After a while
For those left behind after suicide.
Grief is an all-encompassing bastard. When the death involves suicide, it takes on a whole new dimension. It is a hatchet wielding grim reaper which threatens to take away your very being. Suicide does that to those left behind. My friend Rach was left behind from two suicides and her descent into madness and her own eventual suicide started the moment her husband took his life.
The grief as a result of a loved one’s suicide is deep, putrid and soul destroying. For me it felt like a dark blanket was smothering me and no matter how hard I pulled I just couldn’t get it off me. I couldn’t see light and I couldn’t shake the pungent smell of hopelessness. I was cloaked in guilt and remorse. I wore my worthlessness like a badge. I was by connection a failed human being. I had let someone I loved down. I wasn’t enough because my help wasn’t enough. I should have been able to save Rach. My love wasn’t enough.
I went back through every conversation in excruciating detail. Constantly looking for ways to stab myself a bit deeper. My own wounds festered, and the grief threatened to siphon me into emptiness that had engulfed my Rach. I was lost in the dark woods and there was no light. No hope. Only death and bleakness. Madness threated to come visiting. I was swirling in a sea of worthlessness.
In the dark months leading up to Rach’s suicide I was her chief confidant. I was the person she reached out to, often in the dead of night. I spent hours talking and listening. I was deeply concerned months before she dramatically ended her life. I talked her into attending an inhouse treatment program. I sent her gifts. I checked in regularly. I sought far and wide seeking anything that could help. I talked to my psychologist friends. I devoured books and resources on depression, suicidal thoughts, grief (Rachelle’s decline started with deep grief for a death of someone close to her) and then when Rach said that all she wanted to do was drink to obliterate the pain, I researched alcoholism and trauma.
I would help a little and then each regression would be worse. I wasn’t having an impact, and it was taking its toll on me. I felt my self slowly draining. The calls became nightly and with the time difference between rural New Zealand and Melbourne I would lose precious sleep. I was also constantly concerned and deeply aware that professional help was desperately needed. Yet Rach would only last one or two sessions with professionals and would always come back to me. I just need you D, she would say. I trust you. The trouble was, I was slowly dissolving. I had to put in some boundaries, and I needed to get some sleep. At the same time as this was happening my beloved Nanny died. She had nurtured and loved me from birth and was effectively a mother figure. My grief at losing her was clutching at my soul as I tried to help Rachelle.
The first time I turned my phone off at night (at the insistence of my worried husband) – I woke to a suicide note from Rach. I frantically called and called and finally got hold of her two days later. She was in hospital from a failed suicide attempt. It was at this stage that I, along with her family and the professionals talked her into an inhouse treatment. She lasted two weeks and we then returned to the nightly calls. Although now it wasn’t Rach I was talking to. It was a zombie fluttering on a heavy concoction of mind-altering drugs. It was disconcerting. The conversations were esoteric, heavily spiritual and hauntingly dark. She wasn’t supposed to drink but slowly she started to add alcohol to the equation, and it descended into an apocalyptic movie.
I would get hysterical calls at all times of the day and night. If I didn’t answer straight away, she would constantly ring, email and message until I answered. She forgot about my 50thbirthday and kept ringing during the party. I woke up the next day to hysterical and accusatory messages until she remembered that I’ve had a COVID lockdown online party, and she had forgotten to attend. Then she beat herself up and the berating filled me with even more pain.
I was entering a dark place at this time myself. I knew I needed to give up alcohol, I needed to properly grieve my beloved Nan and I needed to focus on my husband and children. I was still there for Rachelle, but I turned the phone off at night and let her know I had to do it. That I didn’t have enough in me to be up all night. So, I set boundaries.
I thought the treatment facility would be the catalyst for her to start to find a way back.
You see Rach was a fighter. She had lived a tough life, and she was feisty and strong. A talented and avid netballer, we’d bonded on the court and our friendship lasted long after our knee’s decided netball wasn’t a possibility for us anymore. She was also ardently opposed to suicide. Her ex-husband had killed himself and she was scathing of him and what she termed “the coward’s way”. She always told me no matter how bad it got – she would never do that. Yet I look back now, and I realise that was the beginning of the end. The next suicide she was left behind from was the push off the cliff and then her freefall gathered momentum.
The night she died; she called me 81 times. I was fast asleep. I tried calling her the next day and the next and then the truth emerged. My beautiful friend had left this realm. On her sixth suicide attempt her life as we know it ended and a void was chiselled in my heart.
Rach’s descent into madness wasn’t slow. It came with many sign posts and there were opportunities to stop it or slow it down but ultimately it was her descent and her choice. Her journey, her agency and her choices let to her end.
That doesn’t depreciate or negate anything. It simply is. I blame myself for not answering the phone that night and other nights, but I know that if I did, it would have only delayed the inevitable. With two years passed and my own rock bottom scaled I can look back with pragmatism. I think that Rach’s descent was foretold. Not an insurmountable mountain, but it was her path. I don’t believe that tortured souls who take their lives are denied eternal life, but I do believe their suffering transcends them and that we that are left behind are left with some of it. I don’t resent what Rach did. I understand how suffocating her pain was and that she just couldn’t take anymore of the demons marching in her head.
I feel her with me now. I think of her often. I dedicated my book to her and my beloved Nan. She taught me so much both in life and death and my love for her hasn’t changed because she decided to end her suffering. I just wish with all my heart there had of been a way to stop her descent into madness. For Rach there wasn’t but for many there is.
This was Rach’s favourite poem, and it gives me great solace.
After awhile
After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is
too uncertain for plans
and future shave a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn…
Veronica A.Shoffstall
