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“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.” -T S Eliot
This post has been a long time in the making. Even now, as I sit here to write it, I am not sure if I am ready or even know what to say. However, I feel compelled to write something, even if just to give myself the chance to process. Please bear with me if I lack focus.
Last year three people I knew committed suicide. One was a long-time family friend who, faced with a broken marriage and family, decided he could not go on. And so on Christmas Day he ended his life. Another was a friend I made online, Gideon. This brilliant man of God brought much life and light into peoples lives through his friendship, his wisdom and the beauty of the liturgies he would write. Despair and depression over-whelmed him as well. His silence is still felt by so many.
The most significant suicide of the three happened almost a year ago on Mother’s Day. Andrew, the brother of one of our first Little Flowers Community members, had recently become a Christian and joined our small inner city church. However, an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness sent him into a cloud of paranoia and fear. He climbed up several stories into a construction site a few hundred meters from our house and threatened to jump. I was the first civilian on the scene and stood there for nearly eight hours until I watched my young friend leap to his death. That image will forever be seared into my heart and mind.
As a pastor, I am inevitably asked some very difficult questions in times like this, such as “Do people who take their own lives go to heaven?”. Andrew’s mother, a Catholic woman, had always been taught that suicide meant that the person would go straight to Hell. I was able to offer small comfort by showing her that the Roman Catholic Church does not believe this to be true in cases of mental illness. However, such answers aren’t to always so clear in all situations.
Though I personally cannot imagine that God would turn away such sons as Andrew or Gideon, whose faith was so true and apparent to all who knew them, I refuse to make claims about who is saved and who is not in such cases. Neither do I wish to offer empty or false hope in the name of comfort or easy answers. Inevitably such deaths leave us unsettled, broken and afraid. The need for God and one another is desperately more important than theological speculation. This is easier said than done, but something we must be very sensitive to when dealing with these very real situations.
Rather, it is to those of us left behind that I would rather focus our attention. Andrew’s death was a further tragedy because Amy, his sister, had been desperately trying to get Andrew treatment. Others in his life downplayed the problem, even rebuking Amy for being so insensitive to her brother. A few had the humility to acknowledge this after his death, mourning their own unwillingness to see and address the truth. Hindsight offers a bitter clarity.
This is perhaps the more critical lesson we must learn. We must get past the stigma attached to depression (and other mental health issues) so that we can both identify and intervene when the people we love are hurting. I am not suggesting that our failure to do so is the cause of suicide- by no means! Rather, I am calling us to a great depth of honesty, humility and intimacy that allows us to bring just that much more light and hope into potentially deadly circumstances.
Within an hour of Andrew’s death, Amy and her daughter (who lived with Andrew across from the site of his death) moved into the community house with us. In loving support, many others in the church also moved in, rallying together to grieve the loss and celebrate the memory of Andrew’s short life. While very little formal “ministry” happened in that time, there was a sense of deep holiness throughout.
Suicide is devastating, but again the stigma attached to it can often lead us to a “hush-hush” approach to comforting and grieving. Any death can be cripplingly difficult, but suicide has proven itself to be something that exponentially destructive on those around. It is not uncommon, for example, for suicides to come in pairs (or more), especially where young people are involved. We must break past the “proper” and be actively and intentionally involved in facing the realities of suicide on family, friends and even the wider community.
If you are facing depression or despair that leads to suicidal thoughts or impulses, please, please please talk to someone you trust. If you don’t have someone, take advantage of the resource available in your community. And if you are approached by someone who is suicidal, but demands you keep it a secret, have the sense to break that promise for the sake of life and hope. Do not try to carry it yourself. Get the help you need from your faith community AND professional mental health workers. The diversity of feelings you will grapple with, from guilt to anger to even euphoria, are too much handle alone.
Finally, if you have lost someone close to you through suicide, don’t try to carry it alone. The impact of such a loss can linger for a long time, even when you feel it has lost its immediate hold on you. Don’t try to be “strong” for others by putting aside your own need for healing, grieving and support. It is this very mentality that too often leads the suicidal to keep their plans to themselves. And in the end, do not let guilt set down roots in your life. We can all make better choices, but we cannot take responsibility for the choices of others, especially ones of such finality.
Above all, we must begin to talk about it together. Let us bring the issue of suicide out of the darkness and into the light, before each other and God. And there we will find hope in the face of despair.
“Where there is despair, may we bring hope.” -St Francis of Assisi
