Mary's Shortcut: About Suicide Bereavement

I can speak only for myself about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. No doctor or therapist diagnosed PTSD in me or even suggested I might be undergoing some of the symptoms of this anxiety disorder after my daughter’s suicide in 1995. It wasn’t until 1998 when I came across a passage in Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide that I began to understand more clearly what I’d been experiencing.

“It is likely that any survivor of a suicide will recognize the symptoms [of PTSD] immediately,” write Christopher Lukas and Henry Seiden, “reexperiencing the trauma [through] recurrent recollections of the event, dreams of the event, and a sudden feeling that the event is recurring.” I began to recognize PTSD not only in flashbacks of finding Mary on her deathbed but also in night dreams of trying to talk her out of self-destruction.

Lukas and Seiden state that those with PTSD experience a numbing or “reduced involvement” with the world through a “lessening of interest in important activities, a feeling of detachment from others, and a flat, emotionless feeling.” Added to that are the sleep disturbances, guilt about surviving, difficulty concentrating, loss of memory, exaggerated startle response, and avoidance of activities that arouse recollection of the trauma (pp. 28-29). With the exception of not feeling guilty about surviving–I was rather proud to be surviving–all of those symptoms found a home in me.

One moment of avoidance behavior I remember to this day. While walking through a parking lot a few months after Mary’s funeral, I noticed a large tool box bolted to the bed of a pick-up truck; and a wave of anxiety rolled through. “It’s just a tool box,” I had to reassure myself before hurrying away, “it’s not Mary’s casket; it doesn’t mean anything.”

Avoidance behavior finally faded away as did all the shapes and forms of PTSD. That fading away came about in large measure because of the wonderfully supportive and non-judgmental care I received in the earliest days of bereavement, a topic that deserves and will receive further attention.