Do You Just Disappear?

This is only my personal reflection, thoughts and ideas about suicide.

Successful suicide can leave family and friends distraught, devastated and angry. It can leave an impression that can drastically change the lives of loved ones and friends, and the even the lives of the people around those survivors

Death alone can cause irreparable changes. As a child, I experienced my grandmothers grief at the loss of her son. I was four years old at the time, and my uncle was 13. His death was purely an accident. But this left my grandmother with a palpable expression of grief. Throughout the years, no matter how good a front she would put up, it was as if I could feel it coming from her very pores.

This was not all my grandmothers doing, as I was a very empathetic and perceptive child. I never felt sorry for my grandmother, I just felt her grief and her loss. There was not a day that I was with her that I did not sense how much she longed for him to be back with her.

I had someone tell me once, "Suicide is the ultimate F you."

It can be. As a 911 operator I have taken calls in which people have taken their lives directly after an argument. There have been suicides committed in front of people, and even in front of children in which the experts state they are sending a clear message of anger.

But I don't believe this is always the case.

I have heard and imagine some people may be so distraught with the idea of living without another person that they would consider this option.

Or what if someone angrily and impulsively murders someone, and then reacts with suicide. There's no way to really know.

¹ In a research specifically related to murder–suicide, Milton Rosenbaum (1990) discovered the murder–suicide perpetrators to be vastly different from perpetrators of homicide alone. Whereas murderer–suicides were found to be highly depressed and overwhelmingly men, other murderers were not generally depressed and more likely to include women in their ranks.

¹ 1999. Journal of Criminal Justice, 27(4), 361-370.

I had a childhood friend take their life as a young adult. Years later, his brother married my sister. My friend was my age, and all these many years later, at any family function or event involving my sister and brother in-law I would feel as if someone was missing. This feeling was fleeting, and It took me years to realize that if he was still here, he would probably be at these family functions also. I was missing him!

At a reading with a psychic medium, he came through. The psychic simply asked, "Is there someone missing in your family?" I knew this was him. The continued details of the reading confirmed this. Not to mention there is no one who is actually missing in my family.

Many people cope with feelings of despair in many different ways. I guess life can become so overwhelming that they see no other option, absolutely no other way out. But I wonder if they think they will disappear.

Studies on people who have attempted suicide have thoughts such as, "The world would be a better place without me." or " I am a burdon to my family and friends."

So people despair over finances, their personal relationships, dysfunction and substance abuse, to the point they just wish they weren't here.

Will they just disappear? I don't think so. I have read and studied with mediums and psychics who recount those who have committed suicide and instantly regretted it. They fight tooth and nail to claw their way back into a body that can no longer function.

This knowledge is what leaves me with the most sadness. Rather than disappear, they must continue on. Albeit not in the physical body for now, but they must attempt to learn lessons on an ethereal plane that they were supposed to have learned while on earth. They also have to prepare to come back to earth, just to do it all over again.

I have often wondered, when someone has issues regarding suicidal ideation, if this isn't something they've struggled with in previous lifetimes. So that one of the lessons to learn in this go round is to find a life of fulfillment and contentment without focusing on this option.

So the real problem, for me is the why. Why? How do you ever find the answer? We can research the thoughts of those who have attempted suicide, but that doesn't answer the why for my loved ones.

It's unfortunate that I have known more than one person to take their own life. I imagine the why was different for each of them.

Of course I will never know.