No reference to Donald. Gruesome thought, but not unheard of, and more common than one might think. Aside from viewing statistic tables, more realistically, often it's closer than thought. Has suicide presented itself as an issue in some way, in your life's experience? Friend, family, acquaintance? Just wondering. Frank
Yes, it has - three family members and too many friends. It never gets any easier, and dry statistics don't begin to equip you to deal with it. I won't call it selfish, because we cannot imagine the pain they're going through. But yes, it DOES affect the survivors for life.
Two family members have committed suicide. I think nobody had a clue... It's impossible for others to know what kind of pain some are in. It's very hard to come to terms with a suicide.
Several people I've known over the years, none that were close friends. Differing reasons but most came as a surprise.
The guy next door hanged himself while my mom was pregnant with me. Later, a cousin committed suicide. I can't recall if it was a hanging or if he shot himself. I believe he'd been in the military (this was a long time ago, probably Korea or Vietnam), and the suicide was possibly related to that or alcohol.
I've always wondered about the fact that acts involving imposing death upon a human being, even if it is self-inflicted, are very often labeled "cowardly". Why does the general concensus accept cowardice as being behind or underlying the fiber of one who kills? In my mind, the coward is the one who cannot commit the kill. For example, the soldier facing his adversary, but unable to kill him, fits the description of "coward", does he not?
I don't see suicide as a cowardly act in some cases. Especially if one is wanting to leave early due to a lot of pain. When my daughter was in art school there was a girl there who came to school one day upset and just sat there sort of spaced out all day and crying from time to time. She told the class her mom had gotten in a big fight with her over the phone last night and then had killed herself. I'm not sure if the girl found out that night or the next morning. Her last words to her daughter was that she was a rotten daughter and she hated her. Obviously the lady was mentally ill and a pretty terrible mom too. She said she'd come to school because she didn't have anywhere else to go or anything else to do and she didn't want to be alone. She had no other relatives or close friends. To me that was not a justifiable suicide although I think some of them are. Frank do you have any suicide stories to share with us?
A son of a friend of my family. He was 17 and did it by sitting in the car, engine running and he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I babysat this boy when he was little, so was shocked and surprised. Turns out reason was a "girl" who left him. What a waste of life.
That is an awful thing to happen to a young girl. I wondered as I read your post, how old this girl was. Me? Stories, yes, but hesitant to share very much. I did that elsewhere, and received flack. I'll think about it, Linda. Frank
Well Frank you haven't rec any flack from me about sharing a story. I'd have to ask my daughter but I think the girl was around 19 or 20. Finished with high school.
This is so sad Chrissy I hesitate to tell it. You might have heard about it on the news a few years ago. About 5 miles down the road from me a teenage boy thought he'd play a Halloween joke on his mom. I am not sure how he thought he could pull this off, I don't know how he could have been so dumb, but he hung himself from a tree in the front yard so his mom would see him when she came home from work. Somehow the plan didn't work and he REALLY hung himself. She came home from work and found him hanging from a tree dead. Very sad. I'm not sure how they found out it was suppose to be a joke, maybe he had told a friend what he planned to do. I can't imagine how he thought he could hang there and not hurt himself.
That is really sad, Linda. Bad enough when someone commits a planned suicide but to have a prank go wrong like that....the poor mom!
@Chrissy Page @Linda Binning : I am not surprised by the large proportion of members who have responded with awareness of suicide efforts near to them. I believe total incidence of suicides is "played down" by the media, except as included to compile "gun-related deaths". My Mother's father, my Grandpa, whom I never met, committed suicide about 2 years before I was born. My sister was then 10, my folks married 12 years earlier. A co-worker of my Dad's, Rudy Severa, had his father-in-law living with the family, this when I was about 8. Rudy's wife asked my Dad if he cared to buy her father's old shotgun, as he was ailing, and they feared he might commit suicide with it. My Dad bought the old Stevens single-shot 12-guage from them for $8.00. Sometime after, her father hanged himself in the very closet where he had kept his shotgun. Finality, my own father-in-law, having been kidnapped from his family in Poland by Hitler's troops, as well as the girl he would go on to marry in Germany, was forced to work the fields by the Nazis. The war ended, he and his sweetheart married in Germany, never to return to their homes in Poland. Their first child, Suzanna, was born on 23 April, 1947. She later became my first wife, in America. Richard was born in Germany on November 28, 1950, and finally Diane, month & date unknown, 1956. The 5 emigrated to America in May, 1963, to stay with our next-door neighbors, the lady of the house being Suzanna's mother's sister. I was just that month completing my Degree requirements at DeVry Technical Institute. I was 21, Suzanna 16. Sue's cousin, Chris, with whom I played baseball, had forewarned me of their coming to America. I eagerly sought to learn about Sue: she was, I learned, statuesque, a Polack of monumental beauty, excuse the bad P.C., we in Chicago were then very, very, ethnicity-conscious. Sue and I began dating, I had never dated due to the anomilies I had remaining from an accident 4 years later which nearly burned my face off. Thus, this was a most wondrous and revealing time of my young life. We did what comes naturally, and by summer, 1964, imagined we should marry, which we did, in July, 1965. Sue & I bought the house I had been born in 23 years earlier from my Folks, who left Chicago to live in retirement on a nice little farm in Michigan. On a Sunday evening, Oct. 22, 1967, while Richard, Diane, Sue, and I were playing cards at our house, their father called to inform he had killed their mother, and would now kill himself. Diane was 11, Rick 16, Sue 20, me, 25, we were then married 2 years. Rick insisted in accompanying me to their folks' apartment, about a mile away. He and I broke down the back door, to find the grisly scene completed as his father had said. I stepped over the bodies to get to the phone, where I first called my Parents, then the police. Thus had begun a series of events like the Maelstrom; no predicting what the outcome might be. No other close relatives in America, other than uncle and aunt, we adopted the estates of Rick and Diane, to complete raising these poor, devastated kids. There are several more incredible trailers to this tale. I cannot now go on. Frank