I recently read in a book called 50 things you’re not supposed to know that the suicide rate is highest among the elderly.
Gah. Isn’t that the truth? Why is that, do you think?
My husband’s father blew himself away when my husband was 11.
We dated for 2 years before he would tell me how his father died. When I finally told him that I was uncomfortable marrying someone with a huge “secret”, he reacted…well…exactly like an 11 year old. Once I knew I said that I would never ever bring it up again, and I haven’t.
He’ll say a sentence about it once in a blue moon, or answer someone honestly if they ask how he lost his father (people invariably do) in a very rational way now. He seems to have come a long way in the 5 years we’ve been together.
We have a one year old, and he’s a wonderful father. I’ve heard his wasn’t.
Funny.
I’ve dealt with it, periphally, by painting this picture in my head of an emotionally disturbed college professor, sort of a chemically sad case, so that I could have benevolent feelings about his father.
Recently found out that it all went down in a much gorier and more selfish way than I’d thought, and without divulging personal info, let’s just say there’s no way I can feel anything but hate for the guy now.
Having been through all that, my husband’s a remarkably normal guy.
My ex husband committed suicide when the kids were aged 7 to 15 (about 7 years ago). It’s so hard to predict how they would have turned out had their dad not died in this way: mostly they seem to have accepted it, although I still sense some anger in the older boys that he is not around to show them how to be ‘men’.
We do talk about him a fair bit, although my youngest son refuses to participate in discussions. I think it is because he has fewer memories of his dad being a ‘dad’ to him (we had separated about 4 years before his death).
Yes, it’s hard on kids, but they do survive. Perhaps it has made them stronger, I don’t know.
If I remember correctly, Ernest Hemingway briefly mentions being able to talk about his own father’s suicide with a friend who had shared the same experience. (I think this was in A Moveable Feast. Many years later Hemingway took his own life. About ten years ago, his granddaughter, Margeaux, also committed suicide.
I think that not only is there a genetic predisposition to depression, but maybe you become accustomed to thinking of suicide as an option.
The actress Mariette Hartley has written about her difficulties in dealing with a parent’s suicide.
There is also a documentary that is seen on the Sundance Channel from time to time. A young woman made a film about her mother who took her own life. I’m sorry that I can’t remember the name of it.
The worst pain that I have ever known was the result of a mental illness. But there is so much now that can be done to relieve mental anguish. A person who is suffering that much must put herself or himself in the hands of a professional (or perhaps more than one – until the right one is found). If the person is suicidal, she or he must be in a safe place until the pain is relieved. The sad thing is that when a person is that ill, usually the decision making skills are so impaired that he won’t know to do that. Or he won’t even want to get better.
I have also had physical pain that was bad enough that if I had not known that it was going to get better, I would have chosen death. I am not one to always say that choosing life is better. But I think that that is almost always so if the illness is mental.
Zoe I’m so sorry. Thank you for your post.
I agree that mental illness can be the worst. There isn’t always a solution for it, though. The husband of our Queen, Prince Claus, was clinically depressed. Ofcourse he tried everything, but he also said: “This is my own private hell, I’d be glad when it’s over”.
He didn’t commit suicide - AFAIK - but died half a year ago. To tell you the truth; I’m happy for him. It must have been so hard for his family, though.
I came across this thread while searching what would happen to my daughter after I kill myself. I can see where people would think suicide as a selfish act. in my case its the only way to stop the pain. yes I’m on med and yes I have a white picket fence and all that life, however it has been a tough road to get here. I have been raped, molested and mentally abuse, physically abused by people I thought were suppose to love me. I was told it was my fault I got raped. That i can not do anything right. BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! No matter how many therapist I see how many drugs I’m on there is still a pain within that never goes away. I believe in God and I have asked him to take my pain away and to take me away. I beg each night to GOD to kill me off because I dont want my daughter to think that she was not enough for me to stay alive. having her be enough is not the issue. i love her with ever part of my being, however the pain and thoughts of freedom from the mental pain is sooo much more inviting.
I wonder, fighting for life, if you’ve ever experienced losing someone you love with every part of your being? Where you felt like someone has ripped your heart out of your chest and stomped all over it right in front of you? Where every fiber of your being cries out in hurt and pain? Well, guess what your daughter will feel if you follow through with this?
God is not going to magically take the pain away. The only way that pain is going to go away is for you to face it, deal with it and get past it.
You need to find a good therapist and be honest with them. It’s not easy, and it’s not fast, but if you really want that pain to go away, that’s what you need to do. The past is done and over; it can’t be changed. All you can control is how you deal with it.
And deal with it you must. Otherwise, your daughter may someday post on a message board about the pain caused to her by someone that was supposed to love her.
You need help, and you have to go and get it. No one can do it for you.
I think suiside is a mean thing to do to your family and friends.
It really tore apart my sister’s family. One of my nephews blames my sister and it has split her family apart.
My friend’s 21-year-old daughter hung herself last week. This is probably the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard of. She’s certainly left her family and friends a long, cold devastating road to navigate. Also, I’m still in that FUCK YOU stage. Really? If you’re going to off yourself, you can’t go somewhere else, where at least a stranger or the police will find you? You need to be blasting your favorite song and be hanging, black tongued, bulging eyes and all for your room mate to find? Sorry, people; this is just too fresh; but I had to get it out.
That’s horrifying. Reminds me of that scene from The Ring
I believe you, that you’re in unbearable pain and suffering. I believe you, because I’ve felt that too.
But the question before you is not, “do you love your daughter”? The question you need to face is:
“Do you want your daughter to suffer all the pain and awfulness that you feel now?”
Because that’s what would happen if you killed yourself. You’d take all that pain you suffer and put it right on her head. And then she’d have to go through the rest of her life feeling what you feel right now.
The pain doesn’t end if you end yourself. It’s finds a new victim among those close at hand.
This happened many years ago, in my extended family. The wife of a second cousin of mine hanged herself in their basement. One of her sons, who was about 12-13 at the time, discovered the body. He had been a nice, smart kid, a lot of fun to be with . . . until that day when he totally freaked out in the basement. His entire life has been ruined, going in and out of mental institutions for the past 50 years. Another relative saw him recently; he was homeless.
I understand that there are reasons why some people take their own life. But to do it so your own child will discover your body is inexcusable.
Guy I worked with for 10 years killed himself a few days after last Christmas. His daughter is 16. He was really upset about his job and he was worried about paying for her college since she wanted to go to a private school. He left a note but all I heard about the note was that he considered killing himself just another part of his life. I think it’s possible he wanted the insurance money to go to her college fund. I’m sure she would much rather have her dad still here.
i am a single mother of 2 wonderful children. i dont do drugs/ drink… and i do have great difficulty making ends meet. my 10 year old son has aspergers syndrome, and i am often called in to pick him up from school, about 2-3 times weekly, despite him having specialized services. my daughter, 4 years old, is lively and ‘normal’, and has been refused into preschool because of long waiting lists. because of my unreliability, i’m unable to hold a steady job, and public aid does not even come close to paying the bills. i have often considered if my children would be better off without me, considering my inability to support them… also my lack of support from family has led me to such thoughts.
i was pretty much raised to hate myself… and it continues by family calling me a horrible mother due to my sons behaviors, they dont understand.
despite my feelings of helplessness… and losing hope that i can provide a good life for my children, one thing that keeps me going is…
even if i am a horrible mother… even if i cant afford to buy all that they need… even if i lose all hope in giving them a good life… the one thing i can still do is be around… let them know every day that they are wonderful… that even though i cannot provide for them, i will not give up. i will not leave them to blame themselves that i’m not around. i will not let them think for one moment that i dont love them. even if they grow up to hate me and resent me for what they didnt have in life… i did not abandon them. i will not give up, and i cannot give up so long as i have love for them, and that love will not die.
And that’s worth more than anything money can buy.
Brother-in-law killed himself a few years after one of his sons died from a sudden virus. He’d been depressed but wouldn’t do anything about it. His wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t get treatment. So he shot himself at home at a time when he knew his teenage daughter would be the one to find him.
Even more sadly, the kids blamed mom. “If you weren’t going to leave him, he’d still be alive.”
This thread breaks my heart. rendered617 and fighting for life, I hope you both find the help you need. From the bottom of my heart.
Roxanne Roberts of the Washington Post wrote a heartbreaking piece about her father’s suicide. For anyone considering suicide, but especially for a parent, please know what you will be doing to those you leave behind:
And it is not something they will ever “get over”:
I know how hard it is to get help when you truly feel this way, but you must. *Everyone *who is suicidal thinks “They’ll be better off without me,” or “No one will miss me.” They are all, always wrong.
My father killed himself when I was 12. He tried to take me with him but obviously didn’t succeed. I’ve always loved him for wanting to take me with him. I think he was trying to protect me. My family was not a good place to be. I moved out at 16 and became permanently estranged at 30. Now I’m 54.
I spent more energy and sadness dealing with the rest of my family and, later, dealing with what it left of me, than with my father. I spent 23 years in therapy - at one point simultaneously seeing three therapists individually plus two groups, one of them an intensive group that met for 4 hour sessions. This was helpful; so was just growing older. I used to awaken sobbing at night, but not these days. I also have been sober since October 1986.
It has really only been the last 15 years or so that I have really focussed primarily on the business of living, as opposed to dealing with old things. I think about the person I want to be, and whether this or that choice will help me be that. When I think about childhood I’m mostly sad about it all, and wish it hadn’t happened. Not just the suicide - the whole childhood.
I shudder to think. Who will protect and defend her, who will she trust, who will she feel safe around?
A friend told me his father called him into his office when he was sixteen years old. Told him this is what it takes to be a man and shot and killed himself. My friend is quite successful but dangerously obese. We only talked about it once.
Another friend, one of six kids, her mother adopted a friends kid. The friend was then overcome by her lifelong battle with depression and killed herself. Did my friends mother enable her? It’s thirty years later now, I’m not seeing him on either of their fb pages. Afraid to ask.
The child will never believe it. The suicide says “Mom/Dad didn’t think having me around was reason enough to live” and you’re always left wondering what could you have done to help.
I’m not even the child of a suicide, but you’ll never convince me that there wasn’t anything I could do for my classmate who killed himself - I know perfectly well he didn’t decide to kill himself to hurt me, d’uh… but if I and the other people who knew there was something seriously out of whack with him hadn’t all said “his brother is also in our class, they live with their parents, I’m not going to elbow my way into something that’s not my business when he’s got a full support structure in place” he might be alive today. How much worse for a child, adult or not, than for “the girl who sat behind him in class”?