With most other causes of death, it seems survivors have at least one source to “blame” for taking away a loved one, which can provide a sense of comfort and closure we humans so desperately need. Whether it’s blaming a life-threatening disease, an at-fault party in an accident, or a violent criminal, anger and sadness can be directed their way, allowing those left behind to focus on grieving the innocence of the one lost. Suicide isn’t so black and white and maybe that’s why grief recovery is so difficult.
It’s hard to “blame” a loved one for taking their own life and be mad at them for all eternity, though I know some people do feel that way. I can say I was in too much shock to simply point a finger at my dad, have closure and be done. We can try to blame suicide and the disease of depression and other mental illness, but that still feels hard.
I frequently see people wearing shirts or making Facebook posts that say “F cancer!” That’s the disease and “thing” to blame when it takes away their innocent loved one who tried to fight it so hard. While we don’t have a cure for cancer, it’s so much better understood and known that sometimes, death is an unfortunate outcome. As I’ve experienced in my own family, we generally have an idea if one’s prognosis is headed that way. It’s sad and we try to begin to prepare for that possibility. As difficult as it is to accept, death can even be a blessing to end the suffering.
When someone is battling depression, it’s hard for most people to even contemplate that suicide and death could be a possibility. We don’t know it’s coming. It blindsides us. I’ve never really seen anyone say, “F suicide” (even if we’ve all thought it).
Though I’ve cycled through feelings of anger and forgiveness, I have never been able to lay final blame anywhere. I don’t and likely never will have that closure. I won’t know why my dad took his life. I don’t know if something prompted it that I could blame. I could blame depression, but that doesn’t satisfy me. It doesn’t feel like “enough,” which may be because I am still trying to understand that in and of itself.
Have you ever thought about blame? Have you placed it anywhere to help with the grieving process? Maybe I am assigning too much importance to making this happen and need to let it go.
I feel EXACTLY the same way! I so want something or someone to blame. I just don’t want to blame my sister. Maybe that’s why I used to blame myself. Then I had someone to blame, in part anyway. And I too can blame suicide and depression. But it’s just not enough. Anyway… thank you so much for articulating my feelings!
You’re so right! I didn’t touch on that, but I do think many survivors end up blaming themselves. It’s unfair, but maybe it feels easier than blaming someone who did something so unthinkable. It’s a heavy weight for survivors to carry 🙁
You’re right. I don’t think suicide survivors really ever get closure. The sad truth is we can only learn to accept the loss of our loved one. Suicide is hard to understand, yet we try to make sense of it all, over and over. It’s an awful grieving process we go through. For those who have closure to the death of a loved one, it’s hard for them to understand why it is so difficult for us to fully move forward. I have often said to my family “I don’t like being alone with myself. My mind drives me nuts!” For those of us who are analytical, the questions never stop and therefore, we will never get closure. We learn to congratulate ourselves for making it through another day and making an effort to move ahead and accept life’s new challenges.
I experience the same thing. My mind drives me nuts! I want answers, but I never get an answers, just a million theories, but those are also not the truth. Every night I fall exhausted from “thinking” into my bed, just to wake up and start the process all over again.
I blame myself, for not going into that room earlier. I blame his daughters for not encouraging him to get more help when I was pleading with them. I blame his family for not asking him how he was doing when he was feeling so low, and for not visiting him when they were less than an hour away. I blame his doctor for not calling in his refill for Ativan ” because he needs to be seen first” and I blame his therapist for not including me in his treatment, to make me aware of this possibility and giving me ways to help him in his depression. And, I blame society for placing such a negative stigma on mental health that those who are affected have to carry the burden alone for fear of judgment. So many to blame, but really..it won’t change anything. The end is still the same.
I blame myself, I was planning on going to see him that day but decided to go to the store before the kids got out of school instead. I know he most likely would have still committed suicide another time but I still blame myself. I blame my mother for making it difficult for him. I also blame my dad for not leaving a note to explain why and part of me is still angry at him for doing so and also leaving me to explain his death to his 3 young grandchildren. They don’t know that he committed suicide and I don’t know when or how to tell them or if I even should and for that, I am still angry with him almost 7 years later.
I remember when my brother Thomas died from suicide, 15 months ago, many people were angry and my siblings thought they figured out the “why”. I never felt anger, just complete sadness and despair. I couldn’t imagine this brilliant, beautiful, healthy man ending his own life. The pain must have been overwhelming and unbearable. I only come from a place of eternal love & compassion for Thomas, I do not judge his entire existence on his suicide. He is dearly missed, beyond words or measure and never forgotten, for I carry him with me daily in my heart. A bond that transcends time and space. I just pray that he is now at peace and safely in the arms of the God. Blessings to all
I struggle with this and I especially struggle with some family members that lay blame rather harshly on my brothers spouse. I don’t blame him, I wish though that I had known what was really going on with him. It saddens me that he was suffering so much in silence.
I struggle with blame, and guilt for not saving my 20 year old son. He shot himself in his bedroom using my own gun while my wife, and I were at work. We never saw it coming even though he had struggled with anxiety, and what we were told was mild depression by his therapist.
I blame myself for having an unsecured gun in the house, was not loaded, but he found a shell in my hunting jacket we believe. He had never shot a gun in his life, never asked about it, so never occurred to me he would ever use it on himself. It was utterly horrific what we found that day.
I lay some blame on his ex girlfriend who we found out a few months after he completed the act had known for years he was having serious suicidal thoughts,, the gun was going to be his method, why he wanted to… Almost 2 years later still angry with her for keeping his secret. She broke up with him a year before he died to as she said “to toughen him up”.
The person I blame the most though is his mental health professional who he saw for 2 years, and never discussed suicide prevention with us. She never gave us a safety plan, any prevention tips, never performed a suicide assessment on him… She only asked us once about suicide and we told we did not think he was suicidal as he never threatened himself to us. I don’t even know what to say about her anymore. As a mental health professional she did not even do the very basics on suicide prevention. She knew he had depression, anxiety issues, was a young male in the high risk group yet she never warned us about suicide. My wife, and I trusted her, but looking back now I feel it was gross malpractice for a mental health professional to treat a young male with anxiety, depression, and not have suicide prevention front and center of her treatment.
I know no one wanted this, or thought he would go thru with it. I just feel he could have possibly been saved if I had been warned, educated more about suicide. There is no going back, so I do realize at this point blame really does not matter. He is gone, and I miss him dearly with all my heart.
I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I can feel the pain you are experiencing and empathize with the feelings of missed warnings. I truly wish I had an answer or could help change that. I understand.
I blame myself for not having been able to protect my son. I blame myself for not having been there in time, I blame myself for not being able to find someone who can stop his seizures, I blame myself for not having had the knowledge needed in the first place, and I blame myself for not having dragged him to more doctors. The list goes on and one, it never ends. I viciously blame myself every minute of the day for not having seen it coming, even though he’s been ill for a long time AND had a malformation in his frontal lobe.
BUT, most people with epilepsy don’t kill themselves. My son had great impulse control, he never did anything stupid, never lost control, he was a quiet, shy, sweet young man, quite successful too. Why would I think he could possibly “decide” to end it all.
Because he didn’t “decide” anything. It is indeed like “cancer”. He had a disorder which can’t be cured which long-term can lead to other problems. He didn’t decide, I lost him to his own brain and we know very little about it. Now researchers are finding out it could be something wrong with other neurotransmitters, like dopamine and not, as previously thought serotonin. There also seems to be some kind of genetic predisposition to act impulsively on a stimuli when the time and place is just right. Your own brain will whack you across your face.
By now I know these things are interlinked. There is a strong connection between depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and epilepsy. I think I have heard it all by now, with some patients who are diagnosed with bi-polar depression and the like, I am actually not so sure if they didn’t suffer from TLE on top of it, you don’t have to have fits to have TLE or how about you have both? What about depressed alcoholics? Their frontal lobes are damaged too and what about the possibility of concussions due to previous accidents?
I just don’t know. I just know it’s not a “decision” one makes if they were healthy. They have something like cancer which forces their rational mind to shut off and give in to some urge.
My brother Greg has been gone 10 years this month, 1 year apart, we were like twins. I blame his employer for fostering a bullying situation that led to his being fired on a city sidewalk . A realtor agent created a ” he goes or I go ” situation and she won. She has been involved in 3 men’s suicides, including her stepson and her 1st husband to be. She broke up his family. I have plenty of blame for her, and so do most people in Buffalo.. Karma can be a bitch. As for his employer, they kicked a top producer to the curb, he was a VP, there 21 years and he loved his job. It was his identity and he was very successful. From his multiple notes and detailed circumstances of the whole disturbing situation, I feel Greg took his life to punish these people, and teach some lesson that changed the lives of the ones who loved him., especially mine. His former employer (who denied firing him) kept his name as a business listing in the Verizon white pages for 7 years until I came across it . This has led to Internet placements of him ,and this business ,like he is still alive and well and selling real estate in Buffalo. A business listing costs $90 per month, this ” mistake ” went on for 7 years. Now references and links will be on the internet forever, a Google search will reveal that in the last year he had millions of dollars worth of premium listings and won a Civic Award from some Scam. For all this I blame his employer. I still blame myself, he was my baby brother and that is just instinct, but I have let go and look at life very differently now. I am very grateful for this blog and all the hard work, emotions and logic that everyone contributes to help others learn they are not alone. Thank you ladies for your dedication, and for reaching out to the broken soldiers that survivors can be, like me.
Of course we want to assign blame. That would make everything easier. Whether we blame ourselves, a doctor, a family member etc. the end goal is to bring ourselves a sense of understanding and closure.
But realistically, if the medical community knew more, this wouldn’t keep happening! It sucks to feel powerless, especially in today’s day in age, but that’s the reality.
I lost my mom almost 2 months ago. We did so much. I swear even she didn’t see it coming. I’ll never have answers, but I find more comfort in the simple explanations. I’ve read that a suicidal episode causes the frontal lobe to shut down. I also talked to someone who suffered from severe depression who can’t make sense of it himself. He told me that the sooner I can get to a place of accepting this makes no sense, the better off I’ll be.
I recommend stopping your search for a scapegoat and accepting suicide as a complex, inexplicable tragedy. Any answer you come to on your own will be an oversimplification that may just add to your own pain.
Dear Amy,
I am so sorry for your loss. ((hugs)) and much love to you.
You are correct of course. This wouldn’t happen if the the medical community knew more. Unfortunately, the medical community doesn’t have the power of foresight either. I have been to the doc with my son three times in the month prior to his death. First the neurologist and then the general physician twice, because he complained of physical symptoms we couldn’t find a cause for. As usual, it was blamed on his medication, advised to drink more water for the constipation and they sent us on our happy way. A week after that, he was gone.
I also don’t think he saw this coming. I have read about the frontal lobe shutting off too and now I even know how it feels. I feel into a deep depression for several months (my husband called it “a deep meditative state, I could not be reached”) after his death and believe me, I don’t ever want to go there again. I couldn’t really stop the “merry go around” of thoughts and feeling at first. A little more than a year has passed now – I am thinking happier thoughts about my son. I miss him so very much though.
Dear Amy,
I am so sorry for your loss. ((hugs)) and much love to you.
You are correct of course. This wouldn’t happen if the the medical community knew more. Unfortunately, the medical community doesn’t have the power of foresight either. I have been to the doc with my son three times in the month prior to his death. First the neurologist and then the general physician twice, because he complained of physical symptoms we couldn’t find a cause for. As usual, it was blamed on his medication, advised to drink more water for the constipation and they sent us on our happy way. A week after that, he was gone.
I also don’t think he saw this coming. I have read about the frontal lobe shutting off too and now I even know how it feels. I fell into a deep depression for several months (my husband called it “a deep meditative state, I could not be reached”) after his death and believe me, I don’t ever want to go there again. I couldn’t really stop the “merry go around” of thoughts and feeling at first. A little more than a year has passed now – I am thinking happier thoughts about my son. I miss him so very much though.
I completely agree with you. It isn’t about finding THE answer…it is about finding YOUR answer. The answer I have regarding my dad’s suicide is far different than that of my sister. We all have to find our own story, because it is our journey.