Suicide Awareness and Prevention

The Ultimate Personal Responsibility Issue

After some thought, it seems likely that the ultimate personal responsibility issue is deciding what to do (or not to do), with one’s own life.  It becomes even more personal when one chooses to end their life.

Here, in the first of some upcoming guest postings, author Carl David, talks about his own personal family issues when they had to deal with suicide.

Suicide Awareness and Prevention

By Carl David

My latest book, “Bader Field; How My Family Survived Suicide” (Nightengale Press) is the emotional story of our family’s struggle to survive after my older brother at age 22 took his life. I was just 16 years old. The effects on myself and my family were devastating, beyond description. We had but two choices; to pull together or tear each other apart.  We chose the former and used every bit of strength to rebuild our lives. The challenges were monumental as every day was day one.  We had to start over with each sunrise because the aftereffects were so persistent and the pain so ever present that at times it seemed insurmountable.  We wondered if we would ever be able to move forward and regain some semblance of life.

We realized after a period of time that life does go on, with us or without us and that we had to forge on and live for ourselves and for my brother.  He’d have wanted that and we knew that whatever the cause that pushed him to that final edge of desperation, if he’d known the pain that his loss would cause he never would have ended his life.

Kids need to know that no matter what, no matter how desperate they feel, that they are loved, that there is help for them and that suicide is never ever the answer.  It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life is a gift and every day we wake up is a blessing. No matter the difficulty, we get a redo. We have the luxury of choice in how we will spend our time and what we will do with it.

The suicide of my brother impacted our family in a myriad of ways but we ultimately found our way back to daylight with the help of our family, friends and professional help. It is human instinct to survive. We don’t forget or get over it, we just learn to live with it as best we can. This kind of lacerating experience becomes part of our soul, embedding itself into our very psyche. Our unconscious keeps a permanent record of every moment of our life and reminds us of them vigorously when we try to erase or repress them.

Having lived through and survived the horrific experience of my brother’s suicide, I am awakened to the purpose in my life. I am paying it forward by illustrating the pain with which the surviving family members are imbued so perhaps it will draw someone back from that edge of desperation.

The impact of such a traumatic event on one’s life is akin to losing a limb. Our family lost that limb and did its best to close the gap. My father internalized his pain with blame and although he regained his smile, survived only eight years until a massive coronary took his life. I had the benefit of years of psychoanalysis which saved my life when I was no longer able to cope without professional help to unravel my emotions which were running rampant. My mother endured a series of ailments including a mini-stroke and cancer but was determined to move forward for the rest of us and never quit. My eldest brother suffered in his own silence but eventually rebuilt his life too.

There are triggers that vault you backward in an instant.  When we hear of someone who has taken their life, the scab on our wound is ripped off and we weep with an involuntary kinship. There is a common ground as we’ve been thrust into an unwanted membership to this God awful club.  We feel for them; we know their pain.  We want to reach out to comfort them; to let them know that they are not alone, they will survive; we all do.

It is always present, that persistent bit of pain which lurks just beneath the surface, waiting to nudge you back to reality when it awakens with just the slightest influence. We must acknowledge it and never shut it out for we cannot deny who we are and all of the experiences that build upon our foundation. We take ourselves with us wherever we go; that library of records within which defines us an makes us individual.

As a father my perspective had became ever more profound. While our children were growing up, the haunts of the past were always there and our caution flags were always on guard.  We never spoke of my brother’s death until they were of sufficient age to understand and not freak out as this is a very sensitive issue. We needed to let them know, almost as insurance, so that by understanding the degree of destruction such an act leaves on a family, that they would never even consider it.

I am on a mission to save lives….even one. This is my way of paying forward by taking the darkest days of my life and helping others to see the impact of a suicide on the surviving family members. I need to let you who have walked a similar devastating path know that life does go on and that life is for the living. Our scars become an integral part of us as the experiences imprint our souls, but it is what we do with that information that makes us who we are in the end. I lived it and need to share my story first hand so that it will spare others from going through it.

Suicide claims more than a million lives each year and leaves more than five million to mourn them.  It knows no boundaries; not age, gender, color, race or nationality.  It’s victims are drawn by drugs, depression, sexual confusion, bullying, peer pressures, feelings of desperation and immeasurable levels of inadequacy. The only way to thwart this unforgiving beast is to confront it by raising levels of awareness so that it is spoken about rather than looking the other way, fueling the veil of shame and secrecy that keeps it thriving and killing innocent people.

If you know someone who is on that final edge of hopelessness, reach out to them. Get them to talk to a family member, a friend, a rabbi, a priest, a doctor, a nurse, a bartender, even a stranger. There are so many avenues of help available, 911, contact organizations, suicide hotlines and the list goes on. Don’t hesitate, second guess or wonder, just do it.  Better to be a little over zealous than wishing you would have acted sooner. You might just save a life.  Remember,  “Whoever saves a life saves the world entire….”

Carl David

www.carledavid.com