#126: Suicide

Crazy Catholic Question#126: I’m struggling to understand the suicide of a friend. Any thoughts?
This time of year especially, suicide seems to touch so many of our lives. We just passed the anniversary of a dear friend of mine’s death by suicide, and even 10 years later, I still have pangs of confusion and guilt when I think of her. I don’t understand how, as a trusted friend, I could have missed the signs. I still think that if I somehow had done a little more, been more attentive and present…what if?

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes once a year on the topic of suicide and his column remains balm to my soul when I think of losing my friend Evelina. Below are some quotes and paraphrasing of his wise words that I hope you find as comforting as I do. (FYI: his columns are archived and available on his website at www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Suicide is the most misunderstood of all diseases. We tend to think that since suicide is self-inflicted that somehow it is a choice; voluntary and avoidable in a way that physical illness or accidents are not. But, for most suicides, this isn’t true. Suicide is a disease that takes people out of life against their will. It is the emotional equivalent of a heart attack. Suicide is a fatal emotional breakdown, an emotional stroke, emotional cancer – not something the victim chooses. The act that ended their lives was not a freely chosen one. They were a victim of a deadly illness, so there is no sin to be forgiven. Moreover, since some suicidal depressions are treatable with medication, then clearly some suicides are caused by biochemical deficiencies, like many other diseases that kill us.

And though, it should go without saying but it helps to hear it, Fr. Ron says “We need not worry about the eternal salvation of those who die in this way. God’s understanding and compassion infinitely surpass our own. Our lost loved ones are in safer hands than ours. If we, limited as we are, can reach through this tragedy with some understanding and love, we can rest secure in the fact that, given the width and depth of God’s love, the one who dies through suicide meets, on the other side, a compassion that’s deeper than our own and a judgment that intuits the deepest motives of their heart.

God’s love is not as helpless as our own in dealing with this. We, in dealing with our loved ones, sometimes find ourselves helpless, without a strategy and without energy, standing outside an oak-like door, shutout because of someone’s fear, wound, sickness, or loneliness. Most persons who die by suicide are precisely locked inside this kind of private room by some wound through which we cannot reach and through which they themselves cannot reach. Our best efforts leave us still unable to penetrate that private hell. But, as we see in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, God’s love and compassion are not rendered helpless by locked doors. God’s love doesn’t stand outside, helplessly knocking. Rather it goes right through the locked doors, stands inside the huddle of fear and loneliness, and breathes out peace. So too for our loved ones who die by suicide. We find ourselves helpless, but God can, and does, go through those locked doors and, once there, breathes out peace inside a tortured, huddled heart.”

SPECIAL NOTE: For those among us who may be called to provide the initial help to someone showing symptoms of mental illness or a mental health crisis, Common Ground offers an AMAZING “Mental Health First Aid” training program (www.commongroundhelps.org). With enough interest, we could even hold the training here at CTR…