Grieving a Suicide: The Loss That Comes With Unanswerable Questions

Every grief involves loss. This one involves loss plus a question that will never be answered, and a set of feelings that most people around you will not know how to hear.

Those bereaved by suicide are sometimes called survivors of suicide loss. There are a great many of them — each death affects a wide circle of family, friends, and colleagues — and they are among the most isolated grievers there are.

What makes this grief different

The unanswerable question. Why. You will construct theories, discard them, and construct new ones. You may re-read messages for years searching for the thing you missed. Most survivors eventually discover that the question does not have an answer available to the living, and arriving at that is itself a long process.

Guilt that attaches to everything. The conversation you cut short. The call you did not return. The signs that look obvious now and were not obvious then. Hindsight reorganizes the past into a narrative that appears to have been visible, and it was not.

Anger, and then shame about the anger. Rage at the person for leaving, for what they did to the children, for the way you found out. This is one of the most common features of suicide bereavement and one of the least spoken, because it feels monstrous. It is normal and it is not disloyalty.

Rejection. A particular ache that is specific to this loss: the sense that you were not enough to keep them here. It is not accurate — suicide is driven by an illness that distorts thinking, not by an evaluation of the people around them — but it is felt regardless.

Stigma and silence. People change the subject. Colleagues avoid you. Relatives use vague phrasing. Many survivors report that the isolation was harder than the grief.

Trauma alongside grief. If you found them, or were present, or saw something you cannot unsee, you are dealing with post-traumatic stress in addition to bereavement. These need different treatment and both need addressing.

Things that are true and hard to believe

You could not have known with certainty. Prediction of suicide is extremely poor even for trained clinicians with full information. Retrospective clarity is a trick of memory, not evidence of negligence.

Their decision was made in an altered state. Suicidal crises involve constricted thinking — a narrowing of perception in which no other option appears to exist. The person who died was not weighing options in the way a well mind weighs them.

Loving someone is not the same as being able to save them. People die of this illness despite excellent care and devoted families.

Ambivalence is normal. Missing them and being furious at them, simultaneously and permanently, is the ordinary shape of this grief.

Language, and why it matters

"Committed suicide" carries the vocabulary of crime and sin. Most survivors and clinicians now use "died by suicide" or "took their own life."

This is not pedantry. Language shapes stigma, and stigma is a substantial part of what isolates survivors. If people around you use the old phrasing, they are usually not being unkind, and you are allowed to ask for different words.

What survivors say made a difference

Talk to other survivors. This is consistently the most valuable thing. People who have not been through it, however loving, cannot follow you into the specific territory of guilt and anger. Suicide loss support groups exist in the Las Vegas valley, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention maintains listings for Nevada. Many survivors describe the first meeting as the first time they felt normal.

Get trauma treatment if there is trauma. Intrusive images, nightmares, hypervigilance, and avoidance respond to trauma-focused therapy. This can and should be treated even while grief continues.

Do not accept a timeline. People will expect recovery on a schedule that does not exist. Suicide grief is often described in years.

Handle the practical grimness with support. Death certificates, insurance questions, police involvement, sometimes a scene to clean. These practical burdens are traumatizing in themselves and you do not have to face them alone.

Decide who gets what information. You are not obliged to tell anyone how they died. Some survivors are open; some are private. Both are fine and you can change your mind.

For families with children

Children need age-appropriate honesty. Euphemisms — "went to sleep," "went away" — create confusion and fear.

For younger children: their brain was very sick, and the sickness made them do something that ended their life. Emphasize repeatedly that it was not their fault, that they cannot catch it, and that the adults around them are staying.

Older children and teens will eventually learn the truth from somewhere. It is much better that it comes from you.

Children bereaved by suicide are at elevated risk themselves and benefit from professional support, even if they appear to be coping.

The elevated risk in survivors

Directly, because it matters: people bereaved by suicide are at higher risk of suicide themselves. Grief, guilt, isolation, and the loss of a taboo all contribute.

If you are having thoughts of ending your life, that is a reason to get help now, not evidence that you are following an inevitable path. 988 is answered any hour by call or text, and telling one person is the single most protective action available.

Grieving in a state ranked last for care

Nevada has historically had a suicide rate above the national average, and the state ranks last in the country for mental health care access. That combination means many survivors here are grieving a death that occurred in the context of a system that could not provide care in time.

Anger at that system is legitimate. For some survivors it eventually becomes advocacy, which is one of the more constructive places grief can go — though not on anyone else's timetable.

Where survivors can be seen locally

We provide grief and bereavement counseling and trauma treatment at our east valley office on E Russell Road, our northwest office on N Durango Drive, and by secure video anywhere in Nevada. We work with adults, teenagers, children, and families together, which for a loss like this is often the right structure — households frequently grieve in separate rooms without knowing how to reach each other.

We are in network with most major insurance plans.

The question may never be answered

Most survivors eventually describe a shift: not from wanting to know to not wanting to know, but from needing an answer in order to live to being able to live without one.

That takes time and it is much harder alone. If you are carrying this, book a session.