Parents of children who have committed suicide are left with all the shards of troubled lives. A twenty-year-old jumped to his death from a multi-storey building hours after his mother had dropped him at the psychiatric hospital where he was being treated. No one saw him leave. She thought he was being taken care of. She tells her story with apparent composure, but it’s clear that after 18 months she’s struggling with her grief, blaming herself and is very angry.
I met a father whose twenty-seven-year-old daughter suffered from schizophrenia and took her life. But, he is determinded to move on. He believes that when you are in the hole of grief, you must stop digging or you might beome suicidal yourself. His unwillingness to dwell on the past seems to be the right approach as it’s served him well. The mother of the young man described above, used counselors as she believed it was the only way for her.
Having experienced a suicide in my family, I dare not judge because I know that every person has to cope the way they feel is best for them. Maybe deep thinkers have more trouble with this. Not being in this category and being a doer rather than a thinker, I felt that the best way for me was to move on, to keep busy and find interesting things to do. Of course it was a very long process but I proved that it could be done. In fact, my whole family shared in this process and although no one in my family came away unscathed, we managed to get on with our lives. We will always remember our son, David and I try to think of him the way he was when he was healthy and happy, riding the waves on his surfboard.