It's always so sad, especially for those left behind.

Suicide is a very selfish act. The ones left behind suffer from this forever. My neighbor, two doors down, committed suicide about 15 years ago. He was a prominent doctor and had been to visit his elderly (in their mid-90's) parents who had developed dementia. He didn't want to end up that way, so this was what he did. Everyone in that family has suffered greatly.

I'm sorry for your loss, cherryfizz. My husband lost his closest brother and his eldest daughter to suicide (both bipolar) and there is nothing more painful. Your anger is a completely normal reaction and part of the grieving process. Hopefully it will fade with time and allow you to remember your friend fondly again.

Suicide is a very selfish act.

I lost my brother to suicide and strongly disagree. I know how he struggled with personal demons for years. He tried and tried to overcome them, but it wasn't meant to be. I feel comfort knowing he's finally at peace. My personal pain of losing him is nothing compared to what he endured.

You have my sincere sympathy in the loss of your friend.

cheeryfizz, I'm so sorry for your loss. I too have suffered loss to suicide. (The preferred term is not "committed suicide" but "died by suicide".) If you or anyone else you know who is suffering the pain of loss to suicide, I highly recommend contacting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It is a nonprofit and all volunteers have suffered loss to suicide. They have an outreach program where you can talk with other survivors and they can share resources in your area where you can go for more support.

Interesting that you should mention this as today was International Survivor of Suicide Loss Day and I spent the afternoon at a session for survivors to share their experiences.

Sending you thoughts of solace and condolence.

A dear friend of ours lost her husband to suicide about a month ago. I'm sorry for your loss, cherryfizz, and anyone else who has had this tragic experience

While doing this seems selfish to survivors, I think people who kill themselves are in a type of pain that the rest of us can't begin to fathom. To many of them, suicide seems the only way out.

It's all about compassion for another's pain.

Cherryfizz, I am so sorry for your loss and sadness. I've lost several cousins to suicide and a recent colleague and can relate to your feelings.

I'm sorry for your loss.

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

My sister tried to commit suicide and failed by fluke. I have told her repeatedly I'm glad she did fail because I'm selfish and want her in my life.

She is not selfish. She is in constant invisible pain as many are with invisible disabilities.

My understanding is that it can be many different, unrelated things or none of those things at all. The death is usually sad, the back story can be very sad too but perhaps not always and in any event speculation without first hand knowledge is probably unwelcome.

That is so sad, Cherryfizz, please accept my deepest sympathy for your loss.

Rusty

Thanks, I am sorry for your losses as well. I don't think it is selfish either, they are tortured souls and have their reasons. Who are we to judge or know what they are going through. Sure, the loss is hard for those left behind, wondering why and maybe never knowing. My sister tried once and called someone before she did something. My sister was ill all her life, had cancer 3 times, hip replacements, pace makers, blood infections, suffered from depression. I don't know how she made it through without taking her own life. She had the means (pills) to do so. She always threatened suicide but I once made a joking comment to her years ago that if she died by suicide I wouldn't get her insurance money (we were each others beneficiaries) I was just joking at the time but she always told me that the reason she didn't take her own life was because of me not getting her insurance money. She was a strong woman and we talked about death often. I haven't accepted her death yet or have been able to grieve for her and it has been almost a year. When I was a teenager another close friend threw himself in front of a train a few blocks from where I live. It is all so sad. I have lots of friends who are all dealing with the friend who died in May. we are there for each other when we need to talk which is very helpful. There just seem to be so many lately who have taken their own lives. I am sure there have been many more we don't know about, suicide is not hidden any more. I just can't imagine how hard that decision is to make.

I have lost a few close friends to suicide, the most painful was the friend I met the first year of college who struggled greatly with the reaction from his family when he came out as gay to them. When he died, it was only by accident that any of his friends found out about it (from his roommate, who was the one who discovered his body) and then his family barred all of us, including myself, from attending his memorial service. So we held our own, at the beach, sharing the memories we had of our precious and kind friend, who left the world far too soon and so very young.

I was livid on behalf of a girl I knew and hung out with in high school who lost her mother to suicide when she was only 11; people were saying to her that her mother was going to hell because she took her own life. How anyone could have thought it was okay to be so cruel to her I don't know, but I did get into their faces about it and they stopped. I'd have been fine if it got me suspended from school, if that had happened, but I wouldn't have done anything different in defending my friend. Sometimes we're called on to be the strong one for others because we have that capability at the time. Other times there is nothing we can do for a loved one/close friend, and despite the pain we might feel as a result, it's not our fault. We accept they are free of the burdens and pain that they carried in life, and that we will see them again (if this is part of our beliefs, alternatively we can look forward to when our energy goes off into the universe where theirs has and imagine how amazing it will be).

Love is symbolic of the best in humanity, it is the greatest thing we do in this world.

I can't imagine the pain your friends must have been in. And the shock and questioning for those left behind must be it's own horrible pain. I am so sorry.

Research has shown that 90% of those who die by suicide suffer with some form of mental illness. So while we survivors may need to anchor on a "why" to help us cope with and make sense of the loss, we can't know what was going on inside their heads that lead them to take such a fatal action, just as we can't experience, for example, another's cancer or heart disease. And each loss is as unique as each individual and their circumstances.

I wrote this a year or so ago:

Andrew:

I’m drinking one of the Pepsi’s you left in our refrigerator when you visited March before last. It’s kinda flat, I don’t really like the taste, but I need the caffeine to help me write and to keep the bottles from reminding me of your suicide every time I open my refrigerator. One more to go.

You left more than skull fragments on your girlfriend’s lawn last January. You blew out that six-figure education that the Marine Corp paid for and you know how I hate waste, hell I’m drinkin’ flat Pepsi to keep from pouring it down the drain. My thirty-two-year-old military nephew certainly knew the definition of collateral damage. Here’s some of yours:

The night we got the call, I told your hysterical mother that yes, she should call back the organ donation people and authorize their work. Somehow, in the beginning of this horror show, your Aunt Lynn and I were lucid enough to immediately begin looking for anything positive to come from it.

Your mother, too spent to argue, let your Aunts decide there would be no services. I was beside myself at that decision, but I was alone. Lynn Anne supported my attending the services that your ex-girlfriend hosted, texting me her love while I waited on the tarmac in the plane, but after her sisters’ excoriations while I was gone that love evaporated. She was divorcing me after 34 ½ years of marriage. Went to the lawyer and everything. Maybe it was the marriage counseling, but I got her back. And that really pissed off your Aunts. So much that they don’t speak to her now either.

The parents of your cousin Isabel, who has hardly ever left the state of Michigan, didn’t allow her to accept our invitation to visit Yellowstone National Park this summer, joining other relatives. We missed her terribly.

It’s September and Christmas is coming like a slow freight train. The spirit of forgiveness and renewal that it and the New Year bring are going to be particularly problematic this year. I’ve reassembled my marriage after your gunshot tore through it and I sent some postcards to the estranged as a first step toward healing that mess.

The Marines trained you to never leave a man behind. I can’t believe you broke the rule for me. You pulled the pin and forced me to jump on your grenade. I’m pretty pissed, but I’m trying to forgive you. I’m doing the best I can.

Thank you Joseph for a very heartfelt message and sharing it with us. I hope you soon find a way to move past the anger and to forgiveness, as the anger only hurts you. He is beyond his pain now. The rates of suicide among military is high...too high. One study suggested that 22 vets die by suicide each day.

I'm sorry for your loss, Cherry fizz. I agree with Cindy Mac and Cynic.

I am so sorry. Just trying to imagine someone feeling that without hope is heart WRENCHING. I am so sorry

Words fail me. Hope seems elusive to so many these days. Take care of yourself, and know that there are people here who care about you.

"To lump all suicides together is wrong" -- yes. But so many are so sad.

I'm sorry for the loss you (we) are feeling.

A step-sister of mine committed suicide. We were never really close, since she and the rest of my step-mother's kids were all grown and out on their own when my step-mother and my father married. I don't know much of the story leading up to it, but my step-mother would stop by her daughter's place about once a month to drop off old newspapers for the daughter to use in her bird cages. On one of these times my step-mother found the bag of papers from the previous month still outside the front door. She called repeatedly to no avail, so she called my father and the landlord. Upon being let in they were hit with the foulest smell imaginable, and found her daughter dead for at least a month from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And her beloved birds had all perished in their cages as well.

So while I agree it is an over-broad generalization to say that suicide is a selfish act I would say that irrespective of the reasons for the act I would very much say that "how" of the suicide can be selfish considering how traumatic and heart-wrenching it can be others.

Cherryfizz, I was actually surprised that insurance was paid after my brother's suicide. He chose to drown himself. His death certificate only indicated the place of death and drowning. I knew, as did his close friends, that he did it of his own volition. He had attempted it, unsuccessfully, a couple weeks earlier. The death certificate listed the date his body was found, not the day he ended his life.

I am truly so sorry that you are going through this. I am still in pain and grieve my sister's suicide. We walk one step forward and fall two steps backward. I do know that this is a process, but I strongly recommend counseling and I found alot of help through GriefShare.org which may have meetings near you. Take care of yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually. Though we never get over it, we can walk through it day by day, one day at a time. God bless you and keep you.

My sister-in-law committed suicide. The pain she left in her wake was the worst part. Her mother had already been through so much sadness in her life and she never recovered from her daughter's death. My (ex) husband found the body. He thought she might still be alive so he dragged her outside and tried to resuscitate her. She had asphyxiated herself with exhaust fumes from the car. My ex never got over feeling guilty that he might have saved her if he had arrived half an hour earlier. At least if someone dies of natural causes there is not much guilt for those left behind, although that may depend on the circumstances, such as preventing an accident.

I do understand there are those who are in such pain, mental or physical, that they cannot go on. It's just so very sad. The saddest of all are the young people who make this decision before they understand that whatever mental anguish they are suffering, there is help and things will get better with time.

We lost a young friend in June to suicide. My heart still breaks. I don't blame him. I think even though he always had a smile inside he just wanted the pain to stop. Sometimes it haunts me, thinking about his last moments. Wondering if he changed his mind but it was too late to do anything about it. And I am haunted by thoughts of how he suffered during those last moments. And his dogs, in the house with him, they must have been terrified. I also feel guilty. We could have been better to him. So I think I know how you feel Cherryfizz. It's a hole in our hearts.

There are many versions, but the sentiment is the same: "Be kind. You don't know what battles the other person is fighting."

People hide their desperation. Suicide is often a cry for help. There is no chance of that after the quick, impulsive pull of a gun's trigger. More guns = Fewer second chances. Two thirds of America's gun deaths are suicides.

I understand some suicides -- in the elderly and infirm. Saddest to me are the children, who have no long-range perspectives about life. Three families in our neighborhood had young men commit suicide in the space of two years. Two were freshmen in college. One was 15. There were also several 'suicides by train' among HS students -- all but one was male.

My sympathy to all who have been 'left behind', sorrowing, wondering.

I am very sorry for loss of life, however it happens.

I will say that if you've never been in the kind of mental pain that makes you consider suicide, then you really can't say that it's selfish. Wishing they had gotten "help" is natural and normal but it does mean that you're in a kind of oblivious bubble...

No matter how those who are left feel, it was worse for them. I know the edge of what it's like.

So sorry for your loss.

I’m so sorry for the loss of your friends. This type of loss seems to be the most painful for those left behind and I hope you can find some comfort and peace via a support group.

I am so sorry

Is there ever a suicide that is not a tragedy?

Cherryfitz, I am sorry for your loss. My beloved sister-in-law died by suicide in June, 2010. She was in a lot of pain, but was able to drive, etc. She left my brother and their two daughters heartbroken, and her granddaughter was only 6 years old. From when I was 16, I thought I would end my life, but after going through the aftermath with my family, I know I can't put them through that again.

Big hugs to you.

Somethings you never forget.... Years ago, when I worked in emergency, a ten year old hung himself. His pregnant mother realized that he had overheard her telling a neighbour that she didn't know how she was going to be able to financially be able feed another one. He may have been misguided but certainly not selfish.