There is help available
I do not claim to be a professional in the field of grief or suicide. My thoughts are based on my own experience. These are my personal views and will not be true for every person or situation. You may find it piecemeal. Please use or ignore it if you have your own help set up.
What constitutes help for you might feel different to what others believe you need. There is always someone, somewhere who will help you in the way you need it.
It’s just a matter of finding your right thing. I trust that you know what you will need. We all do. It might be deep inside but will surface eventually. If you are unsure, keep trying to uncover what you know you can do next, and ask yourself what help you need to do it.
It is worthwhile to try to find a way to state what you need as clearly as possible. It can be confusing and hard. The feelings are often complex and contradictory. It feels overwhelming and we often believe no one can help us in this situation.
Persist until you get the right connections to help you.
There are many of us who have been in your shoes who care about you. Although we are not in your exact situation, we have had an equivalent experience. We know and care about the many injustices in your face in the aftermath of this complex loss. It often feels impossible to explain the magnitude of the feelings you are experiencing.
If the help is for you?
Family and friends may find it difficult to listen to everything as they have their own grief about the loss. They desperately want to help but sometimes cant or don’t know how. They too are shell-shocked by the suicide/s.
Alone time can be necessary and nurturing after facing the suicide of a loved one but don’t stay alone for too long without others. Alone, sometimes grief can compound on itself and make it harder to move forward.
Some others may not be able to bear being alone in this time. Human connection can be understood as primary to every minute of our functioning. And that is ok if you can not bear to be alone.
Those who have been through the same or similar thing may provide help or relief in surprising ways. We are worth seeking out. You might find us at groups set up by Coroners Courts or Lifeline or other places, where this type of support group has been convened.
If the help is for your friend or family member?
If you are supporting someone who has been through a suicide of close person and you want to help them, here are some of my thoughts as to how.
There is no normal.
People may need to cry and/or scream/or laugh/or shake/or sleep for many hours, weeks months or years after the event. Way beyond what you think is comfortable or normal. Trust them. Allow them. Tell them you allow them, no matter how long it takes, you know they are going to be ok. Try to stay a little close to them. We live in a culture very scared of feelings that look like they might overwhelm them. Feelings after a death are normal. The death was what hurt us. It occurred. It cannot be changed. We can not get more hurt by this death that has already occurred than we have. We just have to surf our feelings about that now historical occurrence to heal from the loss as much as we can.
All the feelings afterwards are attempts at recovery from that very difficult event. Some of us will feel more traumatised than others. At different times trauma can be like waves of the experience washing over us. We can get thrown down in an instant to feeling intense and overwhelming heartbreak.
The general social push wants to distract us from emotions and get back to normal. But there will never be going back to normal for this person. Their world will have to be built anew and that will likely take a long time.
Freely allow people the time to grieve to whatever extent they want. Do not try to get them to move on with their life too quickly. Don’t worry about them. Let them know you are not worried about them. Worry does nothing. But stay caring. They don’t need to be shocked into action or manipulated to get out of their grief in any way.
Be confident in their ability to recover and one day they will be able to see that a good life is possible for them. But don’t rush this or force it as it is important to not override their experience. You don’t know more than they do, I don’t care who you are, allow them their own language and definition of the events.
Occasionally, provide them with a broader perspective. Hindsight skews perspectives. They may feel like they could have done something different. Let them know that whatever happened, they did not contribute to the death of their loved one. Suicide is not manslaughter or murder, but it might feel like that, after all someone took the life of someone they loved.
Feelings of responsibility may persist and the bereaved must be gently reminded that it was not their fault. Arguing against the reality is all part of the process of coming to terms with a suicide bereavement.
They did everything they could. Or didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, what was going to happen.
The person who suicided will not be coming back. They may feel very panicked about this. Panic that action is required to be taken, something they have to do. It can be a very compelling feeling.
The bereaved, above all, need to be kind to themselves and that is often the last thing they feel like doing. If you can gently continue to remind them they deserve kindness, they may not be able to agree but will thank you for that in the long run.
Neither harshness, impatience or judgement is deserved for any person involved, and your internal judgements are revealed in subtle ways. Don’t be fake. You can’t really hide anything here, it will be picked up. Now is the time for loving honesty, anything else will leave the bereaved feeling abandoned. And if you can not feel loving for that person, do not show up, just stay away cause you will do more damage. Showing up is not easy. There are no short cuts to the hardest feelings for any of us around this.
Guilt and anger will be way beyond what is perceived as rational and try to be accepting of whatever comes out. Allow them to feel and show crazy, because suicide is crazy making. It is better out than in. Try not to show worry about their feelings. Try to allow all feelings both in depth and time to be understood as normal.
The bereaved may have times that they do not want to be here. They want to be with their loved one. Life no longer holds the same meaning as it did when they were alive. Allow them to long for and want to be with their person/people.
Keep talking about the dead one. Open the door to remember them as much as possible. This offers such relief to the suicide bereaved as it is on their mind all the time. It is often hard to envisage a life without them. It might be hard to do because it might bring up feelings about it.
To hear a loved one’s name spoken out loud is reassuring and a reminder that the fully human person existed. They were a real person with strengths and weaknesses who was loved and is treasured.
There is a saying that people die twice. The first time is when they die and then they die a second time the last time a person mentions their name.
My values, perspective and working philosophy
I want to let you know my personal values, perspective and philosophy, as it is important when understanding what help has been useful for me. I will continue to update it as my journey progresses.
I hold no blame, no attribution of fault towards the living or the dead for any suicide, just acknowledgement things happened that I, and many others, wish didn’t.
I would do anything to undo the suicide, but it is impossible, I don’t have a choice, but I want to live in a world where suicide does not look like the best, or only option, no matter how troubled a person might be.
All lives are full of great complexity before suicide and increase in difficulty afterwards.
I have empathy for others because I know every minute of outliving your child or other loved one can feel excruciating and unbearable.
No one person is more victimised by any loss than another. There is no grief hierarchy. Every loss is as valid as another person’s and worthy of respect.
Grief lands on us each differently – some have more or less resources and therefore, choice as to how to go on in the face of it.
I speak truth to the loss is to subvert the power of the violence against my loved one.
I completely reject the lost sense of their, (the one who suicides) own worthiness. It is a mistake and untrue. They were always worthy of love and respect and life.
I love life, see beauty, and feel joy, and my love of life cannot be reverted because of grief, maybe temporarily obscured from my view.
In my own life I toggle between feeling gratitude and completely bereft.
This website is an attempt to find an anchor, where Gabrielle can live on disharmoniously in my mind forever. I don’t expect to ever resolve it.
I share with others to create a common bond against the sharp and hard relentless edges of this experience.
My stories may be funny. Hopefully. Sometimes darkly so. And I know we are the ones who can sometimes laugh in the face of bereft, because we have lost very badly.
The laughter helps me cry and I feel better when I cry.
We might take a very, very long time to do that and that is ok. I know I will be doing this work for the rest of my life.
Other things you might find helpful
Podcasts
‘Pyrotheology’ Peter Rollins – philosophical
‘Terrible, thanks for asking’ Nora McInerney stories of real life and bad luck
‘Griefcast’ Cariad Lloyd Comedic interviews about grief
‘This is actually happening’ Walt Whitmore, more real life stories as I can’t get enough of them
Streaming shows
Afterlife, Fleabag, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel.