by Jan Deelstra

Created on: February 18, 2009   Last Updated: February 22, 2009

My 21-year-old son committed suicide following finding his girlfriend with another guy. Shock, brutal searing pain, disbelief, numbness, sadness, anger, and depression shrouded me for a decade afterward. Suicide rips holes in hearts, explodes apart families and relationships, and leaves the chasm of "before and after" in the wake. Suicide, I've since learned, is the number three cause of death to America's adolescents ages 14-25. Kids as young as age five have committed suicide, and around age ten, the statistics really begin to accelerate. More boys commit suicide than do girls, and guns were the choice of demise for males but until last year, were not the first choice for females. Now, handguns have risen to the top as being the means of death.

After my son's death, I went into myself with a library of books. I read everything I could find on suicide, on life after death, on mediumship, on psychic phenomenon, on angels, ghosts, spirits, guides, Gods, Goddesses, and worldwide forms of worship. My answers were found in books. But with each answer came new questions. There's nothing quite so motivating as the death of a child to get one to contemplate mortality, and especially, notions of hell and damnation. I have two remaining children, an older son, and a younger daughter. The title of this article, "What happens when your daughter commits suicide" is narrow only in that it does not include my experience with losing a son to suicide. My hunch is that it is just as stunning, just as horrific, just as belief exploding to lose either a son or a daughter. All that is left when the shock is subsiding are questions: Could I have done anything to prevent it? Am I to blame? What good can possibly come of the premature death? WHY~WHY~WHY? "What if...."

Friends and acquaintances have no clue as to what to say, how to help. There is a stigma that lingers and seems to chase away any possibility of authentic communication. "Suicide," just the word is too bitter to face, too contagious to contemplate. I know this because a decade after my son's death I started a non-profit corporation determined to force people to pull their heads out from their hiding places, force people to recognize an unacceptable social problem in this country. We held candle light vigils for survivors, and when the wind blew, we held flashlight vigils. We spoke with politicians and clergy and survivors. We had local live musicians and newly infected family members. We walked and talked and listened. But really, who wants to talk about, "what happens when your [child, sibling, parent, cousin, etc.] commits suicide."

Talking about it makes it all too real. The media actually told us they were afraid of "copy cat" suicides if they broadcast our vigils. Yet they have no problem shoving "news" stories of murders, bombings, automobile accidents, child abductions, and other atrocities into our living rooms on a nightly basis. So maybe "what happens when your daughter dies" is that you become a member of a club you would rather not have joined. You become one of the millions affected by suicide. And hopefully, there comes a time in your healing process when you can say it out loud, "My child committed suicide." And maybe by saying it, some other daughter or son or mother or grandparent will stop before they pull that trigger, because they find a tiny place inside that convinces them that they simply cannot inflict that much pain onto their loved ones; that "this too shall pass."
I'm pulling for you.

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