Sam McManis, Chronicle Deputy Living Editor

When it all gets too much, when the pain becomes unbearable and none of her other coping techniques work, Vicki Henry starts circling her Pacifica apartment searching for swift solace. She starts with the TV, moves on to her Nintendo games, then surfs the Web.

Always, though, Barbie waits. Barbie: pert and peppy, forever a comfort. Henry has quite a doll collection, too, ranging from white wedding gown Barbie to leather-studded Biker Barbie. She'll take them off the shelf, comb their hair and sort doll clothing. Hours pass; the pain of remembering recedes. "It's nurturing your inner child," Henry said. "It's totally therapeutic"

Henry is a 52-year-old legal secretary with a quick wit and dry humor. But in the two years since the suicide of her teenage son Will, she has found it increasingly difficult to function in the world. Her job, once so important, matters little to her now. She couldn't work for seven months, spending the entire time holed up in her apartment.

"It's destroyed my life," Henry said. The loss of a family member to suicide -- be it child, sibling or spouse -- can leave a yawning gap in people's lives and test even the strongest family connections. Suicide victims' pain may end with their death, but the stress and sorrow among loved ones left behind does not.

Family members of suicide victims, psychologists say, often deal with guilt, anger, depression, the breakup of a marriage and the estrangement of siblings, their own suicidal thoughts and grief. Always the grief. It never goes away, experts say, merely changes form in the folds of time.

"It's a huge trauma," said Patrick Arbore, founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention and Grief Related Services in San Francisco. "Some families can cope and get closer in time. Some with unresolved issues fall apart. I see a lot of unfocused rage, desperation in trying to understand why it happened. There's a reluctance to face the situation. But it must be faced."

In late August, more than 3,000 relatives of suicide victims faced one another on a 26-mile overnight march on Washington, D.C., to raise awareness and lessen the stigma of suicide in public discourse.

Bereavement support groups for families of suicide victims abound in the Bay Area. But experts, such as Linda Davis, a grief counselor in Marin County, said a greater number of people shy away from ever seeking professional help and remain consumed by shame and the taboo of such an act visited upon their family.

"What we've seen," Davis said, "is the normal emotions of grief at a very heightened level. Some people can't deal with it."

Others cope however they can. They count it as a victory when good days outnumber bad, when guilt and anger remain at bay, when they can function without paralyzing sorrow.

Routine, Hobbies Help

For Henry, whose son was 16 when he hanged himself from a tree in a Daly City park, coping means dressing and forcing herself out the door for work. For Henry's ex-husband, Al, it means rediscovering his Catholic upbringing and reciting the rosary each night.

For San Francisco artist Marie Wylan, whose adult daughter shot herself through the heart five years ago, it means keeping herself from becoming unglued by getting lost in her landscape oil paintings and trying to keep together a fragile family unit.

For Pam Eckert, of Livermore, it's trying to keep her own clinical depression in check and try to explain to her younger son, who has Down syndrome, why his older brother Dan fatally shot himself.

And for Shirley Kaminsky and her daughter Sharon Easley, who live in Sunol, years of coping after the 1987 suicide of the family's oldest child, David, have enabled them to become stronger, more loving and open with one another. But even Shirley, 58, a nurse, still has bad days and, at times, has contemplated suicide herself.

Not a day goes by that Wylan doesn't think about her daughter Denise, who five years ago, at 37, shot herself in Prescott, Ariz., after a fight with her boyfriend. Wylan still carries a photograph of her beautiful flaxen-haired daughter. Denise was the eldest child of six, and her loss has riven the family and seriously tested Marie's relationship with her third husband, artist David Carr.

"It's been terrible, unbelievable," Wylan said. "I became manic. Couldn't sleep the whole first year. But after five years of therapy, I don't go that guilt way anymore. I need to have a good life. (Guilt) doesn't help me, my other children or my relationship with my husband."

Wylan's eldest son, Jacques, said his family "wasn't exactly 'The Brady Bunch' " before Denise's death. The fallout after the suicide, he said, brought some closer but led one brother in Florida to nearly sever all ties with the family.

"I haven't talked about it much with anybody," Jacques said. "We all feel guilty. We did the usual family thing, the picking on each other. I won't lie. But for most of us, it's improved things a little. We realize life's short and we should let bygones be bygones."

Lack of communication caused the rift with her husband, Marie Wylan said. It was a rocky first six months after Denise's suicide, she said. The two had split time between homes in England and San Francisco, but they lived apart for a while.

"The problem was, we ignored even talking about it," she said. "He blew up at me because I couldn't bring myself to leave the States. It's better now. Nobody can understand the feeling until you lose your child. I used to have visions of shooting myself through the head. But when I remember her body there on the slab, I think the book has closed on her life, and I don't want that with mine."

Suicidal thoughts occasionally dog Kaminsky, too, even 15 years after her son, fresh out of high school, shot himself in the family's living room.

"I was afraid to tell anyone about those thoughts," Kaminsky said. "I'm a scuba diver, and for about five years I never scuba dived, because I was afraid that, under water, I'd turn off my air and just die. I'm better now, but there's a scar in my heart that won't die."

Bringing the Family Together

David's death brought the family closer, though they aren't the type to hold soul-baring sessions. It's more of an unspoken feeling that they must stay together and talk about problems. Kaminsky said that for several years, her other son, Scott, was distraught over his brother's death, but that he has since come to terms with it and has written songs in remembrance of his brother.

Scott's twin sister, Sharon, said the siblings never talked about David's death. "And I'd bring it up, too, but he wouldn't go there," Sharon said. "Whereas me and my mom go into it all the time. My mom has her friends up here to talk to, and I use my mom to talk to."

Though it is 15 years in the past, David's suicide still dominates Kaminsky's mind.

"The average person says, 'Get on with your life,' " Kaminsky said. "All you can hope to do is learn to live with it." Henry, the Pacifica mother who finds solace in her Barbie collection, still is deep in the grieving process two years after her son's death. Had he lived, Will would have celebrated his 18th birthday last month.

"I'm actually pretty functional," Henry said. "I pay my bills. I go to work. But it's hard, because going back to work means admitting that life goes on. Nothing is ever going to be normal again. I don't give a crap about my job, and I used to care and did a great job." Sometimes, alone in her apartment, Henry will sit on the couch and just scream at her dead son as if he still were in the room.

"I yell at him, ask why he did it," she said. "I'm angry. At him and me." But the anger, too, passes. Henry says she takes life moment to moment, finding comfort in smoking on her balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean and handling her beloved Barbies.

"One night, I had to laugh at myself; I was sitting here thinking about Willie while playing with my Barbies and watching 'The Lion King' on TV. I remember thinking, 'I feel about 12 years old.' But there's a comfort in that. It helps."

What to watch for

Many of the symptoms of suicidal feelings are similar to those of depression. Parents should be aware of the following signs in adolescents who may be contemplating suicide:

-- Change in eating and sleeping habits

-- Withdrawal from friends, family and regular activities

-- Violent actions, rebellious behavior or running away

-- Drug and alcohol use

-- Unusual neglect of personal appearance

-- Marked personality change, persistent boredom, difficulty concentrating or a decline in the quality of schoolwork

-- Frequent complaints about physical symptoms, often related to emotions, such as stomach aches, headaches, fatigue

-- Loss of interest in pleasurable activities. Not tolerating praise or rewards.

Sunday, October 6, 2002 (SF Chronicle)

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