Sunday Meditation: After Suicide -- What Helps and What Doesn't

This post will share my own personal observations about what has been a help to us in our sorrow and what has not since our 18-year-old grandson, Brendan, committed suicide May 2nd. I can't speak for his parents whose grief is unimaginable to me or to the grief of my husband or our other children and grandchildren. Grief is very personal, I think, and how one struggles through it must vary depending on a person's age and maturity, their philosophy of life, their own way of dealing with suffering, etc.

But I can share what's been helpful to me personally and what hasn't. So let's start with what is NOT helpful.

• Above all -- silence is NOT helpful. Larry and I have had the experience since Brendan's death of feeling invisible in what should be our closest community after our family. That has added to our pain. It's true people often don't know what to say or do at a time like this. However, being there is a way of speaking with or without words and that, in itself, is consoling. When you know people are aware of what's happened and those who should be the first at your door or on the phone make no effort, it is incredibly painful, hard to understand, and provokes temptations to bitterness. That's when you can only unite your pain to Christ's on the cross who was betrayed and abandoned by those closest to Him.