NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide

Subject: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 01:29 AM

OK, I know this one is a booger.........I have been to the help lines and they are no real help,(they just want to stop ME....)what I need to know is......

How do I help my children, age 16 and 22, deal with the suicide of a family member or close friend? Early December, just before Christmas, we lost Brent; (age 47), Kate's "psysic" father.......he was a family member, even if not by blood. (car, garage, CO)

Sunday nite, they lost a good friend only 19 yrs old.....he hung himself. Service was today, and both of them are just devastated.....

Is there any thing I can say other than, "Sometimes the pain gets to be too much.....they are no longer able to care about other people" and, "I promise you, I will not do this to you"?

(They understand about Terminal Situations......and gathering the Family for Death.......) I am asking about totally unexpected suicide, and what the hell do I say to try to comfort them?

"You/We will meet on the other side" seems so inadequate, especially given the circumstances.......and suicides always seem to be so lost on the other side....they don't know where they are.......

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 01:41 AM

Hi Sorcha. It sounds like you are all going through an incredibly rough time right now. I'm so sorry for your pain and that of your children.

Have you considered getting your kids into counseling? (If they're not already) I did that with my son when he was going through some really bad stuff. It didn't solve everything, but it kept the lid from blowing off.

I hope things start to get better for you and your loved ones soon.

Best wishes,

Carol (and flattop)

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 01:47 AM

Hi Carol,(and flattop!!yuck, yuck--grin) Luke already is, and Kate refuses to tell her innermost to ANYBODY--so, we have to pull it out like eye teeth. Ref Counselors, Kate says....they don't know me, and I don't know them. They don't tell me their Deepest Darkest, so why should I tell them mine? My Mom understands More.........and Mom is at a loss, here.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amergin
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 01:55 AM

Scorch, dear, I agree with Carol. Get them into cousneling, but also let them know you are there for them. Sometimes, though, saying something is unnecessary and pointless....sometimes people just need to be held...and tightly...

Take care, sweetie....my thoughts are with you and yours...

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:00 AM

It sounds like you're doing a good job considering the stress you're under. I hope you're getting whatever support you need to help you cope. I had trouble being there for my son during some of our most difficult times. It's a bugger, isn't it? I got counseling for myself and it helped me cope.

Carol

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amergin
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:02 AM

Scorch sweetie, here's a link for you: click here

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: wdyat12
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:37 AM

Sorcha,

Suicide or suicide attempts by a family member always strike terror and guilt in your heart. We have experienced this three times atleast while dealing with our son's mental/physiological disease. We can only try and feel what our son felt while in his human state of despair.

Peter and Kris

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:41 AM

My personal opinion is that telling them: "Sometimes the pain gets to be too much" is to convey that suicide is a possible positive choice to keep in the back of one;s toolbox when pain gets extreme "enough"... and I think you want to help them find other tools to use, and to think about with their friends. And I think saying "they are no longer able to care about other people" may send the message that the suicide was related to how much the person did or did not care for the people who loved them.

Both of your statements are, of course, true, but what I am saying is that these are powerful concepts best enfolded in an approach that lays out what people CAN do to cope and keep going. And one way to convey that is through modeling, through your own example. Know what my stepson told me as he left for the Navy? He told me that through all the awful years, when he prayed for our death on a nightly basis, what he COUNTED on was that I stayed straight with him, and kept moving MYSELF forward. That was the stuff that really stuck, much more than what I said.... and he was aware of it, throughout-- not just in hindsight.

I am also very curious-- and knowing the ages of your kids-- what do each of them think would help them with this? Of course your heart aches to mother them through this, and you must. But they also are of an age to be able to say what they need as help, and how they want to go about getting it.

Hard as it is-- and I think you know this-- their own time to get some help and deal with this may not be here, just yet. They may need a little more positive life experience, and time, and distance, before they are ready to do some work on this time in their lives. So just being with them as time passes, and helping them focus on other things as time passes, may be a huge thing you can do.

So what does that leave? LIFE. Activities that emphasize and celebrate LIFE. And dear one, my bes/bud, that has to start with you. Were you not just now telling me to take good care of me? So.... honey... have you found and trained the perfect person, yet, to hold you close while you cry and scream and think? Remember what I tawkin about?

Or.... throw em all in the car and come on over. Spring break?

~S~

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 02:51 AM

Sorcha, I know you may have already done this, but try to get them to talk as much as possible, to vent their anger, disappointment, sorrow, etc...have them beat on pillows, go yell at the moon, write letters to the ones who left them behind, then put the letters away or burn them in a symbolic letting go. Share with them the way you are feeling. If they can't or won't write, try to get them to draw or paint pictures, any kind of outlet like that for them to express to the one who left, how they are feeling.

Is there a favourite teacher or other adult whom Kate would talk to? If she knew you were going to a counselor you liked, would she go with you for a shared session? If she can see, by your example, that hard as it may be to open up to a stranger, it is their job to help and that you put some faith and energy into that, then it might encourage her.

I've had this happen with a very close friend when I was in my 20's and with my uncle a few years ago. I was so angry, I screamed and cried and beat on things (pillows and such) for days. The pain and disbelief never goes away but it does lessen a lot with time and maturity.

The other thing I would urge you to do, because we've talked about this before and I know you are open to it, is smudge your house inside and out, your kids and your vehicles, with incense. Smudge every inch, every corner. It doesn't matter if you can't think of a prayer or affirmation to say, just see it as a good scrubbing up, a cleansing of all the psychic energies which have been muddled up and also may be hanging about because of all the pain and shock and sorrow that has been going on. Listen to some healing music, a LOT.

Above all, look for counseling services...(I know I sound like a stuck record:-) and take care of YOU!

luvyakat

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: wdyat12
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 03:07 AM

Sorcha,

We didn't mean to leave you on such a note, but couldn't continue because your situation hits so close to home. We live with this fear night and day. Neither of us would know how to effectively deal with your situation and that's why we will listen to what all of you have to say here.

Kris and Peter

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 03:19 AM

Peter, you know I really am glad you are here. Love to Kris, too.

A resource I can strongly recommend is:

www.rc.org

I'll be getting a set of their workshop videos soon if anyone wants to borrow them. (At the site, there is an index of videos but you only see it if you press a search button that looks like you must first enter a title to search up. You don't need a title-- it will pull up a list.) The journals also are excellent, especially PRESENT TIME which I believe is still quarterly. Chock full of personal stories of people DEALING with BIG STUFF.

~Susan

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: georgeward
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 03:38 AM

Sorcha, I've got to reinforce Susan's second paragraph. What you do, openly, to work yourself through this situation (hopefully with some good counselling help) will be a very powerful force in your childrens' lives, probably the most helpful thing you can do. That was an amazing discovery for me, that what I did for myself to cope with life responsibly had far more effect on my kids than what I said or tried to get them to do. It wasn't selfish or self-indulgent. It was modelling a positive response to life's dark stuff. Seems simple. But I think that, as children, a lot of us "learn" that parenting is prescribing. Anything else seems self-centered. Wrong!

Like Susan, I've had both my grown sons say (more than once) that what mattered far more than the awful stuff (of which there was plenty, including my own suicidal tendencies) was that I never gave up, never stopped working on it. I could have written "WE never gave up", but the guys see Vaughn and I as individual examples as well as, as a couple (as we all see our parents, I think). And they tend to see us individually in this case. What we DID mattered immensely to them. And they were aware of it, just as Susan says, in their worst - seemingly most estranged- moments.

Guess I'm reinforcing Kat's second paragraph just above, too. What about family counselling as a strategy. God knows, you've all got this to deal with.

As one who has had to deal with a family history of suicide attempts in the older generation, I've found a powerful lever against my own fears of what I might do to myself in an old hotline saw: "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." Don't know who first said it. She/he has saved lives.

God bless, -George ::-.--O

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amergin
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 04:22 AM

I never thought of my suicidal tendencies to be selfish or self centered.....I always thought of them as a solution that at the times I think would make everyone happy....especially me because then I wouldn't have to suffer under the yoke of depression anymore...then, whenever I am on the very edge preparing to jump, something pulls me back, and I have yet to discover what that something is....my hope is that it will continue to hold me back.....I am in no hurry to see the next life....

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: dwditty
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 06:40 AM

Sorcha,
The son of dear friends comitted suicide several years ago. D was going nuts from the "elephant in the living room syndrome." The sad fact was always there, but no one would talk about it, and when they did, it was something completely lame (good intentions, of course). D finally tried to find some support, but found none in our area. We researched the web and found lots of info for her to start a survivors support group. She has found much comfort in helping others, and has therefore helped herself. Key in "Suicide Survivors" in Google and you will find lots of stuff. And hug your kids alot.

dw

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Hawker
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 07:23 AM

I know it is a different kind of mental anguish, but I and my sisters were abused by our uncle in our childhood years, none of us spoke out, now, not only do I bear the guilt of what he did to me, but that I could have and didn't stop it happening to my younger sister. I personally have coped the best, and I have to say I am the only one of us who has seen a counsellor. It made a whole lot of difference and made me see that HE was the guilty party not me. These support people do not know you like your Mom does, that can be an advantage, 'cos you can tell them things that wont hurt or shock them that your Mom may react differently to, they do not judge or tell you what is right or wrong, they just encourage you to see the positive of a VERY negative situation. I send my love and kind thoughts to you all and hope that your kids get through this and become stronger peole because of it. Godbless, Lucy

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 08:58 AM

I've had very limited experience with this, but the one thing that always seems present in survivors is guilt. People do that "I should have/could have" thing. The fact is, most people could have tried everything they think of, and nothing would be different - and they'd STILL be thinking of other things they could have done.

There are people who give clues about their intention to kill themselves, or just say they're going to do so. Most of the time, it can take a professional to spot the clues, or close family or friends. And even if you get that fear in your gut that something's terribly wrong, we still can only listen and offer advice and friendship. We can't make other people see life the way we do. We can't even convince them to like the same people or things we do, so how the hell can we get them to love life? We can't. It's up to each individual to survive and be happy. We do what we can, but there's no way we can control another person's will to live. We can't live their lives for them, and we can't force them to ask for and get help.

There are other people who are very secretive. People left behind still blame themselves for not seeing it coming. Don't kick yourself for not seeing clues that weren't there. If it's so difficult to help those you know are feeling suicidal, there's no way in hell you could have done anything for these people.

People who are sick don't think about anyone but themselves. This isn't a judgement - just a fact. People with something as insignificant and temporary as a cold will be rude, and people who are unhappy enough to want to kill themselves don't care if they hurt people left behind. They're wrapped up in themselves. It's normal to be mad at them, but realize that their attention was focused inward. It was probably impossible for them to be concerned with anything or anyone outside themselves.

I keep thinking that people I've known who have chosen a "permanent solution" could have tried something different. If the path they were on was too rocky, they could have tried a completely different road. They could have opened their minds and tried something new, despite their belief that the new thing wouldn't work. I also think this about people who are just very unhappy. Give the counseling a try...

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 10:19 AM

Their death served a purpose, as an example of how precious life is; and how easy it is to throw it away or lose it. Suicide relieved their burden, and their life held little meaning for them. Learn from the experience, talk amongst those loved ones who are affected by this experience; and move on, a wiser person for it. Counseling has never done anything positive for me. Best counseling is achieved by talking to friends and family. Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 11:14 AM

just a thought Sorch............

Katie adored him didn't she? She, like all of us, goes through the same steps of grieving. For a lot of us the hardest step to pass after a suicide is Anger. We find ourselves quite surprised that we should be mad at someone we loved. For a teenage girl, especially in her situation, I think she's having a hard time accepting the Anger. How can she be mad at someone she adored? This is REAL angst.

I dunno'...........I've seen that happen in exactly the same situation as she is in............just a thought.

Spaw

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 11:42 AM

Some thoughts that might be of use.

1. He is probably very surprised about now to discover that while he is out of the game he couldn't stand, the major elements he was wrestling with are still right there. You don't change your problems by changing your skies, as the old saying goes, and the confusions that you don't stand up and face follow you like tins cans on a bumper, even when you exit the body.

2. This indicates that he made a serious mistake in misidentifying the nature of the problem he was in, which led to the extreme solution he adopted. But whatever the problem was, and wherever its origins, it was in no respect attributable to those who loved him, whether they did it well or could have done it better. Issues of that magnitude come from much deeper wellsprings and are highly personal, not in any respect a grounds for guilt from those who cared about the person.

3. It is possible that he has now discovered a thing or two that will make it more possible for him to get up to and over the hump of whatever it was he was wrestling with. Assuming he was fundamentally a good person who felt forced into a corner, by things he could not communicate, he may learn that the pain of communicating is a necessary part of the way out of that corner, whereas the solution he chose -- more avoidance -- is a failed answer. This might also serve to give Kate food for thought about her own willingness to communicate.

4. All that said, he exercised the ultimate right -- to withdraw from a game -- and although he exercised it for the wrong reasons, perhaps, and will not get from it the answer he hoped for, the fundamental right itself cannot be gainsaid. If he had chosen to say the many things he left unsaid, he would not have needed to exercise that right; and we can hope that lesson gets learned.

5. And the only thing we can offer children in a situation like this is a place of unconditional, unwavering love and a place to bring out their thoughts, or not. We cannot enforce communication from them, but if we make it safe enough, and say little enough back, we can make a place where ti will be more likely to happen.

Sorry if this seems disjointed. My heart is with you Sorch; and with Katie as well. And you can tell her so if that will help.

Love,

A

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 11:54 AM

Thanks, guys. All good words, and several things I hadn't thought of. I appreciate the help, nobody is ever grown up enough to go through life alone.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 01:21 PM

Sorcha, I have nothing to add to everything said above. Take care of yourself. You have had much more than your share lately.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: nutty
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 03:36 PM

I keep being drawn to this thread although it brings back painful memories

15 years ago I lost a very close friend in this way ..... it was very distressing particularly as she left a husband and three sons that she adored

She also had a large circle of friends and a very close famiy but somehow none of that figured in the way she was feeling

Like anorexics , who constantly see themselves as fat , her view of life (and herself) had somehow become distorted and for a split second had allowed her to do something so out of character, as to be totally unbelievable

I believe that, she did not rationalise or theorise but reacted instinctively to one small moment in time .... if she had waited for it to pass ...... who knows what the outcome might have been

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Hotspur
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:09 AM

Having been on both ends of this equation, I would suggest--and this is a very difficult suggestion, I know--but maybe the best thing is to let Kate work at this herself for a while. Be right there, and make sure she knows that you are right there...but...sometimes a thing cut so deeply that there is almost a sacredness in it, and talking about it seems trivial and pointless. Especially with the guilt and anger, even though it sounds terrible to say, sometimes people WANT to blame themselves because it is easier to feel responsible than admit that the problem was out of your hands.

I think the biggest help you can give is to show your kids how much you love them and support them, and you are already doing that! Many many prayers are headed your way. i hope you all find a healthy way to work through this. Hugs, Becca

P.S. Be gentle to yourself...you have grief to deal with too.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Gypsy
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:36 AM

Sorcha, my deepest sympathy for you and yours right now. I tend to agree with Becca...it must be the hardest thing imaginable to do, as a parent, but some things can't be fixed instantly. Katie needs time for the grieving process, it sounds like. Listen to her. Let her be redundant. She'll tell you what she needs, i'm sure. My prayers for all of you.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: flattop
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 01:14 AM

I wish I had some wise words to offer, Sorcha, but I feel that your judgement will be better than anything I can say. I hope things improve for you each day and I will try to not call you names until you are feeling better.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: John Hardly
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 06:01 AM

I'm the son of a man who committed suicide.

My siblings and I have discussed this many times and all 6 agree.

It's painful but not devastating.

The ONLY crippling that comes..comes from addiction to SYMPATHY.

JH

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 11:21 AM

Sorcha, after my sisterdid this, I was in a t group for people who had lost someone this way, led by someone who had lost her daughter this way, so we were all equals, except in length of time from the tragedy. We were assured that it is OK to take YEARS to grieve, and if anyone gives you grief over that, THEY are the ones who don't understand the recovery curve. It takes as long as it takes. Being in a group of people talking out all of the above: grief, anger, guilt, depression was of inestimable value. (and since it was through church, led by a fellow member, it also happened to be free, but you can't count on that.)

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Peter T.
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 11:59 AM

I have watched the families of two suicides -- young men -- in my own circle in the last year, and I believe that if either of those two men had been in the room at their funerals they would have been totally shocked. There was so much unhappiness and pain at the loss and the guilt of not having reached out to them in life. Each man was a loner: each funeral was filled with hundreds of people trying to testify to the importance of these men, when it was too late. They would have stayed alive if they could have attended their own funerals.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Matt_R
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:07 PM

Sorcha, you know I'm always here if she needs someone to talk to...

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:12 PM

Peter, you touched the core issue. The cocoon of self-imposed misery from which suicide seems an answer would melt away if the right kind and quality and frequency of plain human communication were made to occur. I believe there's a lesson there. If there is any guilt to be found in the circle of friends and acquaintances from which someone thus departs, it must be in the realm of things left unsaid, of opprtunities to touch a life not taken.

A

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 12:18 PM

Terribly sorry to hear about this, Sorcha.

Dave and John Hardly make good points. Life is fragile. People die. Those they leave behind must at some stage decide whether they want to make the effort to get on with being alive.

It's easy to say to those bereaved by suicide: "Don't blame yourself." But it doesn't work. It's also easy to make excuses for those who kill themselves - but not all of them need. or would appreciate, those excuses. But issues like these do need to be confronted and thought through, and quite often those in the immediate family are too closely affected to be able to help each other much. That's where third-party councelling can be helpful - you could try selling it on the basis that it is helping you, Sorcha, rather than the counselled. You need feel no shame in saying that, just for the moment, you have nothing to offer.

One point to keep in mind, is that someone bereaved by suicide can be at risk him/herself, and your kids are in what is statistically a vulnerable age group. A potential suicide who is still thinking remotely straight, is predisposed to put less weight on the brutal effect of his/her death on nearest and dearest if it has already been done to him/her by someone else. One of my dearest friends lost her 20-year-old daughter to suicide a year or two ago. The girl's father had killed himself some years earlier, leaving her with a sense of having been abandoned.

You might try to track down the work of the renowned bereavement/suicide counsellor Elizabeth Kublar-Ross. Some of her talks are available on tape, and I know of people, previously in despair, who have found her work enormously helpful.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Peter T.
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 04:07 PM

I can't bring myself to blame anyone in the families, friends, (or even the suicides) for the lack of awareness of what they meant to each other -- having listened to them, known them all. I wish we could figure out some way of giving people a celebration of their lives -- maybe that is what birthdays are for, or saint's days, or retirement parties, or anniversaries. I would be prepared to say that everyone should have a celebratory day at some point in their lives, just for the hell of it. I can't figure out the logistics of it, and maybe people do it already at these events, but sitting through two solitary suicides' funerals is a fucking stupid way to treasure people's lives (that is the second time I have ever used an obscenity at this site, since obscene is what it is).
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 04:18 PM

About a year before my mom died she read "Tuesdays with Morty" and told me about the part where he has his own funeral put on, ahead of his death, so that he can BE THERE to hear all of the good things people have to say about him. She thought that was a wonderful idea, always thought funerals were morbid and stupid...we weren't able to give her that kind of pre-transition party, but we did all make sure she knew how much she meant to us.

Not knowing when we may die, I think it would be a marvelous thing to have a special day for celebration of our continued existence...it doesn't seem to happen on birthdays much anymore once people get to a certain age group...maybe we all become complacent or passe...unless we know we are literelly dying, there is no urgency...it always seems to be put off to another day, one that may never come.

This gives me an idea for another thread, a community-housekeeping thought...in a day or two I will post it...

thanks, Peter...

kat

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 04:30 PM

Fionn's point above is an important one: everybody's grieving cycle or style is differernt, and two people grieving the same loss can be out of sync to the point that their own relationship suffers. This is why so many couples who lose a child break up. Getting (trained, competent)help from someone not affected by the same tragedy can avoid becoming a statistic. Good Luck.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 09:11 PM

Occasionally, if you are lucky, you will cross trails with a person who knows the lesson well enough, and therefore goes out of their way to celebrate others on birthdays, unbirthdays or in between, just to brighten the minute in which they are and those who are participating.

Those like Peter T and myself, who get stuck in our heads and take up residence in mental Britannicas, can too easily forget this far brighter side of the human equation -- putting what you have into the communication of the moment with the person before you now, rather than running Category Analyzers on everything first. I believe that the presence of a person who knows how to celebrate others in the moment (and for some reason I usually think of this as a feminine art) could turn a depressed person back toward life just by rehabilitating their ability to smile and have a good feeling about themselves. In many case (not all) it doesan't take much, but that little can make all the difference. Forgive me for rambling -- I am thinking out loud and realizing that even we "World Class Egos" could buckle down to a few important lessons...plain ones of the heartfelt variety.

Regards,

Amos

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Sorcha
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 09:20 PM

(I'm still listening........and Amos, I think I am stuck there too, maybe part of the problem) She, tho, is not. SHE is 16, and "knows it all", so does not need anything.....

We're really working on this, and thanks to ALL for your comments. Some VERY good suggestions,but I think this has gone as far as it can here, so let's kill it, OK? (I know, it's sort of like a hangnail, you just keep picking at it. So do I, but it's time for me to work on this personally, and not have to keep checking in on this thread, OK?)

Nuff said.

Subject: RE: NonMusic Help: Dealing With Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 01 - 10:39 PM

The only advice my sixteen-year old ever listened to in times of loss was "allow yourself to feel what you feel, while still rememebering who you are". For some reason this made sense to her.

My fondest wishes are with you, Sorch. Ciaou.

A