what-ifs, filled with not understanding. While I didn’t know her as well as many others did, she certainly would rank among the least likely people in the whole world who might take their own life.
In my life, I’ve known four people who took their own lives. Each has been a shock, very unexpected. I’ve learned that we won’t get answers to our questions. But that doesn’t make struggling with the questions end.
Sometimes we get some clues though. It was revealed today that she had valiantly battled severe bouts of depression during her life. Depression had been a factor in the life of another of the people I knew who took their own life, and for another, it was discovered post-mortem that he had a previously unknown brain tumor. These clues help us understand a little of what may have contributed to their decisions. But they don’t make the questions go away.
Something our senior minister said at today’s funeral service has helped me though. ”The person who made this decision last Wednesday was not the person we all knew and loved.” He also spoke about extending the grace of forgiveness to her for the loss and pain we are all feeling.
So tonight I’m sad for the family and her many friends. I’m perplexed by the complexity of our bodies that can allow changes that take us completely out of character and have us make tragic decisions. I’m resigned to not understanding, to not being capable of understanding. And I’m thankful for the grace of God, given freely to us, which makes it easy for us to extend grace to others.
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My husband made the same decision a few weeks ago. One of the hardest moments of my life was telling our children. How do you explain to children that their dad killed himself and make it okay? I did my best, but…we still hurt.
I understand that he wanted to be rid of his pain. The problem with pain is that it never really ends – it only transfers. Now I feel as though I’m trying to hold back a wall of pain, trying to keep the pain from seeping down through the generations. It’s impossible. I have one child who is terrified that I will disappear also. Will they ever recover? Will I?
I’ve felt desperate to make sense of this. I’ve searched and searched everywhere for a note, checked phone records, examined receipts, reviewed all of the clues I missed, felt guilty for not being able to stop him, hated him for the things he did, loved him for the person he could have been, been angry with God, been angry with myself, begged and pleaded for one more day, wished our last words could have been different, felt that the thing I want the most is just beyond my reach, felt betrayed, felt forgotten, felt his hatred, imagined again and again his last few hours/moments/seconds and felt his pain. And yet it changes nothing.
I get tired of being strong. I don’t want to care, or think, or feel. I don’t want to deal with the rude comments and the people who avoid us in the grocery store as if suicide might be “catching”. I don’t want to hear the false rumors about what “really” happened that night. I don’t want one more teacher to ask my children to tell the class about their family or to write about their summer vacation. I want the time/space/permission to fall apart and let someone else pick up the pieces. But I can’t. I don’t have that choice. I have to be here, taking care of things – telling my children that everything will be okay and one day we will hurt less. And I try to convince them that the things I say are true. I try to convince myself.
Thank you so much for this comment. It gives me and others real insight into what it’s like to be the person left behind to try to pick up the pieces. What you have written deserves to be read by a wider audience than reads comments, so I’ve quoted your comment in a new post. Blessings as you grieve and heal.