Suicides and Other Losses During the Holidays

I don’t often dream about my parents but just about every dead person I knew came to visit me last night including an old neighbor who had a wickedly high IQ but wasn’t smart enough to get himself some help for his suicidal thoughts. He successfully implemented his well-planned death 2-3 days before Christmas, on the third anniversary of his first wife’s death. They had three kids under twelve and no one would have guessed that he was in that kind of emotional quicksand. Tom was a likeable person with a great sense of humor and he enjoyed a good debate as much as my husband did. They were equally matched and it was fun listening to them. They were both well read and could talk about any topic and neither one got so invested in his side of the debate that it suppressed their sense of humors or their love of matching wits.

I heard at his funeral that Tom had written long letters to each of his three kids, trying to give them all the wise-old father talks that would have come in their futures had he not killed himself. If not for those letters, I would have wondered if the woman he’d married just a month before had murdered him. My husband and I wondered a lot of things about this tragedy in the years that came after. How did his second wife---a first time bride---cope with planning a funeral close on the heels of having what appeared to everyone to be a joyful church wedding and reception? How did the grandparents, who Tom had named as the guardians to his kids, cope with having to make room in their house and hearts to raise another generation of kids? How could those three kids ever have a happy Christmas again, losing a mother to a lingering illness and a father who killed himself while presents sat under a tree one room over? We were just neighbors and not a Christmas has gone by when I don’t think of that family. It took several years for us to let go of the anger over what Tom did to those kids, picking that day of all days to take his own life. I finally made peace with it by deciding he picked that day so his kids would only have one "died date" on their calendars instead of two. Twisted logic but it works for me.

Tom’s suicide hit my husband especially hard because it was not all that many years before when Don was seeing a psychiatrist for depression and at one point I was so worried about him that I snuck the bullets for his handgun out of his house. And while the only time I had suicidal thoughts was when I was 15-16, I'd seen Don's struggle to put a on front to the world around him. Me and my suicidal thoughts? I took all the aspirins left in the bottle then went to school. Needless to say, I didn’t have the dramatic, attention grabbing death of falling down the staircase in between classes that I’d hoped for but I’m thankful that we didn’t have the internet back in those days where I could have found a more effective way to get the job done. Sometimes when I hear about a teen taking his or her life I’m brought back to that day knowing that many of those teens had far more serious issues than I had---child abuse, school bullying, gender confusion and other things that weren't on my plate---but others had minor issues that time alone could have resolved, like me being a teenager with a menopausal mother and both of us going full-blown hormonal at the same time.

As the saying goes, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But guess what. I just finished reading an article by Hollis Easter titled, Why You Shouldn’t say “Suicide is a Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem”. His basic premise was that people who are contemplating killing themselves hear those words differently. While some might find them to be a reason to hold on a little longer, others might say “Yes, that’s what I want! I want to end the pain I’m in.”

With everything we've going on in 2020 I fear our mental health workers and suicide prevention hotlines will be working extra hard over this holiday season. But according to the cdc.gov website, “The idea that suicides occur more frequently during the holiday season is a long perpetuated myth…The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports that the suicide rate is, in fact, the lowest in December.” The article goes on to blame the media for the myth by printing so many articles about holiday suicides and according to the CDC, “…that might ultimately hamper prevention efforts.”

I suppose me writing this post is adding to that myth. In my defense, my dad died five minutes into Christmas Day, my mom on Easter and whether someone dies from natural causes or at their own hand or in a mass shooting like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012, experiencing holiday cheer after a loss is forever tainted with sadness.. People who’ve experienced holiday losses due to suicide write about it because we didn’t just lose a loved one, we also lost faith in ourselves to read other people, to know when they are at a tipping point of mental despair. In other cases involving a death by natural causes around a holiday---like my mom and dad's and now my cousin who last night died of Covid-19---holidays going forward have a bitter-sweetness to them that can’t be ignored because the rest of the world is doing a joy-filled, drum roll leading up to those holidays and to those 'died dates' on the calendar. And the survivors of those lost loved ones to violent acts? They must be haunted at the holidays by what might have been… The bottom line: if you know someone who lost a loved one over the holidays---no matter how---don't let it be an elephant in the room. Don't be afraid to mention it because you can be damn sure survivors don't forget. ©