None of us really knows what is around the
corner. Guess that’s why it’s best to take
each day as it comes, to live life in the moment.
I am reflecting on this because this week
has been darkened by news of death. First the death of a friend’s mother who had cancer, then the
death of a husband in his
prime who took his own life and updates on a husband who knows
he is dying and is making
the most of the time he has left.
Suicide always leaves you with so many
questions. Why? What did we miss? How could we have changed this outcome? It is so hard for the family and
friends. It’s an emotional roller
coaster – from being distraught and sad to feeling betrayed and angry.
And it is not something to be dismissed or
swept under the carpet.
In fact that may be part of the
problem. While mental health issues are
getting more recognition as something we have to pay attention to and not hide
away from in shame; we still have a long way to go.
I had a cousin who committed suicide. She’d had a son when she was 17, and as was
common at the time, was forced to give him up for adoption. Three years later, on his birthday, she took
an overdose of sleeping pills and died.
Now this was over 50 years ago, and today, many children are born out of
“wedlock” and raised by single mothers, but back then, there was a real stigma.
I remember once saying that I thought that suicide
was such a selfish act, and I was quickly and correctly admonished by a friend
who angrily told me that depression was an illness. It was a disease, one that the
person wanted to escape from to end the pain, with suicide seeming like the only option, the
only way out.
I’ve never forgotten her explanation. It
has stuck with me. It changed my perspective.
The three women in these situations are
part of the Company of Women community. This is when we need to rally round and
be supportive. We need to show we care,
because in that caring, the family feels less alone and there is a glimmer of
light, in a world of darkness.
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