Responses of people to suicide

Photo by Kenny Orr on Unsplash

I read this today and I wanted to share:

A person said that suicide is

“…a loss unlike any other and no one can possibly ever understand the complexities of this level of grief unless they’ve been through it.”

I appreciate the words - “the complexities of this level of grief.”

It is so true - that unless you’ve lived it, you can’t really imagine it.

This is true perhaps of most losses - the loss of a child, for example.

But because of the stigma and social taboo, with suicide, it’s extra tricky, because people don’t want to think about suicide.

Though, sometimes, honestly -

I think that though it frustrates me and saddens me that people can be so unwilling to want to think about something that they never have to even live through - I also realize this —

Sometimes it’s worse when people respond with pity.

I wrote about this a few years ago, wrestling with why this felt so ‘icky’ and this is why.

Because pity, unlike sorrow or grief or heartfelt condolences, it comes with an element of feeling superior and/or removed from your situation -

Ie- I don’t understand what you’re feeling and experiencing because I could never experience that myself.

It’s delusional, of course, suicide could and does affect most anyone.

It’s not just reserved for those who think that those family have not enough faith or are weak or have severe mental illness that could never touch my family.

And suicides happen often, and they do affect an awful lot of people, a lot more people than we ever want to admit.

Pity removes a shared humanity that we all face in grief and loss and death; it can imply that your loss is untouchable to/for me, and this is why it rattled me.

It also can be tied to people who…want to see the drama and the wreckage.

Now, I know that that sounds ugly, believe me. I do.

But there are those people.

One of them came to the visiting hours of my father, a relative -

And when I failed to act like she thought properly, she tried to induce a reaction -

“Are you okay?”

I confirmed that I was, stoic, getting through the line - I fell apart later.

She sized me up and down…

Then she said, “Because…

Your dad DID just die.”

She didn’t say he offed himself but she might as well have.

She meant to remind me that it was not just that he died but that it was untimely and tragic and shocking and that that was why we were all here.

As if I could forget or not recall.

But - we all deal with grief differently. With shock and trauma differently.

I’m calm in a storm.

And my displays of grief do not have to be on display or match with your expectations of how I ought to be performing in such a circumstance.

I don’t understand people who are like this.

I am glad I can’t. That they are foreign to me.

I don’t want to show up to bear witness to wreckage and then when it fails to transpire to try to elicit it forth from someone who is already carrying such a weight of loss.

But I am intuitive and perceptive and can tell you, it was indeed palpable- the way she eyed me, paused, studied me, and then the way she chose and punched her words, the way that I failed to react and she continued to watch me, wait it out, to see if I would dissolve and cry.

And I failed to give her the reaction she was waiting for.

So, whether it’s the need for drama or the air of pity - these are sometimes the responses.

I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but I think you can tell a lot about people who have never had a suicide in their family by how they react to another’s suicide loss.

Most people will be awkward to some degree. I don’t blame them.

Many are shocked. (Understandable)

Devastated. (Appreciate that)

Some say “I can’t even imagine…what you’re going through.” (some sympathy and acknowledgment that they can’t.) (Good—Kind, because, yes you can’t)

All of these are completely understandable emotions and responses.

And then you see others.

I think back on those visiting hours during the time of my father’s death and I think this -

I was so used to performing and managing, as a hero of the alcoholic family, and I did it so well. I learned well.

I also think that I realized that suicide and why we were here made other people uncomfortable, so I tried my best to appear/be okay and to ease the conversation along - and this surprised people.

But I an hypersensitive and intuitive and aware - I knew that death is never a happy occasion but in times like these, as I said, people grow all the more socially awkward, and I have always been the one to try to ease those social encounters. So I did my best.

You may think that in doing so I denied my own grieving, but to be honest, I don’t think I did.

I fell apart on my own and behind closed doors, away from my mother, at the end of the day, I gave myself that time.

But I also knew that these people couldn’t help me.

When you experience a suicide loss, because of the stigma and taboo and horrific nature and — as this person commented - the complexities of this grief - a veil is drawn, between you and others who have lost parents or a loved one in ‘a more natural way’ and they simply don’t get it.

The others that do - it often times feels like the only ones that can/do are the ones who also have lost someone to suicide.

We share a solidarity that most others will never know -

And so, regardless of who you lost by suicide, your culture or position in the world, your age or gender or income or other walk in life, we have a way of all nodding in agreement, to some degree, more than others -

And it’s a relief, I’ll be honest, to finally find those ‘who get it’.

And it is for them, and myself, and others who don’t even know yet that they need this type of community, that -

I write.