What happens when … someone you love dies from suicide?

What happens when … someone you love dies from suicide?

The death of a person we love can be a shattering experience, but coming to terms with a death through suicide presents us with complex and sometimes unmanageable feelings of loss and guilt. In my work as a humanist funeral celebrant, it is occasionally my sad duty to help families to honour a loved one who took their own life. And, to mark World Suicide Prevention Day I want to tell you about a funeral I conducted for a woman who took her own life.

Samaritans state on their website:

“In 2018, more than 6,800 people died by suicide. Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy. I agree, it is a tragedy which can have a long term and wide-reaching impact, and this impact can resonate not only individually but generationally.”

How do we talk about this?

It’s a chilly day in February 2022 when I receive a call from a local funeral director who tells me of the death of a 38 year old woman called Caroline; they ask if I would visit her parents, Ivan and Helen, who live on the borders of North London. The funeral director tells me that Caroline has taken her own life.

The first thing which strikes me about Ivan and Helen is their warmth; the second, is their bewilderment. The couple are seated on a two-seater sofa in their comfortable living room; they wait for me to open the conversation, so as I ask if they feel able to tell me what happened.

Following days of unreturned phone calls and texts and faced with silence when knocking on Caroline’s door, Ivan and Helen had called the police to gain entry to their daughter’s East London flat. What they found shattered their stable, everyday lives. Caroline had hanged herself from the banister using a length of washing line. Following the coroner’s report ten days later, the couple were told that Caroline had died approximately five days before she was found and that she had taken her own life.

In working with Ivan and Helen to develop a tribute to honour and celebrate Caroline’s life, I ask them how they feel about acknowledging Caroline’s choice, her choice to end her own life. We don’t need to use the word suicide, I suggest, but perhaps we could talk about her courage, her conviction and her resolve? Perhaps we could say that despite the love and support and friendship which surrounded her, her illness had taken her to a point where she felt unable to ask for help?  Helen and her husband have lapsed into tearful silence, but they nod their assent; and then Helen says:

 “I knew she was going downhill. I knew the signs. I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it.”

Talking about suicide

Caroline had been an energetic child and a quite brilliant student, though she was bored by the limitations of the curriculum which provoked in her a restlessness and sense of non-conformity. She excelled in her exams and started A levels at a sixth form college but left to work in a hairdresser’s. At 23 she gained a place at a prestigious London art school and worked towards a degree in photography. Her talent was extraordinary – plain to see by looking around this cosy living room, the walls curated by Caroline’s pictures. But despite Caroline’s achievements, she had always experienced an unrelenting sense of being not good enough and while this might have seemed like a nagging complaint in her early life, Ivan and Helen became aware that their daughter was suffering from mental ill health. When Caroline was in her late teens, it became Helen’s mission to safeguard her daughter, a challenge, given that Caroline insisted on going out with her friends, often staying away for days at a time. When Caroline left home at 19, Helen insisted she and her daughter meet for lunch at least once a week. But as Caroline grew more independent, she became more distant and her episodes of depression, and conversely, mania, would absent her from the family for months at a time. But it was okay because Caroline had friends, she was hilariously funny and outspoken; she wanted to solve everyone else’s problems and make their pain go away.

I could have … should have …

A family rocked by suicide can be plunged into overwhelming guilt and responsibility and for some, there may always be a feeling of what if? For Ivan and Helen, they had seen their daughter a week before she died; they recognised the signs, but they had been to this “place” before and it had always been okay. The overarching fact is, Caroline was her own person.

Managing suicidal conversations is something most of us have no experience of, and if you really thought about it, could you help someone who was thinking about ending their lives? The simple answer is yes. Yes, we can all help by being aware, being present and by listening.

 How do we make it okay to talk about this?

It emerges that Caroline had dozens of friends who loved her and who loved her parents; at times, Ivan and Helen saw more of their daughter’s friends than they did of their daughter. So, thorough our discussion, this shattered, bereaved couple hit on the idea that it is the friends and Caroline’s closest cousin who will lead the tributes. And it emerges, there are hundreds of funny stories; stories of Caroline’s outspokenness, her artistic fearlessness, her single mindedness. Stories about what went wrong on a holiday to Marbella, stories about a hilarious disaster in a restaurant, stories about her winning an award. Somehow, through these tributes, we must dull the edges of this single, violent act and bring into sharp focus, the beauty of the person.  

In August this year I attended an extraordinary training day hosted by Samaritans called Managing Suicidal Conversations. To my surprise, after just a few hours, I felt equipped to help someone who was thinking about suicide and steer them towards help. It was just a few hours of discussion and interaction and information, and I understood what it took to alter, or halt the progress of an individual’s suicidal thinking. Samaritans have already trained thousands of people across the country, but they want to do more. Just imagine, if even one percent of the population took it upon themselves to reach out to that man sitting on a park bench crying, to that girl on the tube platform, to that isolated and lonely friend you see about twice a year, then we could literally save lives.

 #samaritans

#worldsuicidepreventionday

#managingsuicidalconversations