The person left behind

The person left behind

World Suicide Prevention Day is a difficult day for me every year.

It feels as though we talk about suicide more now than we used to. Although I sometimes wonder if that is actually true, or if, when something has affected you personally, you simply notice it more.

More than ten years ago, I lost a parent to suicide.

I still don't really know what the right word is for someone left behind after a suicide. I've heard the word survivor used, but that has never felt quite right to me. What I do know is that it is an incredibly complicated kind of grief.

There was guilt. Why didn't I recognise what was happening? Should I have known? Could I have done something differently?

There was also anger.

How could you do this? How could you leave us with this?

I found those two things very difficult to hold at the same time. I was devastated that this person had gone, but I was also angry with them for going.

When someone dies through illness or an accident, however desperately sad it is, you know they didn't choose to leave you. For a long time, suicide felt different to me because I believed there had been a choice involved.

More than ten years on, I don't think I see it that way anymore.

I don't think somebody wakes up one morning and simply decides they don't want to be here, knowing what it will do to everyone around them.

I think a person can be in so much pain and despair that they reach a point where they cannot see another way out. There may be other options that are obvious to everyone looking in from the outside, but that doesn't mean the person experiencing it can see them.

That change in how I understand suicide has helped me with some of the anger I carried. It has also helped with the guilt.

Because I don't believe we can make ourselves responsible for another person's suicide.

It is very easy afterwards to go back over everything. Conversations you had. Conversations you didn't have. Things they said that suddenly seem significant. Signs you think you should have spotted.

Could I have done more? Why didn't I realise?

You can ask yourself those questions endlessly and never get an answer.

What I can do now is think about the people who are still here.

I can make time for them. I can ask how they are and listen properly to the answer. I can send someone a message just because I've thought about them. I can tell people that I love them.

And I can be honest when I'm not okay myself.

I think there is something important in allowing other people to see our own vulnerability. If everyone around you appears to be coping brilliantly with life, it must be incredibly difficult to be the one who says, actually, I'm not.

Maybe being a little more honest about our own difficult days makes it easier for somebody else to be honest about theirs.

There is another part of suicide that I don't think we always know how to talk about, which is what happens to the people left behind.

Some people avoid you because they don't know what to say. Others have a morbid curiosity about what happened.

Please don't ask someone how their loved one died by suicide. You don't need to know the details. For the person you are asking, those details aren't interesting or intriguing. They are incredibly painful.

And everyone's circumstances afterwards will be different. In my case, I had lost a parent but I also had another parent who had just lost their partner. So while trying to understand my own grief, I was also trying to support someone else through theirs.

There isn't a tidy order to any of it.

More than ten years later, I certainly don't have the answers. I still find this day difficult.

But I do think talking about suicide matters. Not only on World Suicide Prevention Day, but on all the ordinary days when somebody might be struggling and nobody else knows.

We are all busy. We have jobs, families, caring responsibilities, our own worries and all the everyday things competing for our attention. Most of us would describe ourselves as kind and caring people.

Sometimes we just need to remember to make time to show it.

Send the message. Make the call. Ask the question. And when somebody answers, give them the time to really listen.

Hayley Whitmarsh

If you are struggling, or you're worried about someone else, please reach out for support.

Samaritans: call 116 123 free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Shout: text SHOUT to 85258 for free, confidential 24/7 text support.

CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably): call 0800 58 58 58, 5pm to midnight every day.

If you need urgent mental health support in England, call NHS 111 and select the mental health option.