by Lynette Artin

Created on: February 23, 2008

Suicide is the most painful loss a person can experience. It is an unexplainable death that you will never understand. There is no real answer to coping with the suicide of a loved one. The only thing that you can do is to try to move forward and not blame yourself. So often people who have to live with the suicide of another will blame themselves for not stepping in and trying to get that person help. The bottom line is that there may not have been anything you could have done.

When a person gets to a point in their life where the only answer to relieve whatever pain they are going through is to end their life, chances are they have already made up their mind and you couldn't have done anything to change it.

I lost my brother-in-law 16 years ago and the pain is no less today then it was all of those years ago. The only part of it that gets easier is that the crying becomes less and you think of it a little less. It will always be painful because of the lack of information, not having any answers, not having or seeing the signs or even being able to recognize the signs that now you see after agonizing over the why?

The truth of the matter is you will never know the why. You cannot beat yourself up for not being able to stop their pain or their decision to die. In their mind it was the only answer. They do not understand that the act of suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The unfortunate part of suicide is that it is so permanent and we want to shake them, yell at them, cry with them and for them. We want to put our arms around them and ask them why, we want to offer them our help and bring them back. We feel helpless.

Suicide is a very selfish act and it hurts everyone involved. Everybody copes with it differently. Our coping mechanism eventually will kick and we learn to deal with the pain of suicide. There is no real answer to coping with suicide, we all have to find our own way through it in our own way and in our own time.

It is painful. It is sad. It is a horrible, mean and rotten thing for a person to do. It is okay to be angry and sad. It is okay to let go, the most important thing to realize is that although we feel cheated by our loved one who ended their life, that in their own way they are at peace and they no longer hurt. We need to forgive them and by doing that we somehow begin to cope with the anguish of suicide.

Learn more about this author, Lynette Artin.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.