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A Catholic Priest on Suicide (part three)

March 23, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

For those bereaved by suicide, second-guessing is an expression of guilt that is especially prevalent among those whose child has died. Clinical scholars John Jordan and John McIntosh report that 92% of parents feel guilty for the suicide of their child and do, of course, call themselves into question repeatedly (Grief After Suicide. New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 49).

Self-accusation after my daughter Mary’s suicide followed the usual “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” pattern. I considered it a kind of penitential self-improvement project I had a right and obligation to undertake–one which I didn’t want to be talked out of. One day when an acquaintance told me in the grocery store I shouldn’t feel guilty for what happened to my daughter, I couldn’t help thinking how ridiculously out of touch with suicide bereavement she was.

Still, Father Ron Rolheiser offers a slightly different perspective about suicide second-guessing that seems helpful. He describes it as “myth” that the suicide of someone we love could have been prevented “if only I had done more, been more attentive, and been there at the right time. Rarely is this the issue. Most of the time, we weren’t there for the very reason that the person who fell victim to the disease [of unendurable emotional pain] did not want us to be there. He or she picked the moment, the spot, and the means precisely so that we wouldn’t be there” (“Suicide–Some Misconceptions,” http://www.ronrolheiser.com July 30, 2000).

My daughter began overdosing on her anti-depressant medication well after midnight behind the locked door of her bedroom. To rescue her, my husband and I would have had to find her in the middle of the night. That rescue was not likely to happen, and Mary knew it.

While it is essential to be clear about the warning signs of suicide and to ask whether a depressed person is thinking about suicide and has a plan, it is equally essential to make peace somehow with the “shabby, confused, agonized crisis which,” according to Alfredo Alvarez, “is the common reality of suicide” (The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1971, p. 12).

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A Catholic Priest on Suicide (part two)

March 18, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

When Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, wrote a column in 2000 suggesting that most people who die from suicide are not “morally or otherwise responsible” for their deaths, he received a mixed response. While those bereaved by suicide tended to regard his views sympathetically, other people challenged them by quoting the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church which reads in part, “Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life . . . [and is thus] gravely contrary to the just love of self” (New York: Doubleday, 1995, #2281).

In denouncing suicide throughout the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has also at the same time been emphasizing the inestimable value of life given by God for which we are “stewards, not owners” (#2280). Because human life is God-given and precious to self as well as “family, nation, and human society,” the Church will not, in my view, ever cease to condemn its termination through suicide (#2281).

But there’s more than condemnation in the Church’s teaching about suicide. That “more” is contained in the allowance for mitigating conditions that often surround suicide. In other words, “Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish responsibility of the one committing suicide” (#2282). Even more, “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. . . The Church prays for persons who have taken their . . . lives” (# 2283).

Father Rolheiser makes the case that suicide is not usually freely chosen but is, rather, the end result of a disease which the person did not choose. “It’s truer to say that suicide was something they fell victim to than to say that it was something that they inflicted upon themselves.” He adds, “Every victim of suicide that I have known personally has been the antithesis of the egoist, the narcissist, the strong, over-proud person who congenitally refuses to take his or her place in the humble, broken structure of things” (“The Notion of Suicide Revisited,” http://ronrolheiser.com Sept. 24, 2000).

My daughter Mary died by suicide in 1995 not because she was strong and proud but because she felt herself to be weak, insignificant, and forgettable. Suffering from depression, she wasn’t responsible for those feelings or for the suicide which followed from them. It’s likely that your mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, or friend is equally guiltless and deserving of compassion.

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A Catholic Priest on Suicide

March 8, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

In writing about suicide, Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, often paraphrases Canadian poet Margaret Atwood: “Certain things need to be said and said until they don’t need to be said anymore.” Father Rolheiser is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He’s also a columnist and writer whose book The Holy Longing won the USA Catholic Press Award in 2000 for best hardcover book in spirituality.

Once a year, Father Rolheiser offers a column about suicide on his website. It’s part of his attempt to “say and say” something until it doesn’t need to be said anymore.

The first thing he says is that suicide remains possibly the “most misunderstood” of all deaths, adding that because it is self-inflicted, it is usually viewed as voluntary. “For most suicides, this is not true,” he writes. “A person dying of suicide dies, as does the victim of physical illness or accident, against his or her will. People die from physical heart attacks, strokes, cancer, AIDS and accidents. Death by suicide is the same, except that we are dealing with an emotional heart attack, an emotional stroke . . . an emotional fatality” (“Losing a Loved One to Suicide,” http://www.ronrolheiser.com June 6, 1998).

In an earlier column, Father Rolheiser was even more emphatic about the act of suicide and the morality surrounding it. “[With suicide], there is no freedom not to die. Suicide victims are, like victims of sickness and accidents, not responsible for their own deaths and suicide should not be a matter of secrecy, shame, moral judgment, and second-guessing” (“Understanding Suicide,” http://www.ronrolheisser.com November 11, 1990).

In an endeavor of many years, I have studied the historical teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in regard to suicide, and I have tried to understand my daughter Mary’s suicide and all suicides. What I have not encountered before is the clarity and boldness with which Father Ron Rolheiser writes on the topic. There will be more.

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Can Suicide Be Prevented? (part four)

February 28, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

The previous three posts have dealt with the critical necessity of questioning a depressed (and possibly suicidal) person about whether he or she is considering suicide. It is, I think, the most formidable aspect of the Question, Persuade, Refer strategy for suicide prevention offered by Paul Quinnett on behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). It is challenging, for example, to overcome the denial that someone with whom you’re talking could actually be considering suicide. Also, it’s difficult to believe that asking that person directly about suicide is the right thing to do. Still, it remains the vitally important thing to do.

Quinnett’s second step is to Persuade the person to get help. “Ask the following questions: ‘Will you go with me to see a counselor (priest, minister, nurse)? Will you let me help you make an appointment with . . . Will you promise me?”

If the person resists getting help, a no-suicide contract should be proposed. That’s a promise that the person will not hurt him or herself until help is received. “Because making a promise appeals to our honor,” writes Quinnett, “and agreeing to stay safe relieves our suffering, the answer is almost always ‘yes’.” (If the answer is ‘no’, the person is to be considered a danger to himself and/or others and should be involuntarily committed for professional help.)

Other elements of persuasion involve reminding the person that there are better alternatives than suicide, focusing on those alternatives, accepting the reality of the person’s pain, and offering hope in whatever way one can possibly offer it.

At the same time, cautions Quinnett, the helping person should remove firearms, medications, car keys, and “other instruments which may be used to commit suicide.”

Finally, Referral is about getting the person to seek professional help and accompanying him or her, if possible, to the appointment. Someone helping a suicidal person need not be concerned with showing disloyalty or breaking a confidence–not when life is at risk, that is. (Paul Quinnett, PhD., “QPR: Ask a question. Save a life.” NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program: 2012).

Quinnett likens QPR to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or the Heimlich maneuver: learn these techniques because you never know when you might be called upon to save a life.

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Can Suicide Be Prevented? (part three)

February 22, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

The first step to preventing suicide is questioning a depressed person about whether he or she is considering suicide, advises Paul Quinnett in his Question, Persuade, Refer strategy. “Giving a ‘yes’ answer to this question is often a release for the individual. It makes him or her feel better, not worse.”

Once the suicide question is under discussion, the questioner has a moral obligation to listen. “Listening is the greatest gift one human can give another,” writes Quinnett. “Advice tends to be easy, quick, cheap and wrong. Listening takes time, patience, and courage, but is always right. Give your full attention and don’t interrupt . . . judge or condemn. Listen for the problems death by suicide would solve” (Paul Quinnett, Ph.D, “QPR: Ask a Question. Save a life.” National Alliance on Mental Illness, Family-to-Family Education Program: 2012).

On the day before my daughter Mary’s suicide, I was questioning her, all right, but not about the one topic that might have saved her life. She had just come home from school that afternoon, and we talked for at least an hour about her school day, the weather, my sister’s upcoming birthday, the proper way to use a make-up brush, her skill as a math tutor to her younger sister, and other pleasant and lamentably pointless subjects. But I felt it was exactly the kind of positive, bonding conversation we needed on a day when Mary seemed to be recovering from major depression, and I think most mothers would have acted similarly.

I’m not dredging up that squandered opportunity to make myself feel bad seventeen years later. Mine was not a failure of love but, rather, a failure of knowledge. In other words, Quinnett’s Question, Persuade, Refer strategy is counterintuitive. It isn’t a process a mother (or anyone else) would instinctively figure out on the spot and put to use. It cuts against logic to bring up the word “suicide” with someone who is struggling with depression. That’s why grasping the system before it might be needed is vital and possibly life-saving. There is one last post to be offered on the subject.

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Can Suicide Be Prevented? (part two)

February 15, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

For the better part of two decades, I’ve wondered about the few minutes preceding my daughter Mary’s suicide. Just what sort of inner resolve did she summon in order to begin swallowing several dozen pills she knew to be lethal?

Well, now I know. Mary had to “pass a psychological barrier” before swallowing her pills and did so, it turns out, by way of champagne. “[A] final wall of resistance is what keeps many seriously suicidal people alive,” writes Paul Quinnett. “Alcohol dissolves the wall and is found in the blood of most completed suicides.” On behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Quinnett adds, “If someone is contemplating suicide, keep them sober.”

Quinnett’s Question, Persuade, Refer system of suicide prevention can and must then begin. “Get the person alone or in a private setting and ask the person if he/she is contemplating suicide. Ask questions that acknowledge the individual’s distress. Questions like, Have you been unhappy lately? . . . Or you can ask directly, Do you want to stop living?” (Paul Quinnett, Ph.D, “QPR: Ask a question. Save a life.” NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program, 2012).

At this point, a dangerous fallacy must be exposed. It’s one I subscribed to, perhaps unconsciously, in relating to my daughter in the last days of her life. The fallacy is this: using the word “suicide” around a seriously depressed person will give him or her the idea of suicide that was not in their thinking before.

“Raising the issue of suicide with those who are severely depressed . . .. can open the door to therapeutic intervention,” writes Carol Anne Milton. “Allowing a person to talk through their worst fears . . . could provide them a lifeline that makes all the difference between choosing life and choosing to die. People already have the idea of suicide; it is in the media constantly. If we ask a person, ‘Do you have thoughts of suicide?’ we are showing that we understand the depth of their pain, that we care and that we take them seriously . . .” (The Coldest Night: A Family’s Experience of Suicide. Dublin: Veritas, 2009, p. 83)

The following post will continue with Quinnett’s plan of rescue for the beloved suicidal among us.

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Can Suicide Be Prevented?

February 8, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

“It is a myth that suicide can’t be prevented,” writes Paul Quinnett. “It can. QPR is one technique that can help. QPR stands for Question, Persuade, Refer.”

Quinnett speaks to those for whom suicide isn’t merely an abstraction occurring “out there.” On behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), he educates people whose family members live with certain brain disorders (mental illnesses) that can make them particularly susceptible to suicide. The threat of suicide lurking within those families is what, I think, drives Quinnett’s no-nonsense advice.

Overcoming denial is an important first step for the person who is trying to help someone considering suicide. “Sometimes, because the thought of death is so frightening,” writes Quinnett, “we deny the person may be suicidal.” But someone on the verge of suicide usually provides warning signs that must be taken seriously. (See November 1, 2012 post: “Warning Signs for Suicide.”)

One surprising warning sign is sudden happiness, for no apparent reason, in someone who is depressed. “Since depression saps energy and purpose, sometimes the depressed person is ‘too tired’ to carry out a suicide plan,” says Quinnett. “However, as the depression finally begins to lift, the person may suddenly feel ‘well enough’ to act. As strange as it sounds, once someone decides to end his or her suffering by suicide, the hours before death are often filled with a blissful calm” (Paul Quinnett, Ph.D, “QPR: Ask a question. Save a life.” NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program, 2012).

On the weekend of her suicide in 1995, my daughter Mary went to a video store with her father and sister on Friday night, offered to go to the grocery store Saturday afternoon after I sprained my ankle, helped clean up the kitchen following supper that evening, and then later ate ice cream and watched a television program, probably “Saturday Night Live.” As her mother, I was relieved at this normal-appearing behavior in a daughter who seemed to be recovering from depression. What I didn’t know, of course, is that she was also penning her suicide note that Saturday in between all the normal-appearing activities.

Any one of a hundred moments would have been the moment to ask Mary if she was thinking about suicide and, yes, the question likely could have saved her life. But it wasn’t going to be asked on a day when I was seeing improvement and hoping for the best.

There’s still more to say about Quinnett’s “Question, Persuade, Refer” system.

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Searching For An Answer to “Why?” in Suicide Bereavement

January 31, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

About one father whose daughter ended her life by overdose on a second attempt, clinical scholars John Jordan and John McIntosh write, “[He condemned] himself for his failure to believe that his daughter could really have wanted to die–her death was simply a brutal violation of everything he thought he knew about [her]” (Grief After Suicide: Understanding the Consequences and Caring for the Survivors. New York: Routledge, 2011, p. 181).

It’s the “brutal violation” element of suicide bereavement that makes it surreal and disorienting. A constant personal theme after my daughter Mary’s suicide was that, despite the fact we were living under the same roof, I had not known her. I had not imagined my daughter capable of taking life-enhancing medication and turning it into poison. Her doing so was incomprehensible then and even now jolts me at odd moments.

One thing everyone seems finally to know about suicide is that there are no real answers for “Why?” No words anyone can offer–including the deceased in their suicide notes–get to the deepest truth of why certain instances of human suffering end in suicide. “A survivor may be able to say, ‘My sister was depressed,’ but he also continues to utter the words, ‘Why did she do it?’ A survivor can say, ‘Dad was angry at the world,’ but she also has to say, ‘I don’t understand.’ A family can say, ‘We were hostile toward each other,’ but it still wants to know ‘Why? What is the whole truth?'” (Christopher Lukas and Henry Seiden, Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide.Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997, p. 92)

Searching for the answer, no matter how elusive, is usually healing. According to Jordan and McIntosh, those bereaved by suicide tend to construct a “coherent narrative that helps [them] make at least partial sense of the suicide [which] is a central healing task for most survivors” (p. 182).

Making sense of the senseless–for me laborious and unnerving–was the only way out of the darkness of grief into what seems a kind of new life.

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Suicide Bereavement and Forgiveness

January 23, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

“Forgive us our trespasses,” Jesus taught us to pray, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” A reality no one could deny after my daughter’s suicide was that she had trespassed against all of us and had done so irreparably. She could never make amends for laying waste, no matter how unintentionally, to the emotional wellbeing of those who love her. It’s a simple fact.

Also factual was my Christian obligation to forgive her. Early on, I tried saying, “I forgive you” over her headstone just after listing my failings toward her and asking forgiveness. It was the correct formula for a cemetery visit but meant almost nothing. My heart wasn’t in those words; it was in the clay with Mary.

The suicide of a child wrenches out the possibility of forgiveness, at least for a time. The pain is high-caliber, mostly all a mother can feel for a long time, too grossly unjust even to think about forgiving.

There was another problem in my early struggle with forgiveness: why did Mary even need it? If her suicide was the result of a brain disorder and her will not truly free in “choosing” to die, why would she need forgiveness? Had she died of a brain aneurysm, for example, would I be trying to forgive her?

But over the years, I’ve experienced the substantial difference between what I know and what I feel. I know about my daughter’s diminished capacity that was not in any way her fault. Knowing has given rise to forgiveness that I think, after seventeen years, is finally in place.

At the same time, I respect my early feelings of rejection and abandonment. Those feelings were legitimate–who wouldn’t feel rejected and abandoned?–and not to be talked away.

Even so, a Benedictine sister offers these words about forgiveness that I recognize as true: “Only if there is love in us great enough to transcend deep hurt, great betrayal . . . can we possibly really forgive. Only if we can care for another enough to try to understand what drove the behavior that hurt us so, can we put our own pain down long enough to forgive. Forgive is what we do when our love is as real as our pain” (Joan D. Chittister, OSB. Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir. Lanham, Maryland: Sheed & Ward, 2004).

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Suicide Calls God Into Question

January 17, 2013 by Marjorie Antus

More precisely, suicide calls God’s location into question. In reflecting some fifty years ago on his wife’s death from cancer, C.S. Lewis famously wrote, “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the more disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him . . . you will be–or so it feels–welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become” (A Grief Observed. New York: Bantam Books, 1961, pp. 4-5).

For me, silence was the first indication that something had gone terribly wrong on the day of my daughter Mary’s suicide in 1995. Tapping on her locked bedroom door, I heard only silence as she lay unconscious on her bed. A great deal of noise soon followed as the rescue squad filled the room with equipment and loud, technical language about blood pressure and heart rhythm.

Just after Mary died at the hospital, silence set in again. It was on the short ride home that I noticed it: the presence of profound inner silence which felt like God’s absence.

That moment of disorienting silence was followed by the intense weeping of my family members, thousands of words of consolation at the wake and funeral Mass, agitated and heartfelt phone calls, casseroles left on the front porch that–yes–were speaking, too.

It is true that God seemed to have double bolted the door and left me standing in silence on the other side. It is true that things I “knew” about God’s place in my life were hurled into the air when Mary died. But the human kindness washing over me in early bereavement transformed what would have been horrible days into something decent and fine. There’s no explaining that turn of events except to say God was present in the people who were present to me. And it was obvious.

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