John, this was his name, had just turned 30, and seemed an easy-going man without any problems in life, and only a few hours before taking this extreme action had gone to an optical store to buy his monthly contact lenses supply.
Shattered by the experience, my friend kept blaming himself for failing to notice the gravity of his son’s psychological condition. “Why would he take his own life if only a few hours before he had gone to buy his supply of contact lenses?” he kept asking himself.
A suicide is surely a painful enigma for those left behind, who must now ask themselves those soul-searching questions: Why? Where did I/we go wrong? This in turn generates deep feelings of guilt for failing to do what could have prevented the tragedy.
Whatever the cause, a suicide leaves deep emotional scars for those who survive the loved one. Some, in time, learn to cope with the tragedy, others never really come to terms with it.
Whenever I reflect upon these appalling acts, I am reminded of a homily I heard some years ago at a special memorial Mass for those bereaved by suicide: Even those who take the extreme action of doing away with themselves are probably hoping for a better world.
What remains to survivors of suicides is the thought that perhaps their friend or loved one was hoping to find something beautiful that he or she could not find in this world. Hope is companion to faith, and confers on her its deepest meaning.
Life has called me to comfort more than one person who has lost a friend of family member to suicide. The loss is often unexpected, the shock deep and traumatic, and survivors are often left in utter consternation; it is almost impossible to find words to comfort them, let alone provide them with an answer. The only effective thing we can do in these cases is to not deny them our presence. Helping them begins with our ability to be there for them; to listen with sympathetic silence to what they have to say.
This silence is born of the awareness that whatever we may say to them will be of little or no benefit; it is born of the awareness of the limits of human reason, because the intelligence of the mind is powerless in the face of such deep suffering. These are the moments when we are called to use our emotional intelligence, that subtle type of wisdom which expresses itself by simply receiving the feelings of grief expressed by our friend, by being patient, compassionate and understanding, and by listening with love.
None of us can enter the mind of a suicide, therefore the last word on these events belong to God alone, who understands and embraces all human beings in his divine mercy – in particular those who feel alone and deprived of human love.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance” (paragraph 2283).
In preparing ourselves for Easter, let’s remember in our prayers those for whom darkness seems impossible to overcome, those in the pit of despair, those whose torment and anxiety tears away at their very will to live. As Christians we are called to be a light in the world; we are called to be with those in excruciating darkness who have lost all hope and see no future for themselves.
The explosion of light which is Christ’s Resurrection tells us and reminds us even in the darkest moments that there is always a future beyond darkness.
Happy Easter!
Updated on October 06 2016