Suicide grief: UPDATED wisdom

I have compiled a few excerpts and quotations that have helped me or just resonated with me. Hope they do the same for you! If I can, I will provide the source title as well as author.

Surviving suicide is like travelling on a road that goes up and down various peaks and valleys. We must continue to move along that road, not to become trapped in palace where we might revolve our lives around the suicide. We are faced with two choices. First, we can confront the pain, go through the process of mourning and then find a way to adapt and reorganize our lives or second, we can linger in one of the valleys, dwell on the suicide, not moving beyond the death. Lois Bloom

To make the last millisecond of a person's life so supremely important is to misunderstand both the worth of our lives and the forgiveness of God. Our lives aren't games of high-stakes poker, where one final hand can wipe you out. God judges our lives in their totality. John Hewitt

The following tidbits are from Soborn, Kosman and Gordon "Too Soon to Say Goodbye" (New Hope Publishing: 2010)

"The Bible clearly teaches that each individual's relationship to Christ determines his or her salvation, now the manner of death."

"When faced with lack of understanding, the survivor tends to withdraw. The process of healing is prolonged if feelings that accompany grief are suppressed. Survivors are already dealing with sorrow, shame, guilt, anger and abandonment. Thoughtless comments or questions from others are inexcusable. For the survivor, it is like having a wave crash down upon them in the midst of a storm-tossed crisis. They find themselves submerged and drowning. Survivors may lose sight of friends and family that sincerely may want to help. That is why it is so important for friends and family to stay close to the grieving family over time..." (p 44-5)

"The emotions that surface may seem overpowering to the survivor. Yet they are part of the progression that involves all of our senses. We cannot put a time frame around those emotions. All will take place within God's timing... The main point is to deal with the pain and hurt and not to stuff it! Just as Peter called out to Jesus when doubt and fear seized him in the storm, you can take all your feelings to God and He will hold you up (Matt 14:22-33). (p 45).

"Families often deal with a depressed member for years, which takes an enormous toll. Fear and anxiety become a familiar part of life. As grief recovery ensues, and reality begins to take effect, people eventually realize there was nothing more they could have done. They cannot force a person to seek medical help or take medication. They cannot prevent suicide.... We have the irrational sense that somehow we could have prevented the death - that we didn't do enough. The 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' become our nagging companions. Emotional health comes when, in time, we are able to accept God's gift of relief - without guilt." (p 63).

"Suicide is often a silent killer. Satan takes control over a person's heart and emotions, feeding them with a truckload of lies - over and over - saying things such as: 'Life's just not worth living. No one really cares for you. They won't even miss you. Things will never be better. You might just as well end it. Here's how.'

1 Peter 5:8 states, 'Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.' Lions silently wait, watching their prey from a distance, making no sudden moves. Stealthily they creep closer and closer to their intended victim, who is blithely unaware. Then, in a flash, the reigning kind of the wild pounces on his prey. With gigantic teeth, he rips into the jugular vein and conquers. On the Lion of Judah can conquer the forces of evil..." (p. 94).

This is from the Shack, by W. Paul Young (Windblown Media: 2007)
[God talking to the main character]
"... just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedy doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I needed it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colours." (p 187-8)

Dr Alan Wolfelt from The Wilderness of Suicide Grief: Finding Your Way (Companion Press, CO: 2010)

The suicide death of a friend or family member is never our choice, yet we are faced with the need to confront our raw and life-changing grief. Yet for a number of reasons, we may not know how or where or if we should express the pain that comes with this profound loss. As you will learn throughout this book, the only way to eventually heal is to mourn.

Think of your grief as a wilderness - a vast, mountainous, inhospitable forest. You are in the wilderness now. You are in the midst of unfamiliar and often brutal surroundings. You are cold and tired. You must journey through this wilderness.

Yet, as you do so, remember: go slowly. There are no rewards for speed! As you slowly find your way out of this wilderness experience, you must become acquainted with its terrain and learn to follow the sometimes hard-to-find trail that leads to healing...

Those who have gone before you and me have indeed left us many trail markers that show us how they made it through the wilderness of suicide grief. If we look, we will see that they have been gracious enough to pass them on to others who enter this inhospitable wilderness. Others have gone before us and discovered the strength not only to to survive, but eventually to thrive. From the depths of my being, I believe you can too.

And even when you've become a master journeyer and you know well the terrain of your grief, you will at times feel like you are backtracking and being ravaged by the forces around you. This, too, is the nature of grief after a death to suicide. Complete mastery of a wilderness is not possible. Just as we cannot control the winds and the storms and the beasts in nature, we can never have total dominion over our grief.

But if you do the work of mourning, if you become an intrepid traveler on your journey... I promise you that you will find your way out of the wilderness of grief and you will learn to have renewed meaning and purpose in your precious life. (pp. 7-9)

Sorrow is an inseperable dimension of our human experience. We suffer after a loss because we are human. And in our suffering we are transformed. While it hurts to suffer lost love, the alternative is apathy, which literally means the inability to suffer, and it results in a lifestyle that avoids human relationship to avoid suffering.

Perhaps you have noticed that some people die a long time before they stop breathing. They have no more promises to keep, no more people to love, no more places to go. It is as if the souls of these people have already died. Don't let this happen to you. You have to live, not only for yourself, but for the precious person in your life who has died - to work on her or her unfinished work and to realize his or her unfinished dreams.

What if the person who died could return to see what you are doing with your life? No matter how deep your grief or how anguished your soul, bereavement does not free you from your responsibility to live until you die. The gift of life is so precious and fragile. Choose life! (pp. 119-120).