The Aftermath…When a Loved One Dies by Suicide
By Iris Bolton, MA
‘These days are the Winter of the soul…
But Spring comes…
And brings new Life and Beauty…
Because of the growth of the roots in the dark”
The mystery of life and death is beyond understanding. Who could even imagine the sudden death of a child, a sibling, a parent, grandparent, spouse, or friend. And suicide? That event is reported on television and in the newspapers, but it doesn’t happen in your own family, or to people you know…but it does! It happened to me and my husband and our family. On February 19, l977, our world collapsed and changed forever. Our twenty-year-old son, Mitch, ended his life with a gun. The impact on our other three sons and our extended family and friends will never be fully known.
And…here we are many years later, telling our story, and even surviving the terrible loss and the roller coaster grieving process. We expressed every emotion from questioning why, to waves of despair, guilt, anger, shame, resignation, and even a glimmer of hope that we could survive.
How do you survive? How do you live on when your life has been shattered by a trauma such as this? What makes you want to? Why did this happen to a bright, fun-loving, talented and sensitive musician? You keep on asking the question until you have enough hunches and guesses to try to make sense out of it. You find that you have the courage to live on another hour, another day, another week, a month, even a year. You find resilience you never knew you had!
The miracle is that you will do the grief work and you will find others who have survived this horror as well. You may find a support group or get into counseling, and gradually, inch by inch, you begin to heal. You may find
one day that your spirit is different…perhaps transformed. You may begin to realize how precious life is and live in gratitude for what you do have, not what you do not have. Instead of re-living the last moment of your loved one’s life, you may remember the good times. Someone asked me if I would have still birthed Mitch if I had known he would die so young? Of course! At least I knew him for twenty years!
You may begin to feel a desire to connect to others who are just beginning this journey. Perhaps another parent, neighbor, co-worker is suddenly dealing with the suicide of a friend or a loved one. You realize you may have something to offer him or her.
So you go to them, and you offer yourself, your story of healing and hope, a book that helped you, a poem or a support group. You begin to find meaning in the sharing of the pain. You heal a little more and you helped another human being.
You may join the suicide prevention advocates in the country, educating others about the magnitude of the problem. You may decide to lead a support group, or help a school find a suicide prevention program, or start an Survivors of Suicide Support Team or an outreach program. You may educate legislators in your state with the hope they will fund research, prevention, and aftermath programs for survivors.
It may take a long time to do any of the above…longer than you would imagine and longer than your friends would believe. You may decide that you could never do that kind of “public” work, but if you can go on living and find a way to move from just “surviving” to “thriving” you will know that a miracle has happened. You have saved your own life, and perhaps you have given hope to others. That’s a beautiful legacy. You can continue to live your life, knowing that you made a difference.
I’m reminded of a poem I read in my teens:
“To live today as though it were my last.
To spend it royally, yet with reason.
To live happily, love passionately, regret frequently,
Yet to kiss the place that felt the thorn, because of the rose.
To treat all men and women openly, honestly, reservedly,
And at the last, to keep myself in that frame of mind,
Which allows one to lie down to his rest
Conscious of no great evil done to his fellow man,
And humbly grateful for the opportunity
Of having done some little good in this world.”
These words have stayed with me to this day.
When I wrote my book, My Son…My Son…A Guide to Healing After Death, Loss, or Suicide, it seemed to be a kind of purging. It was a way to get my story outside of me. I recommend to you that writing your story may help your healing. Some people need to speak it out, or scream it out…or you can write it out, as I did.
I was told that there were four things you need to do to heal over time:
- Tell the story of what happened so that you begin to believe the truth of it.
- Express your emotions, such as guilt, anger, despair, by screaming them out, punching them out on a pillow or writing them out.
- Make meaning out of the horror, perhaps by helping someone else some day or becoming an advocate for prevention.
- Transition from the physical presence of your loved one, to good memories of them. It’s not what you want, but in time it’s helpful.
I ended my book with these words:
“My Son…my son…your life indeed was a precious gift. Unbelievably so were the lessons I learned from living each day for itself, knowing that there may be no tomorrow, but whatever happens I have this day to love, to value, to be. I must have thought that you were immortal, if I thought of it at all, for I never even considered that you might die. Now you have taught me to revere life. I see that it is precious and fragile and can vanish in an instant.
I now look with “seeing” eyes and “hearing “ears. I’m intent on cherishing the moment. What a treasury of lessons your sacrifice has uncovered. Would that I never forget. And if I do…because I am human…let my scarred heart remind me gently with pangs of missing you.
And help me to be aware always that it is through suffering that we humans meet one another, knowing no strangers, and that life can regain its meaning through that precious kinship.”
About the Author
Iris Bolton was the Executive Director of The Link Counseling Center and The Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention and Aftercare. Since April 2007 she has become Director Emeritus. She graduated from Columbia University, completed further studies in counseling at Georgia State University and is a graduate of Emory University with a master’s degree in Suicidology. She has appeared on the CBS Morning Program, The Joan Rivers Show and ABC’s Good Morning America. She authored My Son…My Son, a Guide to Healing After Death, Loss, or Suicide, a book about the survival of a family in the aftermath of a loss.