Be Kind; Don’t Rewind
My brother, Matthew, took his own life on Saturday 30th September 2017.
It is a wretched thought for anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one to suicide; that they died alone, feeling worthless and hollow in their final hours and minutes. The desolation of suicide is agonising and if I ever find myself contemplating how my brother must have felt on his final night, I cannot help but shudder, and weep, and despair.
People who make the choice to take their own life do so, not with a gun to their head, but with a gun within their head; taunting them to pull the trigger. There are so many invisible or negligible events that feed the suicidal voice. It is never simply the one event, or one bad day, or one cruel word that sets somebody stumbling into the claws of self-destruction. Very often it is the culmination of a multitude of subtle bites that strips a person’s fibre to naught. They lose themselves. And then we lose them too.
After the fact it can be tempting to torture ourselves with everything we missed. We delve into so many alternative realities and rehearse the bold and timely interventions we wish we had made. We can convince ourselves that any one conversation or act of kindness could have diverted the tragedy that we are now shackled to. But I think this is a mistake for several reasons. Firstly, you are pitting yourself against a foe that you cannot tame or defeat; i.e. time. Time does not allow for the experiment of our existence to be run again and again until we achieve the desired outcome. And so we become a prisoner of our own fantasies once we lose ourselves to this illusion.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is no guarantee that, given any number of interventions, you could have altered the final destination. It is even conceivable that an imagined deviation from what actually transpired, however well meaning, may have even hastened our loved one’s demise; if given the chance to realise itself.
Hindsight can be a cruel companion in grief. We see everything that was with a new and stark significance. These revelations taunt us because now we know what we should have done. But, instead of becoming preoccupied with what you know now, be charitable to your former self; ignorant as you were. You did not know any better, so forgive yourself. I think it will provide you with a much needed and well-deserved peace. Hindsight should be a tool to inform your future; not a rod to beat your former self.
Armed with the tool of hindsight, ask yourself what you will do. How will you wield it? I implore you to look around you. Recognise the beauty in those who are left. Celebrate it. Be uninhibited and unabashed in all of the warm words you can bestow upon the people you love. We have an expression in the UK: "If you don't have anything nice to say; don't say anything at all". The contrary is well worth embracing. If you have something nice to say to someone, share it with them. Why not? It may be just what they need, after all.
“Life makes beggars out of those who have joyful hearts, taxing the living with hardship and tribulation, but the charity of companionship, the currency of shared and unmitigated love, alleviates all disconsolation.”
― Michelle Franklin
