one week ago I became a suicide survivor-I know it wasn't my fault-but damn it I feel guilty! How do I cope?

Question

he was not young-very intelligent-and had a progressive disease that would have eventually killed him- (we had no idea-he never said a word about it till he wrote his note)-I let him lie to me about his aches and pains-(maybe I didn't want to see the truth)-he had a reason for what he did- but what the hell is my excuse for not recognizing what-now seems so obvious-and for not doing more to ease his pain and share his burden-how could I have been so selfish and blind? Now my dad-who was always there for me-is gone and my debt to him will be left forever unpaid.

Answer 1

First, you cannot control the actions of anyone unless you have the size and strength to physically compel them. You cannot make anyone think the way you would like them to. You can only offer alternatives that either persuade them, or that are unpalatable, like telling a small child they will be punished if they do something you don't like. They may choose to do it and accept the punishment, and you cannot control that.

So you don't have any control over whether or not an intelligent adult chooses to end their own life. You also don't have any control over someone lying to you. They choose to do so, and you choose to believe or disbelive what they say. Your father choose to keep his suffering to himself. He may well have decided that it was the only way for him to preserve his dignity. He certainly has the right to make that choice when faced with a wasting death.

As to being selfish and blind, it would have been equally selfish and blind to try and make him live out a painful and degrading existence just because other people did not want him to go. You cannot share the burden of your own death with anyone. Like birth, you face it alone in the end.

As to this debt you owe, pay it forward. As a parent, I don't want my kids to pay me back. I want them to do for there kids at least as much as I do for them. We don't have children to make ourselves feel good. Kids are a lot of work, but the rewards are there all along the way. Your father was always there for you. He must have been very happy to be so, and you don't have to feel like you failed him. Be a good person, and show compassion, and sense, and forgiveness. Start with yourself. I think your dad would not have chosen to spend his time being there for you if he felt it was a wasted effort. Don't make it a wasted effort now. Live and have a life worth living.

Answer 2

I was having a discussion with a guy I was dating and he completely misunderstood what I was saying about a very tender subject.. He left the discussion angry and hurt and I never saw him again. I knew he was depressed, but I didn't know that would be the last straw.
I can't even imagine how you must feel losing your dad.
Losing someone is difficult enough, but losing someone to suicide can be even tougher. On top of sadness is guilt, and the ever plaguing "if only I had done something different, maybe..." These feelings are normal, but they don't help anyone. It's best to try and push them out of your mind as much as you can. Don't think negatively. You sound like you were a very loving daughter, and if you would have known the severity of the situation, you would have dome something different. HOWEVER, in the situation you described, I don't think there was a whole lot to do differently, and it also sounds like your father knew that and felt it unnecessary to burden anyone else with something that wasn't going to get better in this life. In my situation, I coped by:
pushing out negative thought patterns
talking with others who were grieving about the positive times you shared
surrounding yourself with supportive people
I took a anti-depressant medication for "post-traumatic-stress" for a short time

My condolences are with you and your family.

Answer 3

You are not at fault for a drunk driver hitting you. You were not able to get a pinned man out of the car. No one would have been able to do that. Let your in laws be full of hate and blame someone else. It shows what kind of people that they are. They should be rallying around you and being supportive. You lost a lot also. Stop the drinking and call a doctor. Stay away from the negative people and try to hold yourself together. This is a hard thing to deal with but you must.

Answer 4

There will always be people who believe that suicide is wrong, but they've never experienced pain that makes life not worth living for them. Everyone is in control of their own life, and nobody else. If ending his own life saved him from a whole life of suffering, then maybe it was better for him. I'm not going to say it was the right thing to do. If he lied to you then obviously he really wanted to do that to himself. Don't feel completely responsible for someone else's choice. Either way I'm sure he's in a good place. And remember that you can't change the past. Remember him and everything he did for you, and be there for others as he was for you.

Answer 5

What you are going through is absolutely normal. You need to realize one important thing, hindsight is always 20/20 and we most likely wouldn't have seen the signs anyway. Someone who is intent upon taking their life will not let on that he's going to do it because he wants to succeed. Only those who are seeking help let it be known what they're up to. It is not your fault and you can't put that on yourself. You are going through the five stages of grief. They are Anger, Blame, Denial, Bargaining and acceptance. There is no order to the way you experience this, everybody does it differently but you have to go through it. There are also bereavement groups all over that you can attend to be with folks who are going through the same issues. You can learn from each other how to deal with this. I believe there are groups specific to suicide survivors. There are options, check them out and take advantage of every one you can. Good luck.

Answer 6

The way the world works is, people make decisions and no one knows if they are the right ones, to me your father made a mistake in not telling everyone about his illness before, but it was his decision. The way you pay your debt to your father for everything he ever did for you is by living your life in a way that would make him proud. Only time can help you cope.

Answer 7

You are at the stage of mourning where it is quite normal to feel guilty and we all do, as we think about all the things we might have done. You are a human being and you loved your dad and you will continue to miss him. Your feelings are entirely natural. My own father told me once that we can never repay our debt to our parents except in passing it on to our own children. You may not have children as yet, but perhaps one way in which you could deal with that side of the problem might be to engage in some active way of helping others in memory of your dad -- perhaps visiting someone who is housebound or helping with a charity -- perhaps something to do with your dad and his illness. That way you will not simply be nursing it all to yourself and you will be passing on some of the love which you received from him. But this is early days and your grief and mourning must run their course. God bless you and sustain you in the days, months and years to come.

Answer 8

Swami Sukhabodhananda
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One youngster comes to me very depressed and asks this question "Why is God creating so many difficulties for us? How to handle stress?" I tell this youngster to reflect on this beautiful story:

A man goes to a shop, picks up a beautiful cup and says "my god this cup is so beautiful" and suddenly the cup starts talking to the man. The cup starts saying "O man, I am beautiful right now, but what was the state of my being before the pot-maker made me a beautiful pot?

Before I was sheer mud and the pot-maker pulled me out of the mud from the mother earth and I felt why that pot-maker is so cruel, he has separated me from mother earth. I felt a tremendous pain. And the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me and churned me, when I was churned I felt so giddy, so painful, so stressful, I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then he put me into a oven and heated me up, I felt completely burnt. There was tremendous pain and I asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait."

Then he poured hot paint on me and I felt the fume and the pain, I again asked the pot-maker "Why are you so cruel?" and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." Then again he put me into an oven and heated it to make me more strong, I felt life is so painful hence pleaded the pot-maker and the pot-maker said, "Just wait." And after that the pot-maker took me to the mirror and said, "Now look at yourself". And surprisingly I found myself so beautiful.

When god gives us lot of trouble, it appears god is very cruel but we need patience and we have to wait. When bad things happen to good people, they become better and not bitter.

So all difficulties are part of a cosmic design to make us really beautiful. We need patience, we need understanding, we need the commitment to go through in a very calm and wise way. So all difficulties are not to tumble us but to humble us.

With this understanding, let us not be against difficulty. Understand difficulty is a part of a purifying process. A purifying process at present which we cannot understand and hence we need faith and we need trust.

Let us understand how to handle stress with this background. You can be affected by stress from two angles. There is an internal stress and there is an external stress. Nobody can avoid stress; one has to only manage stress. Managing stress can be internal and also external.

The internal stress is; your thoughts can create stress, your values can create stress, and your beliefs can create stress, meaning thereby your stress is coming from your mind more from the outer world. Many people suffer not from heart attack - they suffer from thought-attack.

For example, when somebody says you are an idiot, we get so hurt, we get so victimised. My boss has called me an idiot and I am feeling tremendous pain. Now where does this stress come from? If my boss has called me an idiot, I have to ask myself "am I an idiot"?

If I am an idiot nothing to be upset about; and if I am not an idiot, then also nothing to be upset about! It is the perception of the boss. But why do we suffer from that stress? I suffer not because my boss has called me an idiot but because of the thought-attack.

I may say the boss has called me an idiot; therefore I am suffering? It is true that the words are unpleasant. But what hurts is the interpretation of the unpleasant word. The thought in me interprets. That is pain and therefore it becomes pain. Much of our stress is our mind interpreting it as pain. So we suffer from thought-attack more than heart attack.