Bereavement due to suicide

What about you, we haven’t talked about your feelings at all, at that time?

About telling the children, or the whole way through?

The whole way through.

I was devastated. …I just, I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe it, I came through the door and saw her and, that was just horrific…. I still look at pictures of her and can’t believe that’s what happened, I just screamed, and screamed and screamed.

Mm.

You know it was just awful. I don’t know, I sort of, I guess I had so many other things to think about, you know I wasn’t really, you know, you become numb, it sort of, you know I had to think of the children, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking of myself, but you know I was it was terrible, it was horrific, it was horrible, I couldn’t let go of her, I just wanted to hang onto her.

I think your initial reaction really is you can’t feel your legs. I mean it’s just you’re so shocked. I mean I half expected this to happen for a long time before it happened, and, part, sometimes, painful as it was, I almost used to wish for it to happen because I used to think she just couldn’t keep on with the way she was. She, she just had such a terrible time for such a long time, and she’d actually talked to me about the fact that she’d thought about suicide lots of times in the past and she’d said the reasons why she’d wanted to, and the reasons why she didn’t want to, and she didn’t want to hurt everybody.

But the one thing that I do remember of Leon’s death, if anybody had told me that you got heartache or you could suffer from heartache, I wouldn’t have really taken too much notice of it. But I do remember after Leon death I had a terrible weight in the centre of my chest here.  Whenever I turned, whenever I walked, whenever I stood up, sat down, this awful weight was always there.

Hmm.

And it was there for about three months this, this awful … and it was like a millstone in the middle of your chest rather than round your neck as they say.  And it really was a hard time.  It was a very, very long process of getting back to normality again.

Did that pain go on for years?

No it went on for probably … pain went on for probably, like I say maybe three months, fours months and gradually got less and less. 

What other emotions were you feeling at that time apart from shock and  physical pain?

The only thing I was always aware of was time standing still, it was almost as though time didn’t matter. Time … nothing was of importance. It was … it was almost like, I suppose if you’d been in a time capsule really. 

What were your immediate feelings when you heard that terrible news?

Well obviously, well, within the, within the first few minutes one occupies oneself talking and then the gradual realisation that that you will, well probably not at that stage, that you will no longer see them. And immediately you start asking “Why?” And that’s continued really for 23 years. Partly one, one questions whether one should be guilty or whether one could have altered facts or altered the circumstances to, to alter his decision, but then immediately, yes immediately I handled it differently to Jane because Jane, my wife, she didn’t express outwardly grief at that stage, it was some considerable time before she handled, she expressed open grief, but I was, yes I don’t know whether I was able, but I, I did cry  in those first few days and then I was able to talk about it to other people and in fact I occupied myself I suppose by telling other people what, what had happened I suppose.

I was, well, initially of course I was just extremely upset, I can remember ringing a friend who was living in England at the time actually and kind of trying to just tell him the news and basically being unable to speak the words because it’s, it’s so hard and it’s so awful and you just you know, your first reaction is just disbelief and then upset at something so awful has happened. And something so awful has happened to, you know, someone you love, and you think, “Why was it so bad for him? Why was it so awful for him?”, that even, you know reaching out to someone like me, would not have provided him with enough to make other options viable for him. And that, you know that is quite painful actually. Because… I don’t think I ever blamed myself at all, but you do certainly think a lot, well I certainly thought a lot about why it was that, you know, he couldn’t have rung me, or other people up, or come to see me and you know what it was that was in his mind that was so bad that something like speaking to me wouldn’t have helped at all. But you know I don’t know how, I can’t quite put myself in the mindset actually of it being that bad. And there was just a great deal of sadness and grief after that really, that this, you know, lovely man was no longer there and never would be again. That was very depressing.

I was in shock initially that, it was the sheer disbelief that my sister had committed suicide; I couldn’t comprehend the actual thought. And then as the hours went by, very quickly as the hours went by I was beginning to feel angry and as the day went by I began to start feeling guilty that I could’ve done more. I did ask her to leave and come with me, she said, “I can’t do that.” And I was feeling quite, I was feeling quite ashamed as well that you start back tracking and you start thinking to yourself, well okay, you didn’t, you couldn’t do more because you are in your position of being disowned, and you know you almost are a victim of that, well you are a victim of that, but there comes a point where you have to lift yourself out of that, and jump out of that space, and maybe it was that position that I’d owned, of being my place and I could never get out of it, so the shame part of it for me was a little bit, a bit about you should’ve done more, you know that kind of you should be ashamed of yourself, that kind of shame I mean. And I remember a couple of weeks before Robina took her own life, she rang me and it was out of the blue and she said, “I want my son to know his father, his real father.” And I thought it was a really strange question because all this time you’ve not seen him, you’ve not bothered with him. And she said, “I want my son to know who his father is, and I want you to take this phone number,” and it was in Canada, “and I want you to ring it, to see if you can get hold of him.” And I said, “Okay, I’m fine, I’ll do that, I, I’ll ask.” She goes, “Well I can’t make the call,” she said. So I did make the call and I left several messages, he never got back to me, and the guilt for me is, also, I should have questioned that more, why was she asking me to make contact with her ex-husband for the sake of her son, it was as if in her head she was making plans, not necessarily plans to commit suicide but there was sheer desperation there and she was making plans to do something. And she was trying to cry out to me, and maybe I should’ve questioned it more and more, about why and why and what for and, but, I didn’t think to do that.

And I think it, it sounds a very, I guess it, it will sound a very horrible thing to say, but I think if I’m totally honest, when you’ve lived with somebody who has a mental health problem for years and years and years, and it’s completely dominated a lot of your family life, and then when you go through quite a few weeks of you know, all those kinds of things about attempting suicide, and whatever, there is a, there is a, a little part of me that felt almost as if, “Well it’s all over now.” And that sounds an incredibly horrible thing to say, but there’s almost a sort of a, it’s almost as if there, relief isn’t the right word to say, but it’s almost like that you know that, that that having gone through all of that, and trying to help somebody and just never, there never seemed to be an end, you never seem to have reached a point where you could feel “Yeah, Mum’s now better,” ‘cos every time when we did that, then she would slip back and we would go through another period of lots and lots and lots of her having, of being quite poorly.

Other people have said that too.

Oh.

It’s a sense of relief, having gone through so many months or years of trying to help somebody, so you’re not alone.

Well it feels, because it feels such a horrible thing to say about, you know, how could you love somebody so much but sort of feel relief, you know, hearing them telling you about how she killed herself, and then how can you turn round and say it’s a sense of relief? It doesn’t, it doesn’t feel right to say that, but that is the absolute honest answer is you know that there is a sense that well at least, you’d know that, you’d know that all of that’s stopped, you haven’t got to keep going through it and I’m sure, because I was away, training during the week and home at weekends I’m sure I only know half of what my father went through. I’m sure he was going through you know an awful lot of things that that we were just never told about. So I think about all that you’ve lived with, someone for years and years and years, there is in all honesty, that that kind of sense and that makes, in dealing with that in itself you, because that’s something that I’d never, I never said that to my father, would never have dreamt of saying to him, gosh isn’t it a kind of relief that all of this is over now, so it was never spoken about. So you kind of almost have to try and make sense of that in, in your own head and that’s quite hard you know, how can you actually really admit to yourself that you feel relief when you’re also going through bereavement and, and so that, that was quite difficult.

You said at one time you almost felt a sense of relief at Charlotte’s death. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

Yes. It’s an awful thing to think in a way, and it’s an even worse thing to actually voice, but I did feel a sense of relief because even before she died I used to sometimes wonder how I would feel if, if she did it, because she’d, she’d threatened to do it before. And she had such a horrible time for such a long time, she was in such distress so many times that I felt she didn’t have to suffer that any more, that she was free of it. And also, I didn’t have the worry of if she was okay anymore. Because every day I used to worry how she was.

Of course.