I emceed the annual Out of the Darkness walk last Saturday for our local chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. This group is very special to me – not just because I have two suicide attempts in my past. It is because of their extraordinary devotion and perseverance to this cause in the face of overwhelming stigma. More and more we hear a celebrity, coworker, neighbor or friend talk about their depression or bipolar or even their struggle with drugs and alcohol. But discussing an actual suicide with the loved one left behind is still the ultimate taboo. You just don’t do it.

We want to hear the gory details, but we dare not ask. Instead, we rely on hearsay and gossip. We tell ourselves that we do this because we don’t want to inflict any more pain on the grieving loved ones. But we really do it because suicide scares the hell out of us and if it could happen to them, it could happen to someone I love.

After the walkers took off I hung out with several couples whose children had killed themselves. It had been many years since their children’s suicides and all of them now volunteer to help others deal with their grief. I asked if I could ask them some questions – not about details of their children’s suicide but about etiquette.

I have friends of friends who have killed themselves but no one close to me has committed suicide. I, too, am very uncomfortable discussing it with a grieving loved one. I don’t know how to start a conversation and I don’t know how to respond if they decide to talk about it.

So, I asked these parents: “What should I say?” “What questions can I ask and what questions should I not ask?” “Is it okay to ask why it happened?

One mother told me she thought I should break the silence by saying: “I hear you had a wonderful son/daughter/husband.”

“Don’t approach it from the perspective of loss,” she said. “This way they will focus on the good rather than the event.”

One of the fathers disagreed: “I think you should say, “I am sorry for your loss” because it IS a loss.” They went back and forth, discussing their own experience after their children’s suicide. I listened to them. It was an amazing discussion. “Can I ask how they did “it”"? “Can I ask if they saw it coming, if there was a history of mental illness, if something had recently happened?”

I cannot describe how good it felt to have them answer my questions and to hear them discuss their grief and guilt. It was such a relief to finally be able to ask these questions of those with the answers.

“You never learn to live with it. You learn to live around it,” one mother said.

What I learned is this: There is no chiseled-in-stone etiquette. It depends on the situation, the state of mind of the loved one and your relationship with them and the one who has died. Make eye contact, don’t suddenly change the subject or ignore their pain because of your own discomfort.

We all have to break the ice on suicide. They are trying.

Are we?

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (October 26, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 26 Oct 2009