I received a letter from a dear friend one year, when I was searching for comfort after a loved one of mine died as a result of suicide. The letter was given to our family with the thought that it might give comfort, and as a talisman of sorts…to relieve us from the sorrow and secrecy that come as a part of the legacy of suicide. I’d like to share with you an exert of this letter with you.
Where do we begin. How do we begin to understand, comprehend or even accept that someone we love is gone and a victim of suicide… We can look at the statistics. It is estimated that every 17 minutes, someone in the United States takes his or her life. And for each loss there are dozens of people affected by the loss, people who then live the rest of their lives as survivors of this devastating event. Suicide knows no bounds. It affects rich and poor alike, young and old, black and white. It is the third leading cause of death among young adults. Men are much more likely to succeed at suicide than are women.
Please understand that the suicidal act is the final event in a journey that started long before the most recent crisis. Suicide is an act that is carried out, not as a way to die, (for most people who make suicide attempts do not desire death) but as a solution, a way to escape unbearable psychological pain. And in the end, the individual’s inner demons are expressed through their obsessions their continuous thoughts about all the things that have gone wrong, … and real or imagined failures. In this state, an individual’s mind plays and replays all of the negatives, all of the sorrows, all of the regrets. They rehearse their struggles over and over again in their mind, each time ending up with a profound sense of hopelessless. Their attempts to deal with their problems depletes their energy. The repetitious thoughts only further distort and twist their perceptions. They play their troubles over and over again in their mind, like a celloist, practicing scales , up and down, each time with a new angle perceived, but each time ending in the same place, with only a profound sense of despair for their efforts. Their ability to perceive their situation accurately is severely damaged. Finally, the suicidal mind finds no other escape from pain, no ability to call on those who could comfort, no way of calling upon positives, self worth or past accomplishments. No way out.
And so we ask WHY… why did it happen….hoping that if we can guess the answers, we will heal. And we calculate the multitudes of factors that might have contributed to the horrific tragedy, we search our hearts for clues, exploring the endless possibilities, like detectives trying to put together the pieces of a complex, inexplicable puzzle. And in the end, we can never know all of the answers….because it is only when we tire of the fruitless search or are satisfied with partial answers, that we are ready to let go and begin to move on. . We gain insights that we did not have before. But eventually the process of asking the questions leads us into our grief, down a long and difficult journey of exploration and understanding, down a path that eventually, eventually….takes us through our grief.
But it is a long journey. Because what had once appeared stable and forever, is suddenly, inexplicably shattered. Much remains uncertain about suicide, yet the one solid truth for everyone is that we cannot walk around the perimeter of our grief. If one is to lead any kind of life of healing and meaning, we must go through it, to the heart of the loss….the core of our grief. We can delay this ,we can deny this, and even ignore it… but grief will wait for us …
So we start the journey. And as we go through the process, we experience myriads of emotions, often washing over us like waves from the ocean…without even understanding why those thoughts and feelings occur. There really are no set stages of grief, because everyone experiences the stages of healing and recovery differently. Yet there are outlines, and the states of shock, disbelief, denial, anger, bargaining, resolution and letting go are well known. Still, all these phases of grief overlap, and often circle back upon us, reminding us that this is a process with no set or predictable endpoint and no way of calculating when we will be able to see our life as being normal again.
And of course, it won’t be….normal again. A new normal perhaps, but we are forever affected. The process of grief and healing is gradual and slow, with moments of returning sadness and anger. There may always be this…, yet eventually there is a growing past the grief, to a new place of strength and resilience of spirit. In fact, there are times that some of the greatest periods of growth emerge from the ashes left in the wake of tragedy. …
Still, this thought seems absurd and the words ring hollow to us as we are forced to face the death of our loved one.
Asking how long it takes to grieve, is like asking “how high is up,” But the first year is about coping with devastation. Little is remembered, and much is a blur. Our anger becomes a reflection of how much we loved the one we’ve lost. As time passes, we experience feelings so intense that we are knocked off guard, propelled into feelings that we yearn to escape…but must endure. And the years pass. And then, just as we begin to think that we have finished, it may come flooding back from time to time. We struggle, we question, we might grieve differently than others, and it may be a long while before we can genuinely trust again.
But time and healing really do ease the pain and we gradually begin to find small moments of joy. We allow ourselves to dare to laugh, see the colors of the beautiful world around us. (Colors really do become muted and dull during periods of extreme grief.) And we begin to understand… but more importantly, we begin to believe that our grief is better expressed through our loving messages to the one we’ve lost, than mourning indefinitely in a state of intractable grief. For we did not loose our loved one because of our mistakes or inadequacies. We may even begin to take comfort in knowing that our loved one is no longer suffering and embroiled in intolerable pain.
… And so, we make a choice… to die with our loved ones,…. to live on….crippled by our loss, or to forge out of our pain and memory, new adaptations.
For each of us, we must find positive ways to grieve, reaching out to others, telling our story….staying active and in touch with those we love. Acknowledging and learning to understand our feelings. Sharing our pain, especially if we are in trouble. In the final analysis it is important that we seek out joy and happiness and finally peace….in all those parts of Life that are apart from, but that may be indebted to Grief.
