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    Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life
    Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life
    Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life
    Ebook190 pages1 hour

    Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life

    By William Henry

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    About this ebook

    What do you do when someone you love has taken their own life? You have entered a whole new world that you did not choose to enter and where you feel confused and alone. This book not only will help guide survivors of suicide through the very difficult time of grief, but offers hope at a time that seems so hopeless. This book shows how to receive the help so greatly needed and how there can be victory in a time of unbelievable grief. Give this book to any person going through this grief process and it will be a great help in traveling the path back to a fruitful and even happy life. Those who counsel suicide survivors will find the book a great help in understanding what the survivors are encountering and how they can be encouraged and helped. The author has also experienced the trauma of a loved one taking their life and offers much-needed guidance from a practical and positive point of view. There is hope and there is help.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristian Faith Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateOct 14, 2016
    ISBN9781635250572
    Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life
    Author

    William Henry

    William R. Henry, Jr. William Henry has been a professional writer for more than 45 years. He has been a reporter for two daily newspapers in North Carolina, director of public affairs for a national construction-industry trade association based in Washington, DC, and has written numerous articles for consumer and trade publications. He is accredited by the International Association of Business Communicators. Currently he is a consultant for an association that provides insurance and risk management services for volunteer-based nonprofit organizations. William became interested in issues involving exploitation of older people, and the dynamics of family caregiving, following an incident in his own family, which he wrote about for The Washington Post. Since publication of The Crown of Life Society, he has provided numerous interviews and guest articles for organizations advocating for the well-being of older persons, with guidance on how to prevent financial exploitation. William lives in Mechanicsville, VA. A. Frank Johns, Jr., JD, LLM, CELA, CAP Frank Johns is a nationally recognized legal authority in Elder Law, Fiduciary Litigation, Elder Abuse, Guardianship, Disability Rights, Special Needs and Special Needs Trusts, and Legal Ethics. Mr. Johns, BS 1968 and JD 1971, Florida State University; and LLM – 2008, Stetson University College of Law, is a charter partner in Booth Harrington & Johns of NC PLLC, with offices in Charlotte and Greensboro, NC. He is past president of, and a fellow in, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) and past chair of NAELA's Council of Advanced Practitioners; a fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel; charter chair of the North Carolina Bar Association Elder Law Section; and board member, Center For Medicare Advocacy (2008-2010). He is board-certified in Elder Law by the National Elder Law Foundation, and certified as a specialist in elder law by the North Carolina State Bar. He was a charter board member of the National Guardianship Association (1988). He co-chaired the 2001 Wingspan National Guardianship Conference; was a delegate, commissioned writer and steering committee member of the 2011 3rd National Guardianship Summit; and was a delegate and panelist at the 3rd World Congress on Adult Guardianship in Australia. Johns has litigated fiduciary, abuse, and disability cases throughout North Carolina, and in the state and federal courts, with ...

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      Book preview

      Suicide, How to Cope When Someone You Love Has Taken Their Own Life - William Henry

      You Are Lonely, But Not Alone

      What a terrible sense of loneliness has gripped your heart. Sadness is a constant companion every day now.

      But you are not alone. Every year in the United States alone, over 41,000 people die by suicide. Many of our precious young people, many brave veterans returning from active duty, others we never even considered would do such a thing.

      Think of the many survivors left behind to mourn the loss and cope with all that is involved.

      Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, other relatives, friends, coworkers, neighbors who care—all left behind to try to answer the many questions that remain: Could I have done something to have kept this from happening? Why didn’t I see it coming? Why, Why, Why?

      There are not just thousands of people trying to get through this time and doubt, there are millions of survivors just like you who are trying to cope with this heartbreak.

      What are you experiencing just now?

      There is no common time frame for healing and we all have our own stumbling ways of moving forward, but there are some very common reactions that nearly every suicide survivor experiences: (And we will revisit some of these and others later)

      SHOCK: A violent, unexpected collision of emotions. Shock like you never experienced before in your life. Unbelievable numbness and you are disoriented, as if reality has been replaced by a foggy, unreal world where you hear and see people without really seeing them or hearing them. You can’t concentrate and yet you talk with others without really understanding what is being discussed. You are experiencing the very common reaction called shock. It will pass.

      DEPRESSION: A hollow feeling of discouragement, a dark valley of gloom. For many people, sleep does not come easy now and there may be a loss of appetite while others eat more than normal as a therapeutic activity. You have no energy now and there is the ever-present feeling of sadness. You stare at a wall without thinking and you just want to be left alone—you are suffering depression. You will get relief from this in time—be patient with yourself.

      BITTERNESS OR ANGER: You may be irritated at best, furious at worst, toward the person who died and left you with this grief, toward a family member or acquaintance, a mental health worker, or even yourself. This bitter feeling of near hatred overwhelms your being to the point where you feel as if you need to act upon the feeling to get back at them some way for the pain they have caused you. This is normal—you are normal if you feel this. It will pass.

      GUILT: You continually have the thought that if only you had done something, you could have kept this from happening. You think of different scenarios of things you wished you had done to help avoid the tragedy, thinking, If only I had done this… This is normal in the coping process. This seems to take longer to diminish with most people because we have such a personal attachment to the person. It will pass. Be patient and hopeful.

      There are other emotions which you may experience since we have different ways of coping and different degrees of strength, but nearly every person going through this process experiences some degree of these four reactions.

      God loves us in good times and bad… But He is even more real in our lives when we are having tough times.

      —Joe Gibbs

      Former Head Coach of the Washington Redskins

      CHAPTER TWO

      Closure

      We have all seen reports of a child or other loved one who was murdered or otherwise harmed and the body has not been located and/or the perpetrator has not been punished. The family wants closure. To finally have crucial questions answered and be able to get on with their life. Let’s just tidy everything up and get back to normal living.

      THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLOSURE

      There is no closure as such, but that does not mean there is not relief. To expect what some people believe to be total closure as described by many is not only unrealistic, but can actually be counterproductive to the grieving process. Things will never be normal again.

      Every person has their own personal bereavement process and closure really is only a myth. In reality, what most people call closure is really only justice served or vengeance realized toward the perpetrator of a crime or having no vengeance but having questions answered about what occurred with their loved one. There is a sense of satisfaction that all that could be done to bring about justice and a completion of knowing all that occurred regarding the tragedy has been ascertained.

      There is not a secession of sadness and grief, only a secession of not knowing what happened.

      To expect a complete loss of grief is an illusion that will not happen whether it concerns a suicide or other tragedy.

      What must occur is a realistic acceptance of the facts and the need to personally deal with them. Those who are survivors of a suicide have neither satisfaction of knowing all that led up to the tragedy nor do they have any sense of justice or reason. Questions remain, along with the pain.

      The pain of loss is now a part of your life and will be until you die. You will probably continue to think about the dear loved one every day and for some, many times every day.

      Some remember the loved one with great sadness and intensity, some remember them with less intensity but still with great love.

      They come to your mind when it is near their birthday, during holidays, sometimes just remembering where they sat at home, a certain aroma, another person looking or sounding similar to your loved one, a song, a particular restaurant or other place where you shared time with them. Looking at their picture brings tears that just won’t stop—you miss them so very much. You read the obituary column in the newspaper or online and you wonder if that person did the same thing as your dearly beloved did. Your heart stays broken and you wish time could be turned back and that this really did not happen. You feel so all alone.

      It did happen and you must go on.

      To expect the common idea of closure—that everything can be all right again and the survivor can go back to a carefree life regarding the loved one is emotionally dangerous because it gives a false expectation. It only heightens the loneliness because the person seeking closure never gets the emotional release they expected. They feel they must have done something wrong, otherwise these emotional reactions would have ended at some point.

      No matter how much time elapses since the suicide occurred, memories always remain. Do not deny them or try to push them from your mind. To try to forget them because of the pain of remembering is to deny precious times of love, of joy, of all that makes life worth living.

      Grieving is hard, but necessary. True closure is not forgetting what happened as though some magic wand was waved and the problem is over. True closure is when we accept what happened and deal with the process of grieving in a mature and patient manner while remembering how much we still love the person who left us.

      Perhaps God has a plan for your life that can only be accomplished by what you have gone through. All things are not good, but all things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28).

      Death is a part of life.

      We don’t like it under normal circumstances, but especially when it happens because a loved one ended their own life. Yes, it may cause shock, sorrow, and intense grief, but this is not an unusual occurrence for Christians or non-Christians. In John 16:33, Jesus plainly states this: "In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the

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