Loss of a loved one

Hi

This is my first post so bear with me…

I came across this messageboard to seek solace and understanding as two weeks ago today my cousin committed suicide. It pains me still to write and say those words.

Reading what some of you have written makes me have a greater understanding of the feelings and pain people suffer. I wanted to come across more people who have suffered a loss but there doesn’t seem to be many around on here.

Just like some of you will never understand or know how it feels to lose someone you love through suicide (if you are feeling suicidal, I imagine you think about how you feel right now, and the pain, not what happens after your death or how others will feel?) I will never understand your pain and heartache at wanting to end your life.

I am not here to preach or to tell you not to do it, I am here to write how I feel, whether anybody listens or cares, or whether they don’t.

My cousin was 22. She had been depressed for a long time and had contemplated and tried suicide before, but was found and caught in time. This time she was not. We, her family, know the reasons behind her suicide, maybe not every single detail, or the reasons why she chose that day, what happened leading up to it, and her final thoughts.

I read how people imagine themselves in a coffin after their suicide and picture themselves at their own funerals. You will probably never realise how much people care or love you and if you want to die, you probably don’t care either.

This death has hit me more than I could have ever imagined. It is so heartbreaking for her family, for her mother who found her there, who tried to bring her back to life, who saw the paramedics desperately trying to revive her for 30 long minutes, but to no avail.

Hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night and my mum crying as she learnt her niece was gone forever, her telling me just my cousins name and my knowing immediately what had happened, is something I will never forget and never want to be repeated. I played things over all night in my mind, “what if this” and “what if that”, as I still do everyday. I cannot imagine what her immediate family are going through. How does a Mother cope after finding her daughter dead?

The journey up to their home early next morning for myself and my Mum to tell the news to my Nana, whom she was so close to, was sickening. Telling her what had happened and her reaction was heartbreaking.
Everything that has since followed has been just as difficult. Sitting in her room, looking at her paintings, her poetry, her stories, even reading the card I wrote to her the last time she did it. Visiting my cousin in the Chapel of Rest, seeing her lying there in that coffin, I wanted the realisation to hit me, and it did. Yet still it does not seem real. Seeing the hearse arrive, with her in the coffin, and the coffin being on view to everyone at the funeral with her photograph at the front, it still does not seem real. As though it is some sort of nightmare but in fact it is not, I am awake in this nightmare and it is happening.

What I am feeling is nothing compared to her mum, her brother, her step dad etc. I don’t have to see her house everyday, see her bedroom, be reminded of what she did there, not seeing her walk through the door, or join them for dinner.

Personally, the only solace I can seek, is that when she visited us at our house, she was happy. Maybe it was an act, but to us it seemed genuine and we had some good times together. My last conversation with her was a good one, a happy one, and although she will never know, she has had a huge impact on my life and has changed it forever through the choices I will make.

I have regrets of things I should have said and done that I will have to live with now. Sometimes you don’t realise just how much somebody means to you until they are gone forever. And that is a great shame.
I understand the reasons behind why she wanted to end the pain, I cannot understand how somebody could feel so sad and alone to want to die, to no longer be surrounded by the people who you love, who love you, to never take a breath on this earth again. It may sound silly, but I cannot get my head around how final death is. I will never see her again, ever.

I am not angry at her for doing this, I respect her decision and her wishes, I am angry nobody could help her and I am angry at the people who could have caused this. I respect that she no longer wanted to live. I do not think she is a coward nor do I think she is selfish. In time I would hope her family realise that it would have been selfish of us to want her to live feeling miserable, alone, sad, depressed etc just for our benefit, so we could share the odd good time with her and be in the presence of her.

The pain for us, like her throughout her life, will never go away.