In many ways, suicide is one of the most difficult deaths to mourn. As you mourn the death of your friend or loved one, you probably feel a sense of betrayal. You have invested years of caring, loyalty, and patience with the deceased. Suddenly you are abandoned and rejected. Perhaps you have had thoughts such as: “How could she do this to me?” “Couldn’t he think about the children? Weren’t we enough for him?”

Because you are bewildered by what has happened, you search for whys. A message left may help interpret what went on in the person’s mind before the suicide. Yet the painful questions remain: “Why did he do it?” “Was she angry at me?”

You may also be filled with guilt, for suicide seems like not just a loss but also an accusation. You may feel that somehow you did not love enough, or that your relationship was not good enough. You keep rehearsing the all the “if onlys”: “Why didn’t I realize how sick he was?” “ If only I had been home on time.”

Working Your Way Through

Recovery from the suicide of someone close is a monumental task, for the process of healing a broken heart is painful and slow. The road to recovery requires you to accept your feelings, to draw from your inner resources, and to develop positive attitudes toward the past, present, and future. The journey of healing starts with small steps leading from darkness to hope, from death to a renewed commitment to life.

Learn to live with unanswered questions. We do have some clues about why people choose suicide. We know that suicides often the response to some kind of loss; to real or perceived failure; to physical, psychological, or spiritual pain. The person’s problem becomes the only thing that exists, and he or she cannot conceive that life will ever be better.

But even knowing all this intellectually, you can still feel very confused emotionally. Behind your questions is a broken heart that can’t be healed with simple answers. Struggling through the not knowing is extremely difficult. Your whys may never be answered, the puzzle never resolved. People who commit suicide often take with them the mystery of their life and death. You must gradually let go of the whys, accept what has happened, and go on living.

Allow time for bad memories. In the early stages of grief, survivors often experience playback of the suicide scene in their thoughts or in nightmares. You may feel robbed of pleasant memories and oppressed by this replay of the details surrounding the final event.

You need to own and deal with these negative images before you can get in touch with your good memories. As the hurt gradually becomes less intense, positive feelings will surface and become more frequent and longer lasting.

Acknowledge your feelings of anger. Instinctively, Survivors tend to reject the way their loved one chose to end his or her life. They may resent the deceased for checking out of the relationship on his or her own terms. They may also resent God for having allowed this to happen, or others for not preventing it. Anger is an investment. We never get angry at someone we do not care about. Anger, therefore, is not the opposite of love but a dimension of it - a sign of a love deeply wounded.

Your anger can help you survive and reenter life or it can become destructive: It depends on how you channel it. You might try discussing your anger with an understanding Friend. Or talking about it with God. Or writing a letter expressing it to the deceased. Ultimately, anger needs to be healed through a willingness to forgive.

Turn guilt into forgiveness. Most survivors blame themselves for what they did or did not do. They have the sense of something left unfinished, something suddenly interrupted. They find it hard to let go of their rescue fantasies.

Guilt accompanies many of our experiences of powerlessness and imperfection. It can paralyze and demoralize us, or we can transform it into self-forgiveness and a greater capacity for loving those that are still around us.

Healing Takes place when you realize that you cannot judge your yesterday with the knowledge of today, that love alone may not be enough to save another’s life, that there are limits to your power and responsibility, that you were not the only influence in the life of the deceased.

Accept the loneliness. Loneliness is the price we pay for loving. When a loved person dies, a part of us dies too. To some degree, the loneliness may last a lifetime, because no one can ever replace that person. An anniversary, a place, a song, a flower may bring back the memories, the aching pain. We feel the keen disappointment of not having that special person there to share in the family’s changes, surprises, sorrows.

Loneliness can help you realize the depths of your love. From it, you can learn to become more sensitive to others’ losses and to turn to God, who is always there.

Draw from your own spiritual resources. You may be struggling with questions like “Will God forgive her, or has he condemned her to hell?” While the act of suicide continues to be objectively wrong, contemporary theologians emphasize that individual circumstances may make it subjectively guiltless. Those who take their life may be so disturbed that they act compulsively; their perception of reality may be so distorted that their responsibility is greatly reduced. Only God knows what is in the heart of each person.

Obviously, it does not take your grief away simply believing that God will view your loved one’s actions compassionately. But faith will help you live with your loss and grieve it well. And it will help you discover redeeming values in the midst of your suffering. Trust that God will sustain you through the stages of your bereavement.

Rebuild your self-esteem. The suicide of a friend or loved one is a terrible blow to one’s self-image. Rationally or irrationally, the survivors may feel judged by the community for having failed. They may feel that the suicide is a disgrace to the family or the school or even the community. Some have a strong urge to escape to a place where they are not known. And, unfortunately, the shame many survivors feel keeps them from acknowledging the suicide and talking about it - an important part of the recovery process.

After the shattering experience of a suicide, you need to pick up the pieces, reaffirm your commitment to life, and rebuild confidence in yourself.

Be patient with yourself. Remember that time, by itself, does not heal. It is how you use the time that is important. When you can stare less frequently at the past and can recognize the value of small steps, you develop a framework within which the passage of time makes the loss not easier, but at least less hard.

Reach out to others. You can choose to let your brokenness defeat you, or you can decide to get up and get going. Once you have the courage to place your hurt, your sensitivity, and your compassion at the service of others, you have discovered the key to help yourself. For when the pain is used to reach out to others, it becomes creative and transforming love.

Take Heart. Suicide leaves deep scars on the survivors. But there is no turning back: you can not change what has happened. You can, however, change your outlook - from backward to forward, from death to life.

Those who have experienced the suicide of a loved one can learn to let go of blaming themselves or the deceased for their unhappiness. They can learn to live for themselves, and take responsibility for their own future. They can emerge from their sorrow with a profound appreciation for the solidarity they have experienced with others, and with a deep awareness of the beauty and fragility of life. And they can begin to see life not so much as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be discovered each day.

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