What happens when a parent commits suicide?

Wow. What a powerful thread. Many experiences, varied reactions. But the candidness of the posters has been remarkable. Thanks for that, everyone.

One thing I can personally relate to is having a child. To me, this takes suicide out of any “option for life” toolbox that I carry around. It’s simply not a tool I can use any longer (not that I wanted to). But I know people look at suicide as a way out, a way to end whatever pain, etc. they are dealing with. When you have a child, you just can’t do that to them in my opinion. My heart goes out to everyone who has had to deal with this.

For example, I suffer from chronic pain. Serious, sometimes debilitating pain. No cure pain. It’s never getting better, only worse. I know that. The doctors all know that. And on some of the more painful days, I can understand someone’s desire to stop the pain. It’s not a desire to commit suicide per se, but a desire for the pain to stop. Sweet relief!

Ever since my child was born, I simply can’t go there. The love I have for her is unbounded. I want to see her every day. I want to see her every night before she goes to sleep. I don’t care what I have to endure to do that. She means that much to me. Now, I won’t share this with her, because I don’t want her to feel like a burden or anything. I want her to feel loved and safe, and I think I’m accomplishing that. Nothing else really matters.

For those of you that have children and are contemplating this, please seek help. Kids don’t need toys, nice clothes, money, a car, or anything else you think you are failing to provide. Kids need you to be THERE. To listen to their stories, to let them know they are loved, to give them a sense of security… You would be truly amazed at how quickly they would give up every material possession they have to keep you in their lives. Honestly, you are irreplaceable to them, and even if you find yourself in some bad financial straits because of the economy or whatever, you leaving by suicide is not solving their problem.

I found this thread by searching “how to survive a father committing suicide” up on google.

I thought you might want an opinion from someone who’s father’s suicide was recent.
It was less than 2 years ago, actually. I’m 14 years old, I was 12 when he committed suicide (It was 6 days before my 13 birthday) You have no idea what I’d give to have my dad back. I’d rather live in a homeless shelter, if it meant my family being whole again. I try to fill my voids with materialistic things, but they don’t help. I don’t have suicidal thoughts, but I believe I have depression on the most part.
I just want to crawl somewhere and not have to feel any pain for a little while.
Not forever. Just a little while.
I haven’t accepted it yet. I do believe that a parent committing suicide is one of the worst things that could ever happen to a child. Mainly because parent’s are a child’s role models. And I also think I could’ve done something to prevent it. Everyone says that no one could have, but I also know that my mom and dad had had a fight the night before he did it. And I know the morning of the day he did it I was being a little bitch to him.
I will always feel somewhat responsible and I don’t know how to make all this pain go away.

I’m sorry to hear that, carebearac3. This is a terrible thing that has happened to you.

I understand your feeling somewhat responsible, but want you to grasp that you are not. There is no way that, in the relationship between a 12 or 13 year old and their parent, it is up to the 12 year old to keep the parent from suicide. There is also no way that being a little bitch one morning logically leads to your father’s suicide. Being a little bitch one morning is normal. Suicide isn’t, and it’s a desertion that no child deserves.

It seems almost impossible to hate a parent or to see them as inadequate, as a role model or otherwise. I think this is something built into the human psyche as part of how we find examples to follow in growing up. But there is an underlying truth here that your father was inadequate and that you are the victim in this relationship. I doubt your father wanted to victimize you, but you should still see yourself as the party wronged here, the one who lost out through no fault of their own. And you have to take the “no fault” literally; we all have faults, but not that lead to a father’s suicide. The suicide is on your father. This deserves a lot of thought, and the alleyways your thoughts go down that end in “it was my fault” deserve critical examination so you can see they are false. The suicide is NOT on you. Thinking it is would be a kind of crazy.

It is good that you don’t have suicidal thoughts. Your options stay open when you are still alive. You probably have a great deal of things to work through, including whatever it has done to you to grow up in a family whose environment included a suicide. There must have been some chemistry in the air that hurt your father and it probably hurt you in some ways, too.

You can feel much less pain and live a much more useful and joyful life if you can work these things out, and there will be many things to be happy for. Please keep trying, and please take care of yourself!

Get some help, please. You’ve come here asking for help, and in the meantime look for more help online. I have often found good support groups for my own issues online - not that I had anything so serious as you.

It’s not your fault, though you probably won’t internalize that for a long time. But it’s not your fault.

Twelve is an absolutely awful age for this to happen. Not that there’s any good age, but your father left you at an awful time - a time when you really needed your dad. It was selfish and you deserved better. And it’s Ok to think that.

Be well and take care of yourself, please.

Very sad stories here.

My uncle killed himself three years ago at the age of 30, leaving behind a 10 year old and a 5 year old son. The 5 year old could stay with his mother, but the 10 year old’s mother lost custody of him due to a drug problem. My grandparents have become legal guardians of the 10 year old, which is probably best for him anyway because he lived there before his father died.

His oldest son is now 13, and he seems to have dealt with the grief in a healthy way. He is in many ways your typical 13-year-old, which is remarkable considering all he’s been through (there was a lot even before the suicide.) He has positive memories of his Dad, and frankly I’m grateful he thinks of his Dad in such a positive way because the reality is my Uncle was often hostile, mean-spirited and willing to do just about anything to maintain his heroine fix. This way, he’s always a hero in this kid’s eyes, an ideal captured in time. Only time will tell if my cousin ends up with any serious issues as a result of this tragedy.

My mother tried to kill herself when I was 14. Her response to ‘‘What about olives?’’ was ‘‘Oh, she’ll be fine.’’ She wrote a very long suicide note, which my grandmother confiscated and burned and refuses to say what was in there, stating only that it was horrible. We didn’t talk about my Mom’s problems then, thank goodness for my Aunt to help me sort through everything behind closed doors. My mother has suffered her entire life, and her illness is such that when she suffers, everybody suffers. I love her dearly and want her to be alive, but there are times I have just wanted so much for everyone’s suffering to end. There are times I just want her to be at peace. And ever since I was 14 I had to consider the notion that maybe her suicide really was inevitable and the only way to truly end the suffering. I’ve been bracing myself for that moment ever since.

I’m ashamed to say that, but there it is.

I want to repeat what the others said: It’s not your fault. Please try to remember it wasn’t your mom’s fault either. None of us can control someone else’s thoughts or behavior. An emotionally healthy person won’t kill himself because of a fight with a loved one. We all have said unkind things or had fights with people we love.
Most people who commit suicide are depressed. Depression is an illness. You didn’t cause your dad to be ill, just as it wouldn’t be your fault if your dad had diabetes. Unfortunately, a lot of people in our society have old-fashioned ideas that depression means someone is weak instead of realizing it is an illness, and many depressed people don’t get the right help because of that. If you do think you are depressed, don’t let those attitudes keep you from getting help.

Many people with depression hide it from their family, but the research has shown that
many people who end up killing themselves have struggled with depression a long time and have tried to kill themselves previously. It would not surprise me at all if the truth was that your dad had been depressed before you were ever born, and if that was the case, how could that possibly be your fault?

It is very common after a loved one dies, even if it’s not from suicide, for a survivor to have thoughts of “If only I had done this or hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have died” or “I wish I had been kinder to them”. We can’t blame ourselves for not being able to predict the future, for having bad days or bad moods. You could not have known.

I am sure that if your dad had been healthy and had been thinking clearly about how his death would affect you, he never would have left you. For all we know, maybe he was trying very hard to keep himself together for your sake, but just was in too much pain and couldn’t do it anymore - not because of you, but because of what was going on inside his brain.
Unfortunately depression has a nasty way of warping someone’s thoughts and making them think that people they love will be better off without them, that things will never get better, or other terrible things that really aren’t true. It’s not your fault that your dad was in that sort of mental state. Just please try talking to others and reaching out for help if you feel that things are getting to be too much for oyu.

A friend of mine killed himself a few years ago. His daughter was in her 30s and fortunately is married to a wonderful guy who helped her deal with it.

No one saw it coming. His health had started to decline, and I wonder if he had received bad news from his doctors.

Even though we weren’t “best friends” I’ll always wonder if there wasn’t something I should have noticed, something I could have done.

My sister’s ex-husband died (not a suicide) at his kitchen table, and her adult children discovered the body when they came by. They were shocked and devastated even though they were adults and not particularly close to their father.

I can’t even imagine being a kid, having a parent die, and finding out it was deliberate.

You have described, exactly, the circumstances when my brother took his life 3 yrs ago. Children older, out of town, note explaining it’s not about them. Had truly tried and tried to resurrect his life. We had all watched it happen, again and again.

I think he had a beginning addiction, and knew he wasn’t strong enough to throw it, thought he was sparing his children a Dad that was a homeless addict. He had sought and received, over the years, help from many sides, friends, family, community. In a way he couldn’t forgive himself for needing help, I believe. Accepting it made him feel a failure, no matter how freely offered, or reassurances given.

My niece and nephew, though grown adults, are still a little unhinged by this event still. They are both still in therapy, I believe.

I can’t say whether he should have lived on. I watched him struggle all his life, to find his way. That was heartbreaking too. As he lived in the same city as I, my other siblings blamed me, like I should have known. There was a lot of misplaced anger, layered over our dysfunctional background, well, long story short, the siblings will not likely see each other ever again. Pretty sure that’s not what he wanted, but sometimes that just how it goes.

My mom shot herself when I was 15. (31 years ago.)

She was mentally ill. She expressed paranoia of a mysterious “them” out to get her. She even tried to jump from a moving car during a sudden bout of panic.

My dad took her to a doctor, and he prescribed medication for her. We assumed she would get better, eventually. We didn’t foresee suicide.

I have no feelings of anger, just sadness. I do not believe that she was in her “right mind”, so there is no sense of betrayal or abandonment.

I have no idea in what ways I was changed by it.

I think it has to do with how you are raised to deal with death. I have a mentally unstable mother and my brothers and sisters feel awfully guilty for this. Why I will never know. So kids can feel guilty about a lot of things. And people deal with death in their own way. My father died and we were close but I just view it as “just the way it is.”

Remember the nice times and move on. It sounds awful simplistic, but that is enough for me.

You can “if only” any situation to death. “If I only did this,” or “If I only did that,” but none of that helps and it only keeps one in sorrow.

My wife was 25 when she lost her mom. Two months after we were married, she bought a gun, went to the bank of the Colorado River just outside of Laughlin, Nevada, and shot herself in the head.

The night before she did this, my wife spoke with her mother for the last time. She had told her she had problems with gambling and mental illness. She asked my wife to tell her sister and brothers it wasn’t their fault.

My wife begged and pleaded her mother to not go through with it. We offered any means of transportation to bring her home to Texas. Her sons were ready to go and get her. She said she was tired of living, and didn’t want to be a burden to the family.

Her body was found a few hours later.

My wife carried guilt for 12 years, because she felt her mom didn’t give her a chance to help her. Every holiday she sank into depression, because she missed her mother. She missed out on the first ten years of my son’s life because she could not physically bring herself to realize she had no part in her mom’s death.

And now, as an EMT, I can certainly sympathize with my patients who have attempted suicide, but I really hurt for their families. Those calls hit a little too close to home for me.

I had an uncle that committed suicide back in 1993, he was in his late 30’s. Suffered from severe depression his whole life, and finding out his wife was having an affair led him out to the garage one night to suffocate himself with car fumes. Left behind a 12-year old daughter. She’s now 30 and has her own family, she has gone through depression as well, but I assume takes medicine. I’m sure she fights her own demons, but she has taken a much better and happier road.

Just went to a funeral yesterday actually, a friend of mine from church lost her husband to suicide. Only 50 years old, left behind 4 kids (ages 8 to 12). He suffered from debilitating deteoriation of the spine/depression/addiction. We’ll see how the kids fare. Also, his wife asked for a divorce just the day before. Must have been the final straw.

Similar stories here. Mental illness/anguish/suffering (when not treated) can be just as deadly as any physical disease. Anyone who has ever suffered with it knows.

I got help for depression. Then more help, and more help on top of that as I was in such a mess from medicines, seizures, ‘therapy’, and hospital/medical bills.

I attempted suicide more than once. More than once I was in the ICU - the first time I was in a coma and the second, I had stabbed myself. When I was in a coma - like right before - I knew my friend was trying to contact my attorney as it was Thanksgiving and my son’s placement would have to get figured out. The rabbi had come and I said the sh’ma and everything. My son had come to the ICU with my mom and he was holding hist stuffed dog. He had no idea I was about to die; he just knew mom was sick. I was drifting and thought, “What if Little CP forgets Goobert [his stuffed dog]? I need to wake up. This is not gonna happen right now.”

And later, I did, much to the shock of everyone.

I loved my son. I still do! But for some reason - and I can’t really being to explain why - at the time I simply could not see my actions as abandonment. Thinking about my responsibilities made me feel worse because I couldn’t meet them. I literally though he’d be fine. THANKFULLY he doesn’t know about any of this. I hope he never does, though I’m sure eventually I’ll have to tell him about the time his mom went crazy when he was little. The sad thing is that I did this a few times - the second time, even though I was so wrecked with guilt over it I still saw it as ‘an option’. I didn’t know how to get out of bed. Thinking about things I ‘had’ to do was enough to make me beg for an asteroid to hit Earth.

Every Tuesday, I eat lunch with my son at school. On Fridays, we have a ‘date’. Sundays I make him eggs. Every night before bed we read a chapter of Stink Moody and I help him with his Hebrew homework.

When you are a parent and you commit suicide, you just broke a million little promises. All of the things you’re supposed to be there for - birthdays, holidays, yelling at your kids when they do something dumb, getting a driver’s license, etc. - you just missed. That’s a million sandwiches you’d never make and a million moments you’d miss out on. That’s a thousand times you wouldn’t have been able to think your kid was acting like a brat. It’s the fights and kisses you don’t get to have.

When you have a child, you make a promise. You promise to care for them and tough it out - even if you do it badly. You have to try.

I don’t know how I’d live if I didn’t see my son every day or how I’ll feel when he decides he’s too old to have lunch with mom anymore. I don’t know what I’d do if, God-forbid, something happens to him. It took awhile, but I’ve now learned my value as a parent. Even ‘bad’ ones have worth.

I remember as a kid, my dad would always miss our school plays. He was too busy. He never came to a volleyball game, either. It made me feel so unloved and unimportant. Can you imagine a kid thinking every single time that his (dead) parent should be there, “Oh, why wasn’t I important enough? How come mom/dad isn’t here to see me tonight?”

It’s strange. Parents will give their own lives for their kids - literally jump in front of bullets to save their children. Even the most depressed, angry, terrible, horrible parent will do this. But asking a suicidal parent to live for their child? That’s the most loving, terrible, hard, most awful and best thing you can do. Don’t deny them that right to yell at you for how terrible you are when they become teenagers. :wink:

So…if anyone finds this on Google and is considering such a deed, I just want you to know that you have worth. I know that making schedules and getting up out of bed when I didn’t want to to take Little CP to the museum or whatever is what got me through everything. Before, he was just overwhelming. And he’s a well-behaved kid! He was always cared for and fed and bathed and everything, but I was so overwhelmed by life that even a simple request like, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” made me want to crawl into bed. I simply did not want to function.

I would hurt anyone who tried to hurt my son – what gives me the right to inflict imaginable pain on him?

It does get better. Keep going. **You’re not selfish. You’re hurting and trying to find a cure. **More often than not, your kids will be your best medicine. Whatever tools you need to get through life, you can learn by being part of a family. I firmly believe that.

When I was a child, it was known in a hush-hush way that a neighbor kid’s dad had killed himself in their basement. This was a poor, marginal family to begin with and the notion of getting counselling for this kid was never brought up. He acted out and was a real terror in the neighborhood, vandalizing stuff mostly, until they moved. I don’t know what became of him, he might very well have ended up in jail or worse.

I was running along a multi-use trail yesterday where I saw a young man holding a toddler up, standing behind a tree. At first I thought the little guy was having a pee, but it was odd for him to be being held up instead of standing on his own. Then I saw a young woman approaching from the direction of the other side of the tree, and it was clear that they were all set to jump out and scare mommy.

As the surviving parent, it’s my duty to both my daughter and myself to not sweep away our similar small, sweet memories, from the moments when my wife was okay. It won’tmake the pain worse: just the opposite. My daughter will know that she brought a lot of happiness into a life that otherwise didn’t allow itself much of it.

Also, of course, get the kid down to the Social Security office and do the paperwork. There could be several thousand dollars in death benefits for college money.

you get questioned by the police, you go to the morgue to ID your parent, and then you live a life of hell for years and years which in turn results in your own mental illness.

I read all the threads here, whether or not they pertain to (or sometimes even particularly interest) me.

I just want to say I think the people who frequent TSD are just an amazing bunch of people.

That is all.

UT

It doesn’t just damage the children. My husband’s grandfather committed suicide before my husband was born, but I can still feel the cracks, the pain and loss that casts a tinge on family events even today. As the only male descendent and the spitting image of his grandfather, he’s dotted on in a way that that his female relatives aren’t. Although his family has never put pressure on him to pick a particular profession, I can’t help but notice that he’s become an Army medical personal, the same as his grandfather.

I’ve talked about his grandfather’s illness (his great-grandfather committed suicide too) with his mother, and she said that her father was too proud to ask for help. In that time, mental illness was seen as a personal problem that one could overcome without help. Although my husband’s mother and aunt seem to be free of depression, the history definitely makes me very concerned for my husband and I’m going to do everything I can to help him avoid depression and PTSD.

As someone who has suffered through severe depression myself, I just want to say to those of you still in the pit: I know how bad it is where you are and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I know it seems that we ask too much of you to hold on and keep fighting, but you can get out of this and when you do, you’ll truly experience what it means to be alive. The blackest nights have made the days a thousand times brighter.

I hope I’m not upsetting too many mods by posting on such an old thread but I’ve read through all the posts and I’m still on the fence with what to do with my life.

A little background about me. I’m a soon to be 35 male, living with my partner and we have a boy that has just turned 3. She has a boy who will be 9 next month and I have 2 kids to a previous partner, a boy aged 7 and a girl about to turn 10 in 5 days. Don’t worry I’ve had the snip, no more I promise.

I’m struggling with life right now and secretly in tears. Being a self employed kitchen fitter, working for a national company I haven’t had any work over the xmas period and beyond which means no money whatsoever. My last pay was just over £800 on the 18th Dec, of which I had £230 left after bills to buy xmas for 4 kids and my partner.
Safe to say xmas was a poor show from me, my son just turned 3 2 days ago and I didn’t even have a penny for a card let alone a gift. The first kitchen I had back from the holidays started at the tail end of last week and the way the payment run works I won’t get that now until the 29th…my daughter’s birthday is on the 27th. Even at the age of 35 I’ve so far had to borrow £200 from my mum for materials for work and fuel for my van just so I could try and earn some money.

I feel so done in, I can’t go on like this. I’m 3 weeks behind on rent today, I don’t have the maintenance money to give to my ex this month for my 2 kids, my road tax and insurance for my car is due in a week plus my van’s yearly mot is due in under a month not to mention the road tax and insurance for that.
I’d sell my car but it’s only worth a little bit of money plus I need it to take the kids or do shopping. Speaking of shopping I’ve been living off cheap tinned goods and can’t afford to give my kids more than fish fingers & alphabet letters for their t most nights. They are bound to be sick of it too.
I’m such a failure…end of.