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Click on the link below to read various articles pertaining to how to cope with the loss of a loved one through suicide. This article has been taken directly from the American Association of Suicidology and Lifeline Melbourne's brochure 'Survivors of Suicide'. For copies of this brochure, contact Lifeline Melbourne on (03) 9662 1677 or the Grief Counselling and Support Unit of the Victorian State Coroner's Office on (03) 9684 4444.
For 24 hour telephone counselling in this area please contact Crisis Care on 131 611 or Lifeline on 131 114.
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Survivors of Suicide
For all the talk about it, suicide is still a fairly rare event...
But if you've lost someone to suicide, there are some things it might help to know...
Most people won't ever know anyone who ended his or her own life. So most people don't think very much about it. Most people don't have to. And most people have never thought about what it is like to "survive" the suicide death of a loved one, relative or friend. If you're like most people, you probably didn't think that much about it either. So it's little wonder that now, in addition to your sorrow, you are confused and uncertain about many things. What to say to others, especially children. What to do about religious services. What to expect as you grieve. What to expect from others who are grieving at the same time. How to explain this to someone else. How to explain this to yourself.
It might help to know that this mixture of sadness, bewilderment, and uncertainty is common among people who have lost someone to suicide. Unfortunately, most people grieving a loss to suicide don't know this.
The information in this article is adapted from a pamphlet prepared by people just like you, people who have lost someone to suicide. It was prepared for people like you, ordinary people confronting a very difficult and unusual event. It doesn't offer any easy solutions to the difficult situations you face. It doesn't take away pain, or anger, or sorrow. It just tells you what we know about surviving a suicide from our own experience.
First some facts...
Every suicide affects many people - family members, friends, peers, co-workers and the community at large. With an annual average of 2,500 deaths in Australia recorded as suicides in recent years, at lest 100,000 peole in this country have been personally touched by the suicide of someone they know during the past decade. That is the equivalent of a full house at the MCG on Grand Final Day. Yet, until recently, most of us didn't know each other and didn't know that there were others like us out there. Fortunately that's changing now and that's good because it holds out the hope that understanding and help are at hand.
Surviving a suicide is a slow, step-by-step process. You usually don't notice the first few steps; they're so tiny. But they're there. Just keeping a copy of this article is one. Something within you wanted at least to find it, if only to know it was available. Reading this page is another tiny step. These small steps add up one by one.
Although they may seem trivial, they are actually the blocks you will use to build your own road back to a life no longer dominated by grief. When survivors talk about the first moments of recovery, it is these tiny steps we recall. Things like getting dressed ont he day after the funeral... or picking the clothes up off the floor. Like opening the mail.. or answering the phone. Cutting the lawn, watching the news, making dinner, making a phone call. In the beginning you take very few of them, and most perplexing of all, what is a tiny step for some is a giant step for others. What's easy for one father (like returning to work, for example) may seem to require all the energy in his being for another. Grief itself is exhausting and keeps you from moving too quickly. Still, most of us recall a day when we looked back and were surprised at just how far we had come. What got us through those first few hours, nights, weeks and months was probably different for eacho fus and will be unique for you as well. But when we later talked to each other about our experiences, we did have some things in common. It's those common experiences we now watn to share with you.
This is a small gift: words, print, paper. But we know it must be small in order for you to feel able to take it. It's another of those tiny steps, and of course, it's up to you to know when you are ready to take it. Some of the things we're going to tell you are things we ourselves learned and then forgot when we were in the midst of our grief. You'll probably forget some of them too, every once in a while. That's okay for now. You'll get back on track soon enough.
So here are some things we as survivors remember about the grief process:
Regardless of how your loved one died, you have to go through a period of mourning and grief. Researchers now tell us that this can take a fairly long time for some people. There just isn't any gauge or measure of how long you will feel pain after your loss. It helps to think of its as something that might happen to your body after an operation or accident. Once the shock or anaesthetic wears off, the most intense pain occurs. This usually passes fairly quickly, but a low level of pain will endure for some time as you slowly take the time you need to recuperate. You will probably not be able to function at full force while this recuperation is taking place. Grief is highly indiviual. Everyone grieves in his or her own way. We remember hearing people talking about the "stages of grief" or "normal mourning" and wondering how we were doing relative to these criteria. We didn't realise that these were just convenient ways for scientists to study grief. They were talking about averages in the same way they talk about the average height and weight. If you're a woman and you are 170 cm tall, you're not average, but your'e not abnormal either. So some of the things we present in this article may not apply to you. Some different things may not apply to your spouse or to others in your family.
Another thing we rmember is how surprised we were to discover that we did not recover in a simple way. Clear progress one day did not assure progress the next.
Nor did all the gains we made one month stay with us the next. Some things never went away. Some disappeared for a long time and then came up again unexpectedly. We learned that this was typical of grief. It often proceeds along its own choppy, zigzag way, taking detours away fromt he main road to recover.
We remember too, that we often had no hope. It seemed an easy thing to lose at times. What was there to hope for? What could possibly get better? How could we betray our loved one's memory by looking forward to a future without him or her? But it was there often. Expressed in many tiny ways. Hope the kids will do okay in school. Hope the dinner will not take too long to prepare. Hope I won't have to answer any questions today. These are little signs of hope, which eventually grow into the more recognisable kinds of hope - hope in a future that is no longer saturated with sorrow.
Shock
"We were in shock... just shock..."
The first thing most of us remember was the shock. Some say it was as if numbness took over their emotional systems. Iris Bolton in her book 'My Son... My Son...' describes her reaction after her son's suicide in this way: "As we drove to the hospital I'd begun to feel what I could only call the breath of death. I can't explain it but it struck me like a cold draft, maybe like novacaine strikes an exposed nerve, and it paralysed my tongue and blocked my hearing. If Norm and I spoke en route, I have no recollection of it. Emotions, I once learned, can perform a lobotomy as effectively as any brain sugeon's knife."
This initial numbness typically affects only the emotions and not the intellect. Thus, many of us remember making logical decisions such as calling the police or talking to the funeral director. We were able to do very complex things as if we weren't affected in the least. How odd this must have looked to others around us. Did they confuse this level-headedness with detachment? We ourselves did. We thought... "How can I be doing this when my child is dead? Maybe I don't really care. Maybe I didn't really love her." But it didn't mean that at all. We were just in shok. Although you may find it to be a frightening sensation to lose your ability to feel, the numbness actually serves a useful purpose - it allows you to continue to function under overwhelming stress.
Denial
"After we came home from the hospital I began making the food she liked. I thought that somehow if I made what she always liked she would be alright. Then I put the food on the table and waitied..."
Just as shock is a normal protective reaction to trauma, denial - or not letting yourself believe what has happened - can also serve a positive function. For us it served to limit the amount of pain we had to handle at any one time. It helped to put off for a little while the effects of the terrible blow we had been dealt. Sometimes this can be comforting. The desire to be with Patrice then led Anne to be convinced that she saw her in unexpected places such as in a passing car or walking away on the street. Some of these experiences were so real they made us question our own sanity. This king of denial is common to all grief. Sometimes the thought of suicide was so disturbing and unimaginable that we became temporarily convinced that the death was really an accident or a homicide. Many of us believed in some sort of conspiracy theory for a while. And we found that just when we were finally ready to accept that suicide had taken our loved one, someone else in the family had another theory that sounded very plausible. Some of us went back and forth for several months. Others for years. Even when the facts were supposedly undeniable we were still able to deny. This is a kind of denial that is special to suicide survivors.
Denial is the mind's response to a threat of danger and to the fear of losing control. Eventually letting in the dreadful facts is a step toward realising that you don't have to, and in fact can't control everything.
Shame
"I couldn't face my friends and tell them how Nick died. I was sure they would have thought me a horrible wife. I couldn't help feeling I was, even though I knew otherwise."
Some survivors agonise about what and how much to tell people about a suicide. Many of us were reluctant to discuss suicide with outsiders. We thought they might react uncomfortably and even negatively to the death of our loved one. In acting in this way we were responding the way survivors had acted for centuries.
The roots of this sense of stigma go back very far in many cultures. Suicide was seen as breaking both religious and civil laws in our and other socieities. Even though it has been quite a while since these laws have been in effect, the sense of stigma has persisted. Recently, however, our society has become much less blaming of survivors. Suicide is dicussed openly in the media, prominent survivors have spoken out publicly and support groups have emerged all across the country. In this more understanding climate, survivors are finding it easier to be honest with themselves and with others about the death. This is important to healing because when we felt compelled to disguise the facts surrounding the death, we often found ourselves cut off from people who might have been helpful to us.
Guilt
"I never let him use my blaster. Maybe if I let him, he'd be around now."
The survivors of most deaths experience some sense of guilt. This comes from a feeling that it is somehow unfair that we are still alive while our loved one has suffered and died. Additionally, it is rare not to feel that we could have been nicer or done more for the deceased. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes quite intense, guilt is almost always part of the picture when any death occurs. For survivors of suicide, the intensity of guilt feelings is often greatly out of proportion to our contribution to the event. Some of us remember this self-blaming as a way of not feeling helpless.
We remember the conversations we had with ourselves and with others. Conversations that began with the phrases "if only...." or "what if...". We constructed a thousand ways in which our actions or words - if only different - would have saved the loved one. Sometimes we focused on one detail (a normal act such as going to work the day the love one died) and, like Ron's brother Michael, became obsessed that this was the crucial action that could have changed the outcome.....
To read this article in it's entirety, please contact Lifeline Melbourne on (03) 9662 1677 or the Grief Counselling and Support Unit of the Victorian State Coroner's Office on (03) 9684 4444.
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