I’ve shared about the moment I became a survivor of suicide, but never in great detail. It is now part of who I am and I feel compelled to expand.
“Sorry for your loss.” This dispirited and ambiguous phrase plastered my Facebook Wall in the 30 minutes I stepped away from my office cubicle for a meeting. While I innocently scrolled through the posts, the weight and reality of their context remained unclear…none of them referenced exactly what I had lost. Was this a sick joke? A freak Facebook virus? A sports reference? Hundreds of people had come out of the woodwork – some of whom I hadn’t talked to in a decade – to pay their virtual respects.
As my wheels turned, I suspiciously dialed my mom, ready to pose a sarcastic question about this “loss” everyone seemed to know about except me. When she didn’t answer, panic finally began to set in. Moments later, one of the continually incoming Facebook posts contained a link to a news revelation that would forever change me: my dad, an elected official, had been found dead in a local park with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. My mom was on her way to share this with me in person from 60 miles away and her cell phone wasn’t working. Despite her immediate pleas with the local newspaper to hold on publishing the story until she could reach me, they ran with the juicy headline.
With my privacy already tossed aside in my hometown and on Facebook, my quiet, 150-person office next became aware of the situation with my piercing shriek, “My dad’s dead, and I learned about it on the [expletive] Internet!” People in every reach of my circle were privy to the most crushing moment of my life before I could so much as finish reading the article.
The Effects of Learning a Loved One Died Online
Losing a parent is hard. Losing a parent to suicide is awful. Learning you’ve lost a parent to suicide – on Facebook – is downright traumatic. My family is as close as any and my dad and I had talked as usual the previous day. Though separated by a state line, we made an effort to see each other for major holidays, minor milestones and for pizza in between. I still have trouble accepting that I had become aware of my dad’s suicide through a social network. He battled depression for what we believe was mere weeks and never voiced he was feeling suicidal. Blindsided doesn’t even begin to describe how we felt about his decision to die by his own hand.
Social media has added a layer of complexity to grief and death we’re only beginning to explore. While one’s virtual legacy after death is now widely discussed, the potential for immediate family members to learn of a death online is not. I’m not the first person to learn a loved one has died on online, or specifically on Facebook and unfortunately I won’t be the last. Our fast-paced news culture leaves families, particularly those of notable personalities or sensational deaths, little time to digest the reality a death has occurred before articles are published and shared.
Grieving my dad’s suicide was bound to be a struggle on its own. The highly publicized (and posted) nature of his death added an entirely different level of grief I had to reconcile with. Four years later, the unfortunate reality of learning my dad died online is now a part of my survivor story. My loss is eternally public, which has forced an openness about my dad’s suicide I’m sure he never intended. Keeping the conversation where it initiated, Facebook has become my platform to inspire dialogue about this misunderstood and hush-hush topic in an effort to reduce the stigma of mental illness on surviving family members of suicide. I’m still bothered by the role social media played in my survivor journey but, with time, I have been able to shift my focus to feeling appreciative of the support I have received from friends and readers there.
Let’s face it; there is no good way to learn a loved one has died by suicide. That split-second moment where the rug is ripped out from under us will remain engrained in our minds forever. It’s part of our survivor story.
Thank you for this. Becky I loved the piece on Huffington Post.
Thank you for the sharing of your story which helps bring understanding and awareness to suicide. Blessings to you on your journey.
I found via a phone call that my son Mike had killed himself. Mike’s younger brother was on a plane headed to China at the time. 14 hours later I had to tell him his brother was dead by text message. The whole thing was surreal, but that text message conversation was awful.
On October 15, 2014, I learned, via Facebook, that my father had committed suicide the day before. Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have thought that I would have learned about my father’s passing online. Then again, I never imagined I would have a connection with suicide.