Author Topic: Bereaved spouse from suicide  (Read 2047 times)

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Offline Jtgirl

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Bereaved spouse from suicide
« on: November 29, 2018, 09:55:57 AM »
Hi everyone.

I am so sorry for the very personal post however I would really like to chat to A man whose wife committed suicide. I know how emotional this could be but I have some questions that could really help me.

Offline Dave Administrator

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Re: Bereaved spouse from suicide
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2018, 02:07:54 PM »
Hello Jt and welcome.

 I feel a post that was made years ago that struck a cord with many here might help you too.

It was written by a priest and is quite long and also goes into the religious side of a suicide, but because I respect peoples own beliefs I have edited that part out.

I do hope it helps you too, take care Dave.

<<Suicide is most misunderstood of all deaths


There is perhaps nothing more painful in the world than for us to lose a loved one to suicide. A couple of months ago, I received a letter from a woman, a mother, who had recently lost her 28-year-old son in this manner. The young man had been suffering from clinical depression for nearly eight years when he took his own life.

Her letter to me betrayed a healthy understanding (at some deep level) of what had happened as well as all the unhealthy fear and second-guessing we all do when we are confronted with the suicide of a loved one.

She recognized that his death was, in the end, due to illness (not to malice or weakness), that he had a gentle soul and that God is understanding. She shared the intuition that her son is now in heaven. At the same time, she worried, as we all do, whether her son had now found peace and where, if anywhere, she had failed him. She also worried that her faith was not strong enough because it was not giving her the type of consolation that she felt it should. Her pain is deep - but it is also wide.

Thousands of parents and families and friends of suicide victims around the world are enduring similar pain.

What's to be said about suicide? What can be helpful to us when we lose a loved one in this way? There are, as for all the great mysteries of life, no definitive answers that dissolve all pain and questioning. But there are some important perspectives of which we must never lose sight.

First of all, at this time in our history, for all kinds of reasons,  is still perhaps the most misunderstood of all deaths. We still tend to think that because it is self-inflicted it is voluntary in a way that death through physical illness or accident is not. For most suicides, this is not true. A person dying of suicide, dies, as does the victim of physical illness or accident, against his or her will. People die from physical heart attacks, strokes, cancer, AIDS and accidents. Death by suicide is the same, except that we are dealing with an emotional heart attack, an emotional stroke, emotional AIDS, emotional cancer and an emotional fatality. This comparison is not an analogy. The two kinds of heart attacks, strokes, cancers and accidents are indeed identical. In neither case is the person responsible for his or her own death and in neither case does the person leave this world of his or her own will. >>
« Last Edit: November 29, 2018, 02:18:03 PM by Dave Administrator »
Take care and please keep posting however small or large you can manage, we need them.

Offline Karena

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Re: Bereaved spouse from suicide
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2018, 02:51:50 PM »
Hi -i dont think there is anyone on here at the moment who has experienced that exact circumstance although there has been in the past.
I did lose a very close friend to suicide so maybe i could help answer some of your questions - Please dont hesitate to use the private messaging system to contact me if you are worried they might be upsetting too others. 

Offline Sandra61

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Re: Bereaved spouse from suicide
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2018, 02:01:55 AM »
Hi, I wasn't sure whether to respond to this or not, as I have no idea of the circumstances surrounding the loss of this person, but for what it's worth, I thought I would let you know about my only contact with such a situation.

Not sure if this helps or not, but I did know a lady in her thirties who committed suicide. She had been suffering from ME and had spells of low mood as this is a depressing condition to have to suffer. Although the sufferer may look well, they experience debilitating lack of energy and joint and muscle pains. The lady I knew had lost the ability to be able to care for her pre-teenage daughter also who had had to go and live with the father and so she did not get to see her very often. I think she simply could not bear all the loss and discomfort of the illness and the loneliness and just wanted it to end. I am not sure if she would have taken the action she did, had she been feeling more upbeat or had not been living alone.

I suppose what I am trying to say, is that you need to consider the surrounding circumstances of the person who has died in this manner. Something will have caused them to take this drastic action and they may not have done so, had they been themselves. They may simply have gone too far in a low mood or depressed state of mind. Things may simply have got too much for them. Often, even the strongest of us will hide our true state of mind from those around us and try to 'get through it' on our own, but that is not always the right thing to do and sometimes we do need help, but it can be difficult to do that.

I know those left behind can feel guilty that they perhaps did not know how the person was feeling and may experience guilt that they might have been able to help in some way, but it is up to the person who is in this state to seek help too. You cannot help someone who  does not want to be helped and sometimes, the result of an attempt may not have been intended to be successful either, but may have been a way to try to call for help that sadly went wrong.

Remember, it may not have been possible to help this person for whatever reason and all you can do accept that what happened, happened and may not have been preventable. Don't be too hard on yourself. You may never understand why they did what they did, but you can't change it either. It is a terrible thing, but you can't change it. So sorry.