Facing what-ifs and if-onlys in the wake of suicide

As a survivor - no, as an overcomer - of my 21-year-old son Westley's suicide, the biggest issue for myself and others is often facing the "what-ifs" and "if-onlys." What if I'd been a better parent?

These natural regrets gain their own momentum, causing a suicide survivor to sink more deeply into depression.

After struggling with this cycle of misgivings, I had to find a way to control the invasive thoughts of guilt.

To gain insight, I started a list of the things I did right. I included actions that I did on a regular basis as one item.

We listened to country-and-western music together while I drove him to the skating rink, then enjoyed our personal talks on the way home when he was physically tired but emotionally open to visiting.

I helped him organize a work area in the garage and then gave him broken appliances that he could take apart and figure out how they worked.

I promoted strong ties with his grandparents and other family members by sharing their letters and letting him farm with GranDad.

I let him earn money for skating by mopping the kitchen and wiping down the cabinets.

I took him camping with his friends. Once I started writing down the list, rather than just mentally rehearsing it, my mind quickly began cooperating.

I got out of bed the first night to add five more items. During the next several days, my list grew to 109 items, most of them ongoing.

Then I started a list of regrets - things that, if I could have seen into the future, I'd have done differently.

We were planning to fly him out to see us but were trying to find a convenient time. We wish we had just put him on a plane when the idea first came up.

I wish I had known that people with Attention Deficit Disorder are supersensitive so I could have helped him understand why he often overreacted to things people said.

I wish I had left a voice message when I called him the morning of the night he died. I knew he had caller-ID, and he'd know I'd called. I regret I didn't get to say "I love you" one last time. Seeing these two lists side by side helped put the "what-ifs" and "if-onlys" into perspective. This gave me peace and stopped the cycle of misgivings. From time to time, I still wish I could have known some of the secrets of my son's life so I could have acted differently. But seeing the list of things I did right allows me to accept myself and the love I expressed to him in many ways.

After meditating on the two lists for several weeks, some conclusions seemed obvious:

We're not mind readers. We shouldn't punish ourselves because someone chooses to keep secrets and refuses to give us all the facts we need to make the right decision.

We're not all-wise. Even if we had all the facts, we wouldn't necessarily say or do the perfect thing that would cause the other person to make a healthy choice. Abigail couldn't turn her husband from his foolish reactions, and he died. On the other hand, David responded to her admonition. It was the same woman and the same situation, but Nabal and David chose different outcomes. Despite Nabal's bad choice, God still said Abigail was wise.

We're not all-powerful. We can't control someone else's life. Everyone has choices and sometimes they make the wrong one.

We're not divine. We're human beings with limitations in dealing with life's stresses and problems, and so was the person we lost. Sometimes we burden ourselves to be super-parent, super-spouse, super-sibling or super-friend, who always says and does the perfect thing. The psalmist David acknowledged that while God searches and knows us, he created us with physical and mental limitations and doesn't give us those super abilities - Psalms 139:5-6: "Thou hast enclosed me behind and before, And laid Thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain it."

We simply don't possess the inherent ability or the right to take away another person's choices. And thank God he understands and forgives these realities, as he made our loved ones and us the way we are.

Patsy Rae Dawson of Amarillo a multi-award-winning author of several books on marriage and the Bible. You can contact her and read more of her writings at www.gospelthemes.com.

For you and your grandfather and anyone else who struggles to "forgive":

"Only God can mend a soul torn by suicide"
By FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi
Rome

A few days ago, I was asked to visit a family who had, just that day, lost their 19-year-old son to suicide. There isn't much one can offer by way of consolation at a moment like this when everyone is in shock and the pain is so raw.

Few things can so devastate us as the suicide of a loved one, especially of one's own child. There is the horrific shock of losing a loved one so suddenly which, just of itself, can bring us to our knees; but, with suicide, there are other soul-wrenching feelings too, confusion, guilt, second-guessing, religious anxiety. Where did we fail this person? What is this person's state with God?

What needs to be said about all of this: First, suicide is a disease. It takes a person out of life against his or her will, the emotional equivalent of cancer, a stroke or a heart attack.

Second, we, those left behind, need not spend undue energy second-guessing as to how we might have failed that person, what we should have noticed, and what we might still have done to prevent the suicide. Suicide is an illness and, as with any sickness, we can love someone and still not be able to save that person from death. God loved this person too and, like us, could not, this side of eternity, do anything either.

Finally, we shouldn't worry too much about how God meets this person on the other side. God's love, unlike ours, can go through locked doors and touch what will not allow itself to be touched by us.

Is this making light of suicide? Hardly. Anyone who has ever dealt with either the victim of a suicide before his or her death or with those grieving that death afterwards knows it is impossible to make light of it. There is no hell and there is no pain like the one suicide inflicts. Nobody who is healthy wants to die and nobody who is healthy wants to burden his or her loved ones with this kind of pain.

There is no hell and there is no pain like the one suicide inflicts. And that's the point: This is only done when someone isn't healthy. The fact that medication can often prevent suicide should tell us something.

Suicide is an illness, not a sin. The victim of suicide (in all but rare cases) is a trapped person, caught up in a fiery, private chaos that has its roots in emotions and in biochemistry. Suicide is a desperate attempt to end unendurable pain, akin to throwing oneself through a window because one's clothing is on fire.

Many of us have known victims of suicide and we know too that in almost every case that person was not full of ego, pride, haughtiness and the desire to hurt someone. Generally it's the opposite. The victim has cancerous problems precisely because he or she is wounded, raw and too bruised to have the necessary resiliency needed to deal with life. Those of us who have lost loved ones to suicide know that the problem is not one of strength but of weakness, the person is too bruised to be touched.

I remember a comment I overheard at a funeral for a suicide victim. The priest had preached badly, hinting that this suicide was somehow the man's own fault and that suicide was always the ultimate act of despair.

At the reception, a neighbour expressed his displeasure at the priest's homily: "There are a lot of people in this world who should kill themselves," he lamented, "but those kind never do. This man is the last person who should have killed himself because he was one of the most sensitive people I've ever met." Too often it is the meek who seem to lose the battle, at least in this world.

Finally, we shouldn't worry too much about how God meets our loved ones who have fallen victim to suicide. God, as Jesus assures us, has a special affection for those of us who are too bruised and wounded to be touched. Jesus assures us that God's love can go through locked doors and into broken places and free up what's paralyzed and help that which can no longer help itself.

And so our loved ones who have fallen victim to suicide are now inside God's embrace, enjoying a freedom they could never quite enjoy here and being healed through a touch that they could never quite accept from us.

http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/rolheiser/2002/rolheiser072202.shtml

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