by Heath

Survivors of suicide loss often experience guilt and a deep sense of responsibility for the loss. They seem to go hand in hand. 

Why is this? 

As one person expressed it in a support group, we know what we know now, though only through experiencing our loss. 

Before our loss, we knew what we knew, but in a limited way

After our loss, we sometimes learn things that were hidden, or we see the ‘signs’ that were missed when the person was alive. Our connection goes beyond the limited knowledge that we then possessed, to one that grows as we become privy to the things once hidden from us, and possibly not yet even felt or known by the one now gone, at that time. 

Many of us learn things as we go through emails, private papers, medical records, and even search for online posts. We become aware of things as others share with us their private conversations, once engaged in by our people with family or friends. 

By understanding this difference of awareness between the before and after, we may gain a little insight that will lift our guilt and show us that we were not responsible, either by ignorance or a failure to act, as we only knew what was there in front of us.

The things that we know now

These only are known to us now because we have gone through the experience of a loss to suicide. This is why we beat ourselves up for we take on board this new knowledge as if we were always aware of it (which we weren’t). Even if we had an inkling, I would suggest that very few of us expect the person to take their own life. 

Our minds tend towards familiarity, else we would forever fret whenever a person is out of our sight. We would find it unbearable if we were always stressed about what may come as opposed to what just is. Our familiarity is what brings peace to our lives. 

This is a point often overlooked and rears its ugly head as people want to know, “Didn’t you see the signs?” or “Did you know he was in such a dark space?” Such hurtful questions that come from either ignorance or simply that person’s own need for an answer. 

But we have no answers; we only have conjectures. These conjectures are necessary if we are to find a narrative which makes sense of their loss and a narrative required to alleviate our own sense of guilt and responsibility 

These narratives can and do change as we move forward

When my partner was alive, I knew things about him; saw things that he showed me and the world around him, and this knowing was influenced by my association with him, our history, our friendship, our confidence in what we shared. This confidence, though necessary for creating a fruitful connection, can lead to us becoming complacent and therefore becoming too much of an expectation that all will be fine.  If I had questioned our friendship, our history, our association, etc., then how could I ever have had a relationship that just was,as opposed to what would become?

If someone told me that I would lose my partner to suicide, that I would find him as I did, dead and no longer in my life, as my world shattered around me, I would never have believed them.

I knew he was depressed – I saw the ‘Signs,’ but did I fail him in not taking these as indicative of his impending death?  I do not believe (after a couple of years of struggling with this concept) that I failed him.  And I believe and feel this to be true, for I acted as I did with the knowledge that I had at that time, coupled with the history of our friendship, which gave evidence that this knowledge was true at that time.  His death is what has created

The new awareness of what I know now

Another part of the equation is that we are often told (or we hear) that our people choose to take their lives.  And so we wonder as to why they didn’t share with us, why they didn’t think about us, why they chose death over life.

This, I believe, is one of the strong underlying reasons for our guilt. And more so as we start to think that people around us wonder why the person chose to leave us. Many people who die by suicide feel a strong sense of burden and do not want to burden us further.

From my own perspective, our people did not make the decision to take their lives.  That decision came to them as they struggled with the issues that were affecting their thinking. It came uninvited as opposed to a choice that was sought after by our people.

Sometimes I have this nagging thought that when a person takes their life due to physical pain, it is akin to euthanasia (in their mind). 

But for many others, there are other reasons, such as

• Mental Health Loneliness / Isolation
• Relationship Breakdowns
• Recent Losses to death (including pets)
• Life Upheavals that may be difficult for the person to navigate: Financial Problems
• Issues around shame, such as an impending court case
• Past Trauma, which is often perceived as Shameful by the victim
• The List goes on

In all of this, the person can reach a peak in their thinking and in their feelings, where their access to choices is diminished; shrunk in a loss of access to possibilities for change. 

And so, eventually, the possibility for change appears in the form of saying “goodbye” to the world. The choice comes to them; they do not seek it out as a choice akin to choosing between having a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. 

They did not choose to leave us

They simply did what they needed to do (in that moment in time) to stop their pain

If this is true, then even though we may still feel responsible and all the emotions that go with this sense of responsibility, we may begin to understand, in a deeply heartfelt way, that we were not responsible for their death, irrespective of the feelings we are experiencing. 

These feelings are not wrong. Indeed, I think these feelings are simply Nature’s way of helping us move through grief as we grapple with, and then overcome, the feelings and thoughts that grief entails. 

Now, while the outside world tells us THAT THEY CHOSE TO TAKE THEIR LIFE, we will harbor this sense of responsibility. Alongside this is our desire to have done all that we could to keep them alive – and yet we continue to feel that WE FAILED THEM, and more so IF THEY CHOSE TO DIE. We may believe that we are responsible, as we should have been able to prevent their death, but we cannot prevent people’s pain; we can only be there as best we can and offer what we can from what we knew at that moment in time. What we know now is not what we knew back then. 

The message surrounding suicide not only needs to change – It Must Change so that the survivor of such a sad loss can process their grief differently, in a healthy way and in a way that is far more conducive to their healing (if one ever truly heals from this experience) than is the current way for many survivors today. 

And it needs to change so that people struggling with thoughts of suicide feel confident to reach out without thinking that those they share with will see them as Selfish in their ‘Choosing to want to die,’ as opposed to simply wanting to stop their pain. 

Suicidal Ideation is a real and often very frightening issue to contend with for those who are experiencing it. And it is not helped by such ill-informed and myopic thinking as this message of choosing conveys. 

This is just my view on this important topic, which I feel needs to be explored. Others may think differently. 

Heath