Suicide

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Aftershock: Hope, Help, Healing in the Wake of Suicide

Day 3 of 3

Guest: David Cox

From the Series: The Survivors

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Bob: A friend, a family member, or a loved one commits suicide. Those of us who continue to live often aren't sure how to deal with the reality. Here's David Cox.

David: There are two things you don't want to do -- you don't want to just slap a Band-Aid on it and pretend like it's not there -- just cover it up and hope it will go away. The other thing is you don't so completely focus on the problem that you neglect the healing. There's a middle ground that we need to arrive at where we talk about it, we bring it out in the light, because there are many more redeeming qualities about this person than to simply focus on the way they die is to misunderstand what their life represented.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, July 9th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. How do you deal openly and honestly with the reality of suicide when someone you love takes his life?

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. Dennis?

Dennis: Bob, we receive a lot of letters and e-mails from our listeners, and one got my attention from a radio listener, and I'll just read it. She says, "Yesterday our pastor committed suicide. I have a two-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. What do I tell them? Several parents are also asking me for advice. Our church is having a congregational meeting tomorrow night. Your advice and prayers would be appreciated."

You know, what she is talking about is a family that has been impacted by another person's suicide, and they have a unique set of needs to know how to process, as those who are left behind, the living, and how to coach and guide and help their children and family know how to cope in the absence of someone they loved.

Bob: That's a subject that we are dealing with this week on the program, and we have got a guest who is helping us do that from Spartanburg, South Carolina. His name is Dr. David Cox. David, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

David: Thank you so much.

Bob: Our listeners who have heard your story know that you have had to deal personally with the impact of a successful suicide. Your father took his life when you were nine years old, and you have continued not only to look at this subject personally but also professionally. You are a counselor today, and I know that this is one issue that emerges for you over and over again as you deal with folks who are in the wake of a suicide. And you describe this interestingly in a book you've written called "Aftershock." You say that any of us who have had the experience of losing a filling know that you almost can't help but have your tongue keep going to the spot where the filling used to be, and every time you do it's painful, but there is this strange attraction there. You say for a person in the wake of a suicide, you almost find yourself going repeatedly to that same pain. It's like you can't avoid it.

David: Because there are no good answers. Why did this happen? Why did they choose this? And no matter how many times you go there, you never come away with anything that resolves the anger, the guilt, the shame, what if we had done the right thing? What if we had seen these problems coming?

Bob: Does someone who is a friend or a family member of a suicide victim -- do they just have to resign themselves to the fact that there are going to be unanswered questions for the rest of your life and kind of get past that and move on?

David: You have to move on, because you will become paralyzed and immobilized by the guilt and the questions if we're not careful. Dennis, you mentioned the church where the pastor had taken his life, and I can tell you some things they don't need to do right now -- they don't need to cover this up. They don't need to deny how this man died. We need to use The Word, it needs to be talked about, we need to talk about the wonderful things that this pastor did and the way he lived his life for the Lord, and it's a very difficult but necessary thing to talk to these children that are survivors. And when we use the term survivor of suicide, we are referring to those left behind after a successful suicide attempt.

Bob: So you're saying that in the same way that you might eulogize or memorialize a person who died in a car wreck or who died from a terminal disease -- we should have that same philosophical approach to someone who takes his own life?

David: I believe so, because there are many more redeeming qualities about this person than -- to simply focus on the way they died is to misunderstand what their life represented.

Dennis: That's a difficult assignment, though. I know of a friend who described a suicide in his family as though it was a ripple effect; that it affected and infected the entire family and continues, even to this day, to impact their family and how they're raising their children, because suicide has been introduced into the family vocabulary. They are now wondering if their elementary children are thinking about suicide; they're wondering if their teenagers are more likely to contemplate suicide. It changes the genetic structure of the family, doesn't it?

David: Well, you use the word "infect." What do you do with an infection? There are two things you don't want to do. You don't want to just slap a Band-Aid on it and pretend like it's not there -- just cover it up and hope it will go away. The other thing is, you don't so completely focus on the infection and on the problem that you neglect the healing. There's a middle ground that we need to arrive at where we talk about it. We bring it out in the light; we call it for what it is; we even call it sin, because anything that is not of faith is a sin and, certainly, that's not an act of faith. It's an act of fear, it's an act of desperation. It's someone who is obviously in a very desperate situation.

Bob: ...