Arnold Toynbee, a British historian of the twentieth century, argued that death is a “dyadic” (or two-person) event in which the survivor bears the heavier burden. “The sting of death is less sharp for the person who dies than it is for the bereaved survivor.” He adds, “There are two parties to the suffering that death inflicts; and, in the apportionment of this suffering, the survivor takes the brunt” (Man’s Concern with Death. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, as quoted in Stanley Lesse, M.D., Ed. What We Know About Suicidal Behavior and How to Treat It. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1988, 60).
While I appreciate Toynbee’s respect for suffering survivors, I can’t help asking, “How do you know? How can you speak with such assurance about the mystery of death?”
Psychologist Edwin Shneidman, who founded the American Association of Suicidology in 1968, also questions Toynbee’s assertion. “For all his wisdom, I believe that Toynbee is indulging unduly in what I would call the romanticization of death. In my view, the larger need is to deromanticize death and suicide.
“Individuals who are actively suicidal suffer–among their burdens (and especially the burden of unbearable anguish)–from a temporary loss of an unromanticized view of death-as-enemy. . . . they have lost sight of the foe: they openly sail with full lights in the hostile night; they smoke and show themselves on combat patrol. . . . They behave in strange, almost traitorous and defecting ways. Whose side are they on? They attempt to rationalize death’s supposed lofty qualities and, what is most difficult to deal with, to romanticize death as the noblest part of dyadic love. . . . Suicidal individuals have been brainwashed–and by their own thoughts” (“The Deromanticization of Death,” What We Know About Suicidal Behavior and How to Treat It. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1988, 66, 73-4).
My daughter Mary romanticized her suicide. The note she left describes suicide as “darkly mystical,” especially if the person is young and has suffered in silence, which she evidently thought she had done. Perhaps she considered her life a waste and her suicide a favor to family and friends; I’m not sure. But I do know she wasn’t on her own side at the end–hard as it is to conceive–and I imagine it was because of the unbearable anguish, the “psychache” that Edwin Shneidman deems to be the usual cause of suicide.
Mary's Shortcut: About Suicide Bereavement 
My daughter first attempted suicide by jumping out a window at the age of 8. When I asked her why she would rather be dead than alive she said, “When you’re dead it’s very quiet and peaceful, not like when you’re alive.”
Wanting release from “psychache” is very different from romanticizing death, but I do think my daughter “idealized” death. Does my daughter have a consciousness now, one that can feel the pain of her actions, a longing to return home? I don’t think so. But imagining that she does, causes me, her mother, even more pain. I prefer to imagine she found peace. But…how do I know?
Thank you for the thoughtful piece, Marjorie.
Shaye, thank you for revealing part of your daughter’s experience as well as yours. I’ve wondered if the psychache precedes the romanticization of suicide as in, “Well, I need to stop the pain by ending my life, but maybe death is a beautiful thing, anyway.” No answers for us there, only speculation.
Second, I believe that our daughters are conscious of what they did, are at peace, and are praying very hard for us, their mothers, to be at peace too. Of course, I can’t prove it. But I’m happy believing it.
Peace upon you and yours.