Suicide

12 Dec Suicide

Suicide…

I don’t know much about it personally. I’ve watched friends be blown away by it.
It’s not death. It’s suicide and it’s a motherfucker.

My friend called to share that her friend’s partner had killed himself. What should she do, she asked, “I know you know.”

I do not know, I replied. All I could say is:
Drop everything. Go to her home with an overnight bag on the ready. If she lets you in, be prepared; understand that suicide is unequal to death. It’s a motherfucker. You better know if you can handle this. Is your cup an espresso shot glass, a cappuccino cup or a latte cup because suicide is bowl size big. If you can’t hold her pain, I told her, know that now. Her pain is going to be vast, her guilt will be present. I don’t know what she’ll need beyond your ear and your heart. I don’t know if she knows either right now. Love her through this process if you can. And be prepared for her pain to jump into your veins. Love of another is like that. What will you do to empty your bowl? Who can you turn to? Empathy has residual effects. That’s all I know and I don’t know if what I’m sharing is on or not.

I was aware that I might mislead her. What do I know of this? I do not know the hows or why. I only know that those left holding the empty places of those gone by their own choosing feel so much when numbness fades. So little is spoken of suicide. Death itself scares most of us, leaves us with questions of what to say and what to do. Suicide feels like an insurmountable mountain and the death conversation so easily handled by comparison.

Death is a completion. It’s sad and sometimes not. We may not feel complete with who dies but death in itself is a period, a conclusion. It may be a starting place for the living as it was for me. It may be a challenge as it has been for my sisters.

Death requires courage, a courage to feel the pain and loss of another and still go on. Suicide asks so much more. It’s like going to a foreign country that few have been and there is little information. One cannot be prepared for it. How does one live with it, move on or forward? This is wisdom I do not have.

What I feel as an observer is a deep sadness – a hollowed out feeling of oh dear god no.

Suicide is not death; it is an incomplete sentence. Sometimes it’s a statement; nevertheless it’s incomplete.

Watching my friends and friends of friends I can visibly see suicide burrow its self in their marrow. I want to suck it out and I cannot. My heart hurts as I write this.

Someone write to me and tell me how do I help my friends survive suicide. I can be there to hold their pain, but how? I will listen to them again and again. Is this enough? I want to brush their hair, feed their soul, salve their pain, but I fail at the hows of it all.