My name is AJ, I am a husband, father, and son. I share the basic wants and needs and desires of everyone else in the world, I want to be happy and content. I recently saw a Face Book post that said “Suicide is not the end of your pain, it’s the beginning of the pain for everyone dear to you”. As a family survivor, I have lived this truth for many years. I lost my mother to suicide when I was 10 years old, not even old enough to really grasp what suicide meant, what ANY of the implications of my mom’s desperate action would be. Looking back, I can see the rupture of our family and the disintegration of relationships that would be left unhealed for many years. But how does a 10 year old deal with such things? Two years after my mother’s death, her father, my grandfather, completed his suicide. I knew little about him as he and my grandmother had split many years before, and even though I knew that they had remarried at one point, all I knew was that they were no longer together and my grandmother (the rock and foundation of our family) would no longer allow him to call or visit. It wasn’t until years later, when my grandmother was well into her 80’s and I was involved in caring for her that I had a conversation with a second cousin (my grandfather’s nephew) who told me that there had been three other suicides on his side of the family; my grandfather’s side. These horribly traumatizing events, losses that changed all of our lives, was never discussed. It had to take my questions, at age 26, to find out some of the initial answers. Depression and other mood disorders, like Bipolar Disorder, runs in families. There are clear genetic components to these illnesses and we need to be aware of this and be prepared to address them. If we don’t, we are doomed to continue to walk blindly through our world and will remain unprepared to cope with what otherwise would be expected and anticipated problems. My family never talked about the depression that was happening within our world and we suffered because of this. I work with AFSP in hope that this conversation can be as normal as any dialogue in a family AFSP in Arkansas is starting to become a community of caring people. I am grateful to be part of this community in many ways and am proud of the work we have done and will do in the service of saving people from the desperation that becomes a fatal choice. One day our mental health issues will be an open discussion and when that happens, suicide will become a rare event. Let’s hope for such a future.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:50:34 +0000
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