Dealing with Suicide (Part 2)

Dealing with Suicide (Part 2)

When dealing with death and suicide, it is important to ensure that you let go of the emotions, accept the circumstances, accept your inability to change the circumstances, and engage in serious positive activities. This will act as a catalyst to rebuild your city with a new and improved life.

Tears streamed from the bosom of my emotional aquifer. Relentless in his search for his exit. The pain was deep and without mercy. We were separated from our birth mother when we were only 9 or 10 months old and were forced to be raised briefly by our stepmother and then by our sisters when her time ended. But through all of this, the desire for male bonding has always been a hot pursuit. We always chased stealthily, but my father always darted away boldly. The question of whether or not we could live without him didn't arise, considering he was there but absent for many years, and we developed a coping strategy that allowed us to have careers, etc. I think for me it was a matter of lost hope that he would ever consciously choose to step up and be the father. I thought to myself, maybe I'm naive to think that after 27 years of self-defense we would have it one day. So how do I live with dealing with this pain that is crushing my emotions? I give up hope that my father will teach me how to be a man, after all, I have no choice now. I learned all too quickly that the answers I needed would come from the most unexpected places; my wise one in me.

If the pain is overwhelming, let it go. Since I was never taught how to be a man, I relied heavily on my own observations of behaviors that were pervasive around me. I never saw my father cry, so I thought men probably shouldn't cry. It was a wimp until I realized that crying is there to help heal, and every tear that rolled down my face spoke volumes about my own fragile humanity. It spoke to my ability to feel empathy and sympathy for others. It taught me about my ability to love. I had become so cold that I no longer knew the meaning of warmth, and my experiences as a young man enduring one battle after another made me angry at God, angry at the Church. It caused me to lose faith in humanity, faith in my ability to become a man of integrity. I was just hopeless. But my crying helped me let go of my pain. Did it stop me from missing my “porridge,” as I affectionately called it, no, but when the crying stopped, stopping was an indication to me that I could move on. When I realized I had the ability to stop crying, I took the opportunity to laugh at a fond memory. We all have the ability to rebuild our empires after loss, but we must first accept that we can.

You cannot take the place of those you love, nor do you have the ability to reverse the situation. We all have our autonomy and free will, which the laws of all jurisdictions seek to protect. If someone decides to commit suicide, you must accept the fact that you have not changed their mind. Worrying about what could have happened or what you could have done won't bring the person back, it will only drag your hope further into the abyss. So the sooner you can accept that it wasn't your fault and that you are powerless to undo it, the sooner you can move on to building a life beyond hurt.

Participate in activities that help release these feel-good hormones. Sport, exercise, good conversations with lots of laughter, reading a book, signing a good song. There are plenty. Suicide is also hard on the loved ones and that's why you want to make sure you use the best materials in your attempt to rebuild the broken city of your heart. This way, the building blocks of your character are stronger than they were before the catastrophe of experiencing the suicide of a loved one. I wrote songs during the experience I had in 2014. They made me cry more than anything at the time. But the more I cried, the more I healed. I also had some really great laughs with friends talking about the funny things my dad used to do. Sometimes the simplest things like saying my wife's name with a French accent were always a classic. Or his strange way of telling us, I smoke, but don't you dare. When we were around he would always go to a dark place under a tree to smoke. I think that was his way of trying not to bring his own demons into our lives.

If you can practice the above; If you accept the current circumstances, accept your inability to change them, cry about them, and focus on the positive during your time of dealing with death and especially the suicide of a loved one, you will be well on your way to helping yourself have a productive and wonderful healing experience.