Coming To Terms With Suicide

Death is a funny thing. It’s natural. It’s heart breaking. And it’s most definitely inevitable. Yet, when it happens it still knocks you for six like a rogue wave in a stormy sea. People die every day, it’s an on-going cycle that will keep turning for as long as we live on this planet. The concept of life itself is simple, we’re born, we live, and we die. But it’s what we do during the time we are given to live that determines just how precious our lives are. The places we visit, the people we meet, the things we do; are all contributing factors to what makes us as individuals… special. And it’s exactly that, that makes death so hard to accept. You know it’s going to happen, you just don’t know when and knowing that you’ll eventually end up losing someone you hold so close to your heart is one hell of a bitter pill to swallow.

This is where the complexity of grief comes in. With every death, follows grief and it’s something you see all the time. You witness people grieving but you do not feel their grief and with that lack of understanding, you stand as an on-looker, watching them embark on an everlasting journey of heartache and sorrow. But as weeks pass by, they seem a little better. You see them crack a smile or maybe even a slight laugh and you immediately tell yourself that they’re doing ok. However pain is an emotion we cannot see and can therefore be concealed incredibly well and if you cannot see their pain, well you cannot feel it. Until it happens to you.

I experienced that very pain seven weeks ago when my best friend committed suicide. That best friend, was my dad. The man that brought me up loving heavy metal music, football and gaming. He was the one person who could brighten my darkest days just by giving me one of his hugs. You see, you think you know grief because you’ve seen it happen a hundred times to the people around you. But you don’t truly know grief until death creeps up on the person you love most and snatches them from your grasp far too soon.

Let me assure you that death is terrible under all circumstances, however, suicide is particularly traumatic. Had my dad been diagnosed with a terminal illness, maybe I would have been able to prepare myself for the day he would be taken from us. But nothing could have prepared me for that day. Don’t get me wrong, my dad was ill but he had an illness of the mind, something you cannot see and therefore is so very often overlooked. Nobody would think I suffer from depression and anxiety, yet I do. It’s such an easy illness to overlook, especially when you don’t know what you’re looking for. Was I aware that he suffered from depression? Yes. Did I think that it would one day take his life? Of course not. He was my dad, I’d always imagined him still around at 90 years of age, sat in a chair, whiskey in hand, and ranting about the state of the economy and how screwed up the country is. Losing him at 19? That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. But it did and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Now that’s the hardest part to accept. In the days leading up to my dad’s death, I knew something wasn’t right and I still kick myself now because I didn’t ask him if he was ok. Even if I did, maybe the outcome would have still been the same but at least I could sit here now and tell you all that I tried. He wasn’t even 50, he still had so much happiness to come. But now he won’t be here to see me off to university, he won’t see my sister nor I graduate. He won’t be there on mine nor my sister’s wedding days. He will never meet his grandchildren nor have a happy retirement with my beautiful mother. And as upsetting as all of that is, it only emphasises how much he was hurting. He is and always will be the bravest man I know for leaving behind everything he knew the future held. You may be reading this now and thinking that suicide is a selfish act but I would have to disagree. Yes, my dad’s death has caused a lot of collateral damage, grief and heartache but I will say this once and I would say it one hundred times over if I needed to; I would much rather my dad be gone and at peace with himself now, than have to live a life of unhappiness just to please his family and friends.

And I’m not going to lie, losing him has been the hardest thing I have ever experienced and I’m never going to be the person I was before he passed away. Whoever said that time heals all wounds was a liar, because no amount of time can heal me when a part of me died with him that day. And after the funeral, the flowers stop coming and only the odd few people still come to visit you. It’s hard because you’re left to sit at home, wishing that you’re just stuck in one big nightmare, ready to wake up to everything back to normal.

But that’s not how life works. Grief has no time frame, seven weeks on and it’s only just beginning. You never truly learn to live again, you just learn to exist. Slowly counting down the days until you can be reunited again.