Victims of Suicide are Sick, Not Sinners
by Daniel O’Rourke • Cassadaga, NY

A pastor friend has been gently suggesting I write about suicide. He points to the Canadian priest author and columnist, Father Ron Rolheiser who considers suicide important enough to write about every year.

But first a disclaimer: some points in what follows are not mine. I have gone to Father Rolheiser’s web site (www.ronrolheiser.com) with its excellent archives of his columns and have used his insights. For those wishing to pursue the pastoral implications of this troubling subject, that website is an excellent resource.

All death, of course, is painful. It is also inevitable. No one has missed it yet. “The young and the old, the frightened, the bold, the greatest and the least” eventually come to die. As Robert Louis Stevenson remarked, “Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.” Even the fresh life of the baby we bounce on our knee will one-day end –- hopefully ninety some years from now. But of all deaths: accidental, sudden, violent, lingering -- suicide is the most difficult to comprehend. It confuses us; it befuddles us; it leaves us with feelings of guilt, fear and resentment.

Rolheiser has an enlightening insight on this. It’s a point he makes year after year and it bears repeating. “A person who falls victim to suicide dies, as does the victim of a terminal illness or fatal accident, not by his or her own choice. When people die from heart attacks, strokes, cancer, AIDS, and accidents, they die against their will. The same is true of a suicide, except in that case, the breakdown is emotional rather than physical — an emotional stroke, an emotional cancer, a breakdown of the emotional immune-system, an emotional fatality.” Such reasoning goes against the commonly accepted notion that any self-inflicted death is voluntary. It is not.

Rolheiser speaks of “a person who falls victim to suicide” and places the great majority of suicides in that category. He distinguishes them from those “who kill themselves” such as suicide bombers, Kamikaze pilots, or murders who out of anger or jealousy kill others and then themselves.
Most victims of suicide, however, are not angry or jealous. They are depressed. They are sick. Very often they are gentle, sensitive souls whom a harsh and uncaring world has wounded. Their skin isn’t thick enough to withstand the inevitable slights and hurts of life. In this regard they are like people with weak hearts or immune systems and the emotional system under life’s wear and tear just breaks down.

Following logically from this is that the loved ones whom a suicide leaves behind should not blame themselves. Would they castigate themselves if their loved one died of cancer? Would they constantly second-guess themselves if he or she died of a stroke? And as Rolheiser also points out, “Part of the anatomy of the disease is precisely the pathology of distancing oneself from one’s loved ones so that they cannot be present to the illness.” Suicides are not only profoundly wounded but their sickness leads them to bear their wounds alone! They have insulated themselves and don’t want help from those who love them. Death seems the only way out. It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but they cannot see it that way.

In many ways, when the cold hand of death touches a family the religious community rallies around. In such instances the church or temple are at their best. Parishioners bring casseroles to the home and often prepare a luncheon after the service. Parish members drive to the airport to pick up out-of-town guests and even put them up in their own homes. They do this too after a suicide, but in this case even in church there is often a darker pall surrounding the death.

Religious folks are only reflecting the ambivalence of the wider society. Undertakers and obituary pages cautiously report that the suicide died unexpectedly or suddenly; questions at the service or funeral parlor are charitably left unspoken. Given the stigma attached to this kind of death what else can sensitive people do? Too often, however, believers in their silence think negatively. Some do not consider victims of suicide as sick; they pity them as sinful.

For believers Rolheiser has much to say. “Any faith that connects itself to a God worth believing in doesn’t have undue anxiety as to what will happen when God, finally, face to face meets a bruised, gentle, over-sensitive, wounded, ill and struggling soul.”

Loved ones should not worry that they did not do enough to heal in this life nor should believers be concerned that the Loving Mystery will not do enough to heal in the next.

Daniel O’Rourke is a married Catholic priest, retired from the administration at State University of New York at Fredonia. His column appears the second and fourth Thursday of each month. Spirit at Your Back, a book of his previous columns has just been published. The book may be purchased or comments sent to orourke@netsync.net.