On Friday, my friend Chris told me he hadn’t heard from his best friend Frank in a few days, and he was worried. I only hung out with Frank a couple of times, but he struck me as a really awesome guy. Frank is young-ish, somewhere in his early to mid 30’s.
As you can guess by the title, Frank took his own life sometime earlier this week. I’m not pressing for details, but I do know a couple of things. For example, he drove to a small town about 50 miles away from where we live. He called off work on Monday, and didn’t call or show up on Tuesday. He wasn’t found until at least Friday evening, because that’s when the police told Chris they filed the report but didn’t have any further info. I don’t know how he did it, but I do know he had at least a day and probably 3 to think it over.
Frank wasn’t suicidal, as far as I could tell. He was a social drinker, had a pretty good job, but no family to speak of. He and Chris saw each other almost every week, and Chris agrees there was no obvious sign or signal that Frank needed help.
I wasn’t close enough to be hit too hard with grief, but it’s affecting me in unexpected ways. All I can think about is how badly he must have been hurting, and how long he suffered with it, all by himself just sitting there with his phone off. It’s not grief I’m feeling, but something more like the first moments after waking up from a nightmare. It’s something like dread, or horror. It makes me squirm to imagine what his last days must have been like.
I’ll see Chris tomorrow and have a conversation if he feels up to it. He was probably the person closest to Frank, so I’m sure his feelings are much stronger than mine. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help beyond offering some sympathy. I don’t even know what I could possibly say.
My sister committed suicide, and 18 years later? I’m still not sure I can offer much advice on what to say to your friend*. There’s really not much to say - “I’m sorry.” Listening is good, though. Not just an offer of “call me any time,” but more specific. An invitation to get together after work for dinner, or a phone call now and again to ask how Chris is doing, or sitting around a bonfire or on a dock, at night, listening. And acknowledging the pain, guilt, anger, funny stories, whatever. I’m sorry your friend is going through this. You can pass along from me, if you wish, that it gets better. Not quickly, not easily, but it gets better.
*I can tell you a lot of things not to say, unfortunately. “Part of God’s plan” is a sucky phrase. “He’s in a better place” is also awful. A lot of people told me that they were praying for me, and I appreciated that they had good intentions, I also concluded that praying for someone is just a socially acceptable way of doing nothing especially helpful. The worst, though, was from my own mother, who has never dealt with depression: “It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” <<< Don’t use that one. Really.
The only really wise thing I ever heard someone say at a funeral came from my then-4-year-old sister at our father’s funeral, 20 years before her own: “My daddy’s not sick any more.” Not in pain is sometimes the closest thing to a happy ending that we can find, I think.
I lost a brother to suicide a few years ago. It’s just devastating to everyone, family, friends, even those more tangentially connected, as you’re discovering. Lacunae Matata’s advice is spot on. Her words on what NOT to say sage indeed.
Like you, my focus fell to what pain he must have felt in those final moments to tip the scale over to life ending action. For weeks I would suddenly wake in the night, in a cold sweat, my heart racing. Certain I could hear him call out, and then… It was a truly horrid time for me and my friends tried hard to help, but how?
Survivors desperately need answers. But there are none to find. Eventually the only path out of the overwhelming lack of answers or sense, for me, was accepting I could/would never understand. To stop looking for answers as there were none to find. It is never going to make ANY sense. And then choosing to actively shift my thoughts to acknowledging that I could never understand his choice. Instead I would acknowledge that mercifully his suffering had now ended. He would never know that pain again.
It is common for people who knew someone who commits suicide to blame themselves…
“If only I did this…”
“If only I did that…”
Etc.
So be sure to tell the surviving friend these feelings are common and that it is not anyone’s fault! People who do these things will go ahead and do it anyway, nothing anyone can do.
So far as counseling for someone like that, you can suggest they go, but you can’t force them.
And some people go to every psychologist/psychiatrist in the book, but no one can help them. No drug can relieve their misery (read about “bipolar”).