The Questions People ask after a Suicide Loss

How I answer the terrible questions left behind after my daughter died by suicide.

There will always be questions after someone dies, but the questions people ask after someone dies by suicide are harder than most. 

If my daughter had any other life threatening illness the questions wouldn’t be the same, or even asked at all.  When will this world realize that depression is an illness, just as terrible as any other?  Can you imagine asking a grieving mother who just lost their child to any other disease the following questions:

·         Why didn’t you tell her to just not have diabetes?

·         But she didn’t act like she had cancer?

·         Wasn’t she taking medication for her High Blood Pressure?

·         Why couldn’t she just try to make her appendix not rupture?

·         Did she even think about how the rest of us would feel when she couldn’t breathe from her Asthma?

·         Didn’t she even try to make her tumor go away?

Now ask ME those same questions as a mother that just lost her daughter to suicide and I will give you my answers:

·         Why didn’t you just tell her to be happy?  BECAUSE SHE WAS SICK!

·         But she didn’t act like she was depressed?  She never wanted to make people worry about her. She never wanted anyone to see her feel as bad as she did.

·         Wasn’t she was taking medication for her depression? Yes, she was.  Sadly, the options for mental health treatments are all a guessing game; trial and error. We never found the right medications for her.

·         Why couldn’t she just stop being depressed?  BECAUSE SHE WAS SICK!

·         Did she even think about how the rest of us would feel when she took her life?  Yes, she was so sick that she believed we would be better without her.  The darkness that took over her thoughts didn’t allow her to see or feel the love we all have for her.

·         Did she even try to just be happy?  She tried with everything she had to fight the darkness that invaded every thought she had.

Questions that blame my daughter for her illness hurt, and it shows just how much work is yet to be done to help people understand mental illness.  The battle through any disease with your child is painful, scary, and makes you feel helpless.  We stand beside our children to battle their illness.  We fight for treatments, go to war with insurance companies to cover their treatments, and scrape together money for the treatments we find but can’t afford. Though all this we LOVE our children and hold onto hope that we will get them through to the other side of their illness.  Sadly, many of us lose our children to a disease even after a very long hard-fought battle.

So please, before you ask a grieving mother why, know that illness is illness, and you can’t will away mental health issues any more than you can will away any other illness.