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Q - Dear Annabelle,
Over a year ago, I met a friend on the Internet. At first we were only in touch because she had a web site and wanted to put some of my writing on it. Even though she was about 8 years older and had four kids, (I'm married but have no kids yet), we just hit it off. We became close friends very quickly. We both lived in towns where we didn't really have any other friends, so it was like a perfect blessing that we met when we did. We would "talk" about absolutely EVERYTHING to each other. We'd e-mail each other three or four times a day, and when we wanted to discuss things too personal for
e-mail, we wrote regular letters. We talked on the phone sometimes too.
She helped me through some tough times when I was very depressed, and she encouraged me to go get counseling. She had gone through some very bad times when she was younger and had taken pills in an attempt to kill herself when she was around 16. She LOVED life now, though, and told me she knew what it felt like to feel hopeless but that there was always a way out and suicide was NOT IT. She was such a great friend, and we were planning to meet someday soon.
Well, about a week ago, her husband called and told me that she shot herself. Completely out of the blue. No one who was close to her had any hint that she was going to do it. Her husband thinks that she was feeling a little restless with being kind of a "suburban mom" and he also thinks she may have had an obsessive crush on a certain rock singer. But still, how does that explain it?
Her husband is a great guy, from what little I know about him, and now he has to raise these four children by himself. I'm planning to go there to help out for a week or so, sometime in January, maybe.
But Annabelle, here is my dilemma. Her husband wants to die. He says he just wants to be with her, to be sure she is okay. I don't THINK he will commit suicide, but obviously you just don't know about what a person will or won't do. I'm trying to find a way to help him see that the best thing for him, for his children, and for his dead wife is for him to KEEP LIVING. He wants to know if she is in heaven. I am a Christian, and the way I believe is that when people die, they sort of go into a deep sleep until Judgment Day, and that is when the whole heaven/hell issue will come into play.
How do I tell him the truth without making him feel his own life is worthless? How can I assure him that though his wife is dead, God is a Just God and she will be okay (however 'okay' turns out to be)?
I guess I just want some help here--to know how to help this man who is suffering so much and blaming himself for his wife's death. I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing. I just keep letting him know that it is NOT his fault, that it was a decision she made, and that his kids need him and he DOES have a glorious future ahead if he'll only open his heart to it.
But how do I talk to him about eternity?
Sorry to go on and on. This is a very difficult thing, and I'm not sure what to do. Anything at all that you might be able to tell me would be helpful, I'm sure.
A - Kim,
I donāt know that I have the words to help anything here....letās see what we can do. A parentās suicide invariably condemns the children to a life of unimaginable tragedy....they MUST be attended to. You donāt say how old they are, but I cannot stress too strongly how this will impact on them. The husband is, and will be for some time to come, in shock...and, if he want to die....THAT has to be dealt with too. Call, *NOW* the ĪSuicide Hot lineā for referrals and attend to them IMMEDIATELY.
Suicide is/can be, the result of soooo many things. It can be an angry, hostile act, or an act of utter desperation where the person, killing themselves, has attempted, in the only way they can sense, to flee unimaginably terrible pain. If you have never been suicidal, you cannot know how the thought of suicide can take on actual form and substance and begin to take over your entire awareness until you feel totally enveloped by the thought of Īnothingnessā being the only relief. Whatever else, I hope he does NOT go see the Robin Williams film, ĪWhat Dreams May Comeā....itās a beautiful film, but heās in no mind set to benefit from the message.....heās in terrible pain and has to go through ALL of the stages of grief, including the *VERY important* one of anger.....even rage.
He AND the children need to have grief counseling for, possibly, a couple of years. This is just the most awful thing that could have happened in ANY of their lives. The children will see this as the ultimate repudiation of love from Īthe Mommyā........it will be years, if ever, before they can even begin to comprehend the overwhelming pain that she was in. Children, especially the under-fives, think that THEY have Īcausedā everything.....ALL of them will wonder, Īwhat did I do to make this happen?ā
The incredibly sad component to this is that, had she been receiving good, competent, psychiatric help with her desperate plight, thereās every reason to believe that she could have, with the help of her loving family, survived this peril. So very many people sink into a private hell, caused by heaven-knows-what, and, believing that there is NO one to help or to understand, and that they have done such terrible things, that the only way out is to cease to exist. The pain becomes so palpable that the individual in agony cannot even fathom how their behavior is impacting on others......the excruciating separateness actually results in the personās inability to empathize with any other living being and to long for the release of death.
I can give you no good thoughts on the religious aspects of this other than to say that I HOPE, as do we all, that, in His Eternal Mercy, God can, somehow allow the defeated spirit rest and protect the innocents left behind. The sad thing is, that in reality, the persons left behind are shattered. My heart goes out to you all and, in your helping the family, please see that they do find a good grief therapist....this is shattering beyond words.
At some point, one, or all of them, are going to turn their anger on you. Expect it, and let it pass. It will not be about you...it will be about the unbelievably explosively agonizing realization that they are powerless against something so terrible that they cannot even begin to understand its meaning. You know, that no matter how much pain your friend was in, had she been aware of the emotional carnage she would bring to her husband, and, especially to her defenseless children, that she would have found a way to work through her pain. Somehow, somewhere, for just a moment, she lost her courage and her way ......and her life.
I am at a loss for words to help. My prayers go out to you and to her family.
- Annabelle
Q - Dear Annabelle,
Thank you for your help. I did talk to my friend's husband this morning, and he did go to the hospital emergency room yesterday because he couldn't take it. He went there to get immediate counseling. So he is going to continue that, and they also put him on anti-depressants. The kids will be going too. There are four of them, and the oldest is only 10.
No one can fathom why she did it. Just as you said, the only thing I can think of is that there was something overwhelming that was causing her pain, and she never told anyone, but just in one moment in time she let go of her control--forgot how much she loves her husband and kids, forgot how much they needed her and she needed them--and in that moment, she just got the gun and killed herself. She always seemed so happy. . .I guess you can never know about people.
I also saw the movie "What Dreams May Come," and I know what you mean--that is the LAST movie her husband should be seeing right now. He says he wants to die too, to be with her, but I just keep telling him that it doesn't work that way, and that that would be a HIDEOUS thing to do to the kids, because they'll grow up forever thinking that neither one of their parents loved them at all--ESPECIALLY not their dad for deserting
them when he was all they had left.
Thanks for warning me about the anger eventually being turned on me. I am planning to go stay with them for a short while--just to clean the house and spend some time with the kids and let him talk about her with someone who really knew her (well, THOUGHT I really knew her, anyway). I guess then if that happens, (the anger coming at me), I'll be ready.
Do you know what was nice, though? After she died, I sent her an e-mail message. Mostly just to sort of say goodbye. Since she'd been my "cyber friend," it seemed most fitting. I never expected anyone to see it. I just sort of figured it would be floating in cyberspace somewhere. But her husband read it, and he printed off two copies. One he folded up and put in her hand before she went to be cremated, and the other he kept to read at the funeral. He couldn't get through it, so his brother read it, and he said everyone cried and cried. So even though I wasn't able to be there, I kind of ended up giving the eulogy at her funeral. So at least that was something. . .it's hard when a loved one dies and you can't be there for the funeral, to put closure on it. When my grandma died in 1995, I was here (my family is in Minnesota) and had just started a new job and wasn't able to get away. I always felt weird about that. But I
guess this way I was able to be a part of it, even though I wasn't physically there.
Anyway, sorry to talk your ear off. I appreciate you taking the time to offer some sympathy and advice. I always enjoy reading the letter archives on your web site. I think it's wonderful that you're so willing to help people and that you do it in such a smart, tactful way.
A - Kim,
This is such a traumatic event that Iāve tried to Īgive it a couple of daysā before answering. Somehow a watch must be kept on all of the family...the husband must NOT kill himself..and that may become so very easy to do. He blames himself for having the gun in the house Īfor protectionā. So many people believe that a gun will Īkeep them safeā, and sometimes it may, but the overwhelming evidence is that Īthe gunā is used against a family member or oneself, and not an intruder.
Let me tell you a little about suicide. It is NEVER a Īrationalā decision under these circumstances. Suicide actually becomes an Īentityā with form and shape and substance, and it envelops the person. (I donāt know WHY more is not made of this.) Right now, weāre still in the Īsuicide is shamefulā stage, and maybe thatās why people wonāt step forward and talk about their experience of it. Those people who self-commit are aware that they are about to be overtaken by Īitā, and are about to kill themselves. Those who can struggle free for a moment, can get themselves to the safety of an institution, but you must realize that the Īimpulse to leaveā becomes an overwhelming, all-enveloping directive where Īthe worldā, with all itās enticements, simply is moved far far away into some Īotherā realm where it cannot be heard, felt, or sensed in any way.
The person moving TOWARD suicide and AWAY from life sees through the tiniest of openings. It is almost as if one is enveloped in another Īrealityā (perhaps the promise of the Īsafetyā of the intrauterine experience, I donāt know)...and the movement is AWAY from pain that has become so excruciatingly, agonizingly enormous that the personās rational thinking and coping has simply ceased to exist. The mind in incredibly complex...we have so much to learn.
Now, the children ......if ANYTHING were to happen to their father, would, almost certainly be condemned to a fate far worse than the one now facing them. This is bad enough.....the likelihood of their having good lives has now taken a perilous nosedive. I DO HOPE that the therapy they are getting is from REALLY competent people who KNOW about this stuff. That they feel responsible is absolutely the case....and the younger they are, the more likely they are to believe that they actually, through their abilities magically created this into existence. For the young group.THEY Īcreateā everything they experience. If ANY one of them EVER thought ĪI HATE you, Mommyā....or wished her dead....(a VERY common childhood experience)...the companionate trauma may well be irreparable.
What a blessing that you had written that letter. Though it make take time, a year or two at the least, the love of friends, family and church and community will help guide the family through this most horrendous of occurrences. Take care that your husband does not feel neglected or threatened by your Īouterā involvement.......youāll need your strength to balance both sides of this. You, and the family, are in my thoughts.
- Annabelle
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