Editor for Special Newsletter on Suicide: Kitty Reeve
917 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94707
Phone:  510/527-0734
e-mail:  kittyr@earthlink.net                                                                                                       Summer 2001

But as time passed, I learned that my son had shown the classic signs of bipolar mood disorder, also called manic depression. His first episode began shortly after his graduation from college. None of us close to him knew what was happening nor where the new behavior, the off and on compulsive talking and extreme irritability were coming from. We knew nothing about clinical depression.  Because he was in a difficult job market (his major was creative writing), we thought Philip’s depression was due to his not being able to find a job in his field. How woefully we underestimated the mental torture he was enduring. How deeply I regret my own lack of knowledge and therefore lack of action to help him. I no longer see his death as a rational choice, but rather as the terrible outcome of an unrelieved clinical depression that sabotaged his thinking and ultimately caused his death.

Philip’s death forced me to learn as much as I could (and can, since the education is ongoing) about clinical depression and suicide. This newsletter is an attempt to share some of that information. With few exceptions, the articles and poems on the following pages are from parents or siblings who have had a daughter, son, brother or sister die by suicide. There is also an insightful suicide note from a young man who died (contrary to popular belief, most people who die by suicide do not leave notes).  There are two pages of resources which list organizations, newsletters and books whose intent is to help grieving family members and/or help educate the public about suicide.

So many times over the past years, as people have learned of my son’s death, they have approached me and in lowered voice, sometimes in a whisper, talked of a suicide death in their own family. I have been stunned by how many people have been touched by suicide — and I have been saddened by their shame and embarrassment at the word “suicide.” The Surgeon General of the United States has declared suicide a “national health crisis” in this country. We simply cannot afford to remain ignorant nor to stigmatize an illness that is taking the lives of over 30,000 of our fellow citizens each year.

This newsletter is a one-time production; the regular newsletter, edited by Nanette Jacobs, will return later this summer. I thank the Marin County/San Francisco chapter of TCF for encouraging my desire to do this publication and for all the support TCF has given to me in my own healing. The newsletter is dedicated to all the beloved children and siblings who died by suicide. How we love you, and how we miss you.

With love,
Kitty

In memory of Philip Ganote (March 8, 1968 - August 16, 1994)

Suicide: How Do We Say It?

© 1999 by Joyce Andrews, TCF/Sugar Land, Texas

From the moment we learned of our daughter’s death, I knew that the word “suicide” had the power to erase her life while emblazoning her death in neon letters in the minds of her friends and colleagues. During the unremitting misery of those early days, I even toyed with the idea of telling no one she was gone, willing her to stay alive in the thoughts of those who knew her, forgetting that I’d already notified our family and closest friends. It was a fairy tale wish I contrived as a way of allowing myself a momentary escape from the unthinkable reality of her death. If her death were never acknowledged, would she still be here?

My fantasy vanished in the cold light of the days that followed. I knew that we could never dishonor Rhonda’s memory by concealing her suicide. I wrote a letter to friends and relatives, informing them of the events leading up to her death. I hoped my letter would quell the inevitable whispers by openly acknowledging her depression and her decision to end her own life. I implored them to speak often and openly about her to us; to do otherwise would deny her existence.

I never intended to embark on a campaign to confront, let alone eradicate, the stigma of suicide. What mattered most was that we who loved Rhonda must not let the circumstances of her death diminish her memory or her accomplishments. I explained that she had “taken her own life” or that “she died of suicide.” An expression I refused to use then and refuse to use to this day, is the despicable “committed suicide,” with its implications of criminality. Historically, that term was an instrument of retaliation against the survivors, and it has no place in today’s enlightened society.

Many people prefer to say, “completed suicide,” but as a parent who witnessed my child’s 20-year struggle against the demons of clinical depression, I don’t care much for that, either. “Died of suicide” or “died by suicide” are accurate, emotionally-neutral ways to explain my child’s death.

My first encounter with suicide occurred many years ago when my dentist, a gentle family man in his mid 30’s, took his own life. Since that time, I have known neighbors, relatives, friends and other hard-working, highly respected individuals who died this way. I’ve facilitated meetings in which grieving parents declined to speak about their children because they couldn’t handle the group’s reactions to the dreaded “s” word. I’ve known parents who never returned to a chapter meeting because of negative comments about the way that their child died.

Rhonda was a gifted scholar, writer and archaeologist who, like my mother, suffered from adult-onset manic depression (also called bipolar disorder). She made a lasting contribution in her field, and a wonderful tribute to her life and her work appeared in American Antiquity, Journal of the Society for American Archaeology (October, 1994).

Both my daughter and my mother suffered tremendously in their struggles to conquer and conceal their illness. Neither of them won that battle, but my mother responded to medications that minimized the highs and lows, and she died of cancer at 87. Sadly, doctors never discovered a magic formula that could offer Rhonda the same relief. She ended her own life at age 36, after a year of severe depression that was triggered by life stresses beyond her control. I saw her battle firsthand, and I witnessed her valiant struggle to survive. She wanted desperately to live; she died because she thought she had no alternative.

In his revealing book, Telling Secrets, the great theologian Frederick Buechner describes his father’s suicide, which occurred when Buechner was just a boy. The conspiracy of silence that was imposed on Buechner and his brother had a profound effect on their development and their relationships with other family members. “We are as sick as our secrets,” he concludes.

We whose children have taken their own lives must do all that we can to help eradicate the secrecy and stigma that surround their deaths. If we allow these to persist, we allow their lives to be diminished. We owe our children more than that.

On May 23rd, 1995 my son jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge [in San Francisco]. Tempting as it is to believe he’d still be alive had there been a barrier, I think it would be naive. In my despair I wanted to blame the psychiatrist who refused to see him because he’d missed some appointments, the girlfriend who’d ended their relationship just two days prior to his jump, the crisis center at the hospital where he’d gone for help and who could have kept him had they read the signs right, but didn’t; myself, (especially myself), for flawed parenting. But never did I blame the bridge! In the end it was his decision. In his farewell note, he said he was going to electrocute himself. What made him change his mind? I don’t know, but I believe it was the deed, not the method, that he was determined to execute. People who really want to die find a way. So while a barrier would deter suicides on the bridge, it would hardly deter suicides. Should we eliminate tall buildings, parking structures, automobile exhaust pipes, ropes?

In spite of very sad memories, I still appreciate the beauty of the bridge. People from all over the world enjoy the vistas from this compelling structure. Is it fair to impair the visibility in a futile effort to control deaths from the bridge? The bridge is for the living, too.

... Carol Sheldon, TCF/Marin County, California

September 14, 1999

How much I have learned since that horrendous day.
I’ve learned that I’m not alone in my grief,
That others have suffered, are suffering and will suffer
The tremendous loss of losing someone they love to suicide.
Two years later I also learned how grief can destroy
When your father, who couldn’t deal with his grief,
Decided to end his pain and suffering too.
I’ve learned I wasn’t as guilty as I had thought at first,
That your decision was yours alone,
That once made nobody could change it.
And I’ve learned to stop asking the “Why?” question ?
That question to which only you have the answer.
Some people said that I’d get over losing you in a year.
After that first round of holidays, birthdays, etc. I’d be fine.
Guess what ? I’ve learned just how wrong they were.
It’s now the 10th year - the 10th year of holidays, birthdays, etc.
Certainly it’s not as heart-wrenching as the 1st year or even the 5th .
But I’m still not over losing you and I’m still not “fine.”
And I doubt that I’ll ever get over losing you, that I’ll ever be “fine.”
I’m certainly not the same person I was before this all began.
I guess I’ve reached a “new normal” though and I’m going on with life.
Even though it’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to endure,
At least now I’m strong enough to help those who follow on this path.
But, oh, how I’d give up all I’ve learned for just another hour with you.

.. by Karen C. Kimball, Hingham, Massachusetts

Circle

How do you bear it all?
The cry came from a mother
Whose son had died only weeks before.
We were in a circle, looking at her,
Looking around, looking away,
Tears in our hearts, in our eyes.
How do we bear it?
I don’t know,
But the circle helps.

… by Eva Lager, TCF/Western Australia
(Eve’s daughter Milya Claudia Lager died by suicide on 4 March 1990.)

Go to page 2, TCF Marin/SF Special Newsletter on Suicide