Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of my sister’s death by suicide. This sunset evolved about two weeks after her death and those words — beauty persists — arose spontaneously, something to tether my broken heart to.
I have learned unwanted and surprising lessons from her death:
How inadequate and fragile our healthcare system is.
How the inevitable and pointless questions that haunt you after crossing barefoot over the threshold of broken glass into the land of ‘survivors of suicide’ are just that: pointless and inevitable.
That the shroud of shame and ignorance our culture imbues suicide with is its own burden you must learn to set down.
People will ask you the most insensitive questions like, “How did she do it?” and you will feel punched in the heart each time.
Time does not in fact, “heal all wounds,” but it does allow you distance and perspective to learn how to be in relationship with this unique form of grief.
Mourning someone who dies desperately through suicide requires you to sort out your relationship to their life, your shared relationship, and your relationship to their death, as separate experiences over time.
My sister was beautiful and flawed, brave and fragile, capable of so many things, while challenged to show her…
