Mary's Shortcut: About Suicide Bereavement

To those bereaved by suicide, grief educator Harold Ivan Smith sometimes says, “‘I know what you’re looking for–some definite there answer that ends the questioning–but what answer will you settle for?'”

As veteran suicide survivors know, there is no answer to “Why?” that puts an end to questioning. That isn’t to say survivors must therefore give over their lives to constant interrogation.

“I believe there are three levels of why’s,” writes Smith, “Initial, transitional, and transformative. If a survivor will not settle for the first explanation that ‘comes down the pike,’ there is hope, in time, of a fuller explanation.”

For example, initial why’s begin right after the suicide and are usually met with responses, not answers, from kind people who don’t know what to say. “She’s in a better place” and “Maybe she’s found what she was looking for” are responses I received after Mary’s suicide that, well-intended, fell short of answering the question that, in truth, no one could adequately address.

The answers to transitional why’s are, according to Smith, like rough drafts under constant revision that take time and openness to reality. For me, those were the “Aha” moments years in the making which helped me say, “Okay, I understand a little better now.” One “Aha” moment arrived on a country road late one night just after I ran over a cat. Even though seven years had passed since Mary’s suicide, that destructive roadway event made me soften my “why” answer. There were many “Aha” moments like that throughout my years of asking and trying to answer why, most of them coming as a gift in the form of a surprise.

Transformative why’s are those which, because lived each day, have the power to effect profound change. “Some suicide survivors refuse to accept ‘getting over it’ as a spiritual goal,” writes Smith. “They do not resonate with ‘getting beyond this’ or ‘moving on with life.’ Rather . . . the goal becomes to move into the maelstrom, the chaos, like a plane flying into the eye of a hurricane. They ask the Genesis question, ‘Can order come from this chaos?'” and finally, for asking with their lives, do themselves bring about order (A Long-Shadowed Grief: Suicide and Its Aftermath. Cambridge, Mass: Cowley Publications, 2006, pp. 30, 33, 36).