Day 3 - National Suicide Awareness Week

*Note: I am going to try to do posts each day this week (no promises) with information that I hope will be helpful concerning the problem of suicide. If you have not already done so, please read my initial introductory post on the topic for my background and a way that you can participate in helping to address this awful problem that devastates so many lives.

Also, if anyone reading this has his or her own blog, I would be grateful if you might be willing to do a post sometime this week mentioning the week (feel free to link to my blog if you want). Most people don't think of suicide beyond the occasional publicized celebrity death, but when it happens to someone you love, you too would wish more was being done to help those who fall into such deep despair. A post this week can be a small step in helping with that cause.

I am going to do one more post here concerning a book that I have read on the topic of dealing with the suicide of a loved one. There are many books and articles I have read, but this book and the book I mentioned two days ago are the ones I have found most helpful.

Both books offer very good and very helpful advice for those who have found themselves in the depths of this trial, but as a person whose faith is very important to me, I felt the one area the first book lacked was a bold and honest look at the difficult questions that come up for those who believe in a God that we say is good and loving when something tragic such as this happens. The first book is admittedly written to a very broad audience and does an admirable job of offering hope to both religious and secular alike. But because its stated audience is different, it very naturally is more delicate in its approach to religious topics.

Finding Your Way After the Suicide of Someone You Love by David Biebel and Suzanne Foster, on the other hand, is straightforward about the fact that it is written to an audience that holds to a faith in a God as generally defined by the teachings of the Bible. So, if that is not your background, this book may not be as palatable to you, though I think the tenderness and compassion with which the book was written would be appreciated by all.

But suicide does, for those who are people of faith, bring up some very difficult questions that cannot be answered by a pat on the back and some trite religious catchphrases. And, Biebel and Foster handle this in a real way, without glossing over the intense emotions and anger that can very naturally arise within the heart of someone who goes through this seemingly senseless devastation. Thus, I believe this book is essential first reading for a person in grief who is searching for how tragedy can co-exist with the belief in a God who loves those in pain.

Day 1 - National Suicide Awareness Week

*Note: I am going to try to do posts each day this week (no promises) with information that I hope will be helpful concerning the problem of suicide. If you have not already done so, please read my initial introductory post on the topic for my background and a way that you can participate in helping to address this awful problem that devastates so many lives.

Also, if anyone reading this has his or her own blog, I would be grateful if you might be willing to do a post sometime this week mentioning the week (feel free to link to my blog if you want). Most people don't think of suicide beyond the occasional publicized celebrity death, but when it happens to someone you love, you too would wish more was being done to help those who fall into such deep despair. A post this week can be a small step in helping with that cause.

I am far enough removed from the events of last October that I am able to look at things from a bit more balanced perspective than when I was in the throes of the pain and shock closer to the event. I am at the point where I tend to look back at the death of Alfred with just a contemplative sadness rather than the overwhelming uncontrollable sorrow I used to feel. And, I am learning that one of the greatest ways for me to move on and become a stronger person from the experience is to use the insight that I have been given to help others going through similar circumstances.

For in the initial days and weeks after losing someone to suicide, a person feels dazed and confused. Sometimes you burst into tears uncontrollably with no warning and regardless of where you are (as I did in such places as church or walking down Broadway near my home); other times you feel no emotion at all and just sorta sit and stare. But the overwhelming sense during that time is a feeling of being completely lost. Suicide is not generally talked about in "polite company," so those thrust into the experience find themselves without warning in uncharted territory, as if they woke up one morning like Michael Douglas in the movie The Game, buried alive in a tomb somewhere in Mexico but not knowing where you are. You feel as if you want to just stay in the tomb and not go out, because when you do, you don't speak the language of the experience to even know how to ask for help.

It was during that time that I was so grateful for another person, a bit further along in his experience after losing his mother to suicide, who recommended a book that truly became my road map to find my way out of the tomb and back to familiar ground. That book was No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One by Carla Fine (a suicide survivor herself, having lost her husband). As I have continued to learn about suicide (first to help me and now in an effort to be able to help others), I have found that there is a large body of work addressing the topic of suicide (a search of Amazon.com's "Suicide" category brings up 2,103 results), so there are many more resources than I have been able to examine personally. But this book, speaking as one who read it barely a week past the suicide itself happening, is a superb, compassionate, hope-filled book that is very reasonable priced ($10.74 on Amazon), currently in print, and able to be found at the major bookstore chains (I have purchased copies at both Barnes & Nobles and Borders near my house).

Hopefully nobody who reads this will ever have need to read this book yourself, but it is very possible that sometime, someone you know and care for will be faced with this unimaginable situation. Those who have not gone through such a situation often feel awkward and don't know what to do or say. I hope later this week to offer some suggestions for helping a friend who is going through such pain, but here is one very simple way you could be a help in a very tangible and meaningful way and know that you are really making a difference for the person who is still trying to "learn the language" of their new experience.

Dry

Last fall I was introduced to author Augusten Burroughs when a friend of mine loaned me his copy of Running with Scissors. It was one of the most humorous, bizarre, and oddly captivating books I have read in a long time--one of those books where you wouldn't believe it was non-fiction except for the fact that nobody could be creative enough to make that stuff up.

Then, as I was finishing up Running with Scissors, another friend gave me Burroughs' book Dry as a gift, and I completed reading that book last night. It is basically the author's account of his struggle with alcoholism, from his employer's intervention to rehab to relapse and recovery. Although I enjoyed Scissors plenty, I have to say that Dry surpasses it in excellence at every turn. His witty, sometimes comical recounting of his experiences draws the reader into the story, and you feel his struggle along with him.

Then, as he keeps you laughing throughout the book, in the final pages, he suddenly ends the story with a conclusion that is so touching, I was moved to tears. If you have never read Running with Scissors, that is a great introduction to Burroughs, but Dry is the book that has made me a loyal reader of his. If his other books come anywhere close, I will be reading all of them.