{"id":34050,"date":"2017-02-16T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=34050"},"modified":"2026-02-13T19:47:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T00:47:30","slug":"suicide-and-saying-goodbye-leaving-survivors-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/suicide-and-saying-goodbye-leaving-survivors-with-love-0216174","title":{"rendered":"Suicide and Saying Goodbye: Leaving Survivors with Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RearI hardly dare to write or even think about suicide<\/a>, a topic difficult enough to discuss when it is not outright painful. Suicide, attempted or completed, has touched the lives of many. You may know someone who has died by suicide or someone who has made an attempt. You may have experienced thoughts of suicide yourself.<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0people who consider\u00a0the act of suicide to be a sin, an act tantamount to murder, and consider it unforgivable under any circumstances.\u00a0My personal belief, though, is that some situations, such as long-term physical pain or terminal illness<\/a>, may make suicide seem like a rational course of action. Of course, emotional pain can be intolerable too. Severe depression<\/a>, for example, which may feel endless and can be a match for tormenting physical pain, can often play a part in the development of suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0someone we love dies by suicide, whatever the reason behind their choice, we are likely to feel unspeakable grief<\/a>. We may feel angry<\/a>\u00a0or hurt; we may perhaps experience\u00a0guilt. Along with these emotions, we might feel a desire for answers and explanations. We want to know why this happened, how it could have happened.<\/p>\n

When A Loved One Dies By Suicide<\/h2>\n

People who\u00a0complete suicide sometimes leave notes or discuss their plans with loved ones. Other people might say nothing. Even when we have some knowledge or understanding of a person’s reasons, suicide leaves us ungrounded. We need something to hold onto.<\/p>\n

I myself know people who have died by suicide. My father\u2019s cousin, who was fatally ill, asked to be removed from his respirator so he could die on his own terms<\/a>. Another of my cousins who was incurably ill and in pain did something similar. They both said goodbye to close family members before passing on.<\/p>\n

One\u00a0lovely young man I knew who was battling addiction<\/a> also chose to end his life. He was extraordinarily kind, funny and smart\u2014a feeling soul. Before he died, he took his mother on a trip to the northwestern United States, a place they had both wanted to visit. I don\u2019t know if they discussed his plans, but I do believe this was his way to say goodbye and tell her he loved her. I do feel he was, in some way, looking to be close to her and compensate, in a way, for his death.\u00a0

\n\t

Find a Therapist<\/a><\/h2>\n\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\tAdvanced Search<\/a>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

Some months after this young man\u2019s death, I read a Facebook post from an older woman, a message that was unusually warm.\u00a0 Her wishes to her friends and her thoughts about life were so lovely\u2014it took time and rereading to realize it had been a goodbye to those of us reading, a suicide note\u2014that, in fact, she had already passed on by the time I read the post. Many of us wrote back, remembering her gifts and her compassion<\/a>, expressing their love. I was not the only person who couldn\u2019t believe she was dead.<\/p>\n

A colleague with an incurable disease planned her suicide very carefully. She wanted to make sure she would succeed. She wanted to protect her husband and children. She wanted to live as long and as well as she could, and then she wanted to die.<\/p>\n

Again, I hesitate to write\u00a0about suicide. My intention is not to inflict pain, to challenge anyone’s beliefs, or to\u00a0cause difficult\u00a0feelings. I only want to help those left behind, the survivors, survive, but I\u2019m not sure if I can.<\/p>\n

The people I\u2019ve written about just now had deep relationships with others. They took care of the people around them, both in their lives and in their deaths.\u00a0Each of these people understood what they were doing and knew their choice would have an impact on the people close to them.<\/p>\n

They said goodbye, either directly or metaphorically, to make sure those who survived them knew they were loved. And though their absence left a painful, unreal space, a hole, they\u00a0are all still alive inside of me. There are always reminders that they are gone, as there should be. They were here, but now they are physically not, though they live in memories<\/a> and as part of our emotions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some might consider\u00a0love and suicide to be antithetical. But I believe death and love are both so big that they encompass their meanings and their opposites, their synonyms and their antonyms.<\/p>\n

To me, the most touching death of all was that of the young man who traveled with his mother before he died. The enormity of his love, and of all that he left behind, is almost more than I can bear. I find his death so poignant because he was young\u2014not yet thirty\u2014and because he and his mother embodied the primal pair of mother and child. Birth and love. Ultimate connection, followed by the ultimate disconnection. But not. (The iconic image of the Pieta\u2014the Virgin Mary holding the body of the dead Christ in her lap, appears before my eyes as I\u00a0write this.)<\/p>\n

When your life has been touched by suicide, working through the complicated feelings that develop can be a challenging process. The support of a qualified therapist or counselor<\/a> can often be of benefit. If you are having thoughts of suicide, we urge you to reach out. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline<\/a> (988) is available at any time, day or night. Additional crisis information and resources are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you would like to read further on this topic, I suggest Linda Phillips’ book\u00a0A Beautiful Here: Emerging from the Overwhelming Darkness of My Son’s Suicide<\/a>.

This page contains at least one affiliate link for the Amazon Services\n\tLLC Associates Program, which means GoodTherapy.org receives financial compensation if you make a purchase using an Amazon link.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Survivors of those who die by suicide may be left with grief and a desire to understand. But many who choose suicide make a point to say goodbye with love. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[31,49,25,236],"class_list":["post-34050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-considering-psychotherapy","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-suicidal-ideation-behavior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}