CARRYING ON AFTER SUICIDE

by Bob Sheldon, Westerlo, New York

As I look into the beautiful face of my five-year-old niece, she brings me much joy.  Yet there are also silent sighs of sadness as I remember her father’s death.  Her father, my brother-in-law, completed suicide in 1995.

When I listen to the voice of my best friend’s brother on the phone, and he reports the latest positive changes in his life, it brings me encouragement.  But I also feel disappointment as I reflect on why I am talking to my best friend’s brother and not to him.  His brother, my very best friend since childhood, committed suicide two years ago.

I could never have prepared for the shock of the suicide of someone I love, nor the aftershocks that keep vibrating in the very core of my existence.  The initial damage causes much confusion, but over time, when one is able to step back and survey the damage, one sees that the devastation of suicide is greater than first anticipated.  Life is forever changed.  Nothing will ever be the same again.  There is no going back, and there are no quick fixes for what is ahead.  There are no easy answers.  Suicide is a knockout punch.  Two suicides threatened to keep me down for the count.

As one who works with troubled youth as a profession, I have studied suicide and know the statistics.  I have counseled suicidal youth and parents.  But I really didn’t know about suicide until the impossible, the unthinkable, “It can’t happen to someone I love” became a reality.  Two of the very closest people to me on earth, two of my key relationships, two of “my people,” chose to end their lives within the span of fifteen months.

My brother-in-law, Chris, and my best friend, Bill, were very different people, but they each chose suicide.  Different paths eventually led to the same end.  I gave the eulogies at both funerals.  I quickly learned what suicide was all about, not from study but from life.  Not secondhand but a first-heart experience, that gave way to a bruised, battered and broken heart. As John Claypool reflects, “Just like a broken leg, a broken heart heals slowly and cannot stand much touching right after the break.”

It takes so long, and we wonder if our hearts will ever be made whole or be healed.  I’d like to believe that Ernest Hemingway’s statement, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.”  As a person of faith, I call out to Jesus to heal my broken heart and lighten the deep hurt within me.

I am reminded of the prayer of the psalmist who cried out to God, “When I called, you answered me, you made me bold and stouthearted.” (Psalm 136:3.)  Though one needs to be stouthearted and determined to come out on the other side of this terrible darkness, every part of me wanted to flee from the suffocating darkness that hung over my head.  Sometimes I still want to turn around and run.

Yet it seems to me that the only way out of this grief is through it – not around, under, over, or retreating from it.  I must let the deep pain hurt.  I must sorrow.  I must question.  I must cry.  I must unload on friends and not keep this bottled up in me.  The darkness is so great, and I am afraid.  Yet I know I cannot outrun it.

It’s like an metaphor I once heard:  “As the sun is setting, the darkness is coming, and if I try to outrun the darkness and keep running west, the sun will surely set and I will be left in the dark.  I cannot outrun or avoid the darkness.  But if I decide to face the darkness and run east, it will be dark, but eventually I will run into the sunrise and into the light.”

I am able to choose which direction I will go.  I have very little control over whether another person chooses to live or die, but I can choose the direction of my own life.  Since the darkness is unavoidable, I can absorb it and learn what it has to offer.  It is only by stepping into the darkness that I can ever hope to see the sun come out again.

As I survey the landscape of lives in the aftermath of suicide, I see some shattered lives because poor choices were made.  Survivors are physically alive, but they have also committed a sort of suicide.  Their former lives are unrecognizable, and they are dead to things they once held dear.  They have not recovered.  Then I see others who were shocked into living better lives and have chosen to be different now.  Why the difference?  I’m not sure I know.

I do know that avoiding the reality is not the path to take.  The narrow path, the uphill climb, the facing of the darkness, is the slow road.  It’s slow because grieving is such exhausting work.  One must trudge through all sorts of stuff to move on, because it’s an uphill climb and it’s uncharted territory. We haven’t been there before.  No one can prepare for this marathon of misery.  We have been suddenly thrust into this exhausting race wondering if we will get our second wind.

Since I couldn’t prepare for this ahead of time, I must look to others who have been thrown into this race as I was – others who have experienced the death of a loved one through suicide.  How did they climb the mountains that they faced?  How did they stumble through the darkness without falling off the narrow path?  How did they manage to take another breath when they felt suffocated?  How did they come out on the other side?

Questions with no easy answers, but questions that need to be asked out loud to allow us to tell our stories.  There is a healing in speaking about suicide, by calling on our memories and using metaphors.  Suicide is a harsh word, but it is fitting because it is such a harsh loss.  Speaking about it breaks not only the silence and secrecy but the chains that hold me back and threaten to choke the life out of me as well.

I will continue to remember these two precious ones I lost to suicide.  I will continue to tell their stories and my story to those brave enough to listen.  I will continue to acknowledge my loss and admit that when they died, some things deep within me died as well.

I will continue to help those who are losing their hope, not to choose suicide, for I know the devastation and multiplication of pain it causes.  I will continue to trudge through my rocky road.  I will walk on with those who have lost as I have and help them on their journey.  I will keep looking into the eyes of my beautiful niece even if I see her father.  I will keep talking on the phone to Bill’s brother even if I hear Bill’s voice.  I will continue on.

I will carry on.

Bereavement Magazine, Jan/Feb/2000

reprinted with permission from Bereavement Publishing Inc., 4765 North  Carefree Circle, Colorado Springs, CO 80917, 888-604-4673, www.bereavementmag.com

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