I attended the
memorial service on Sunday afternoon for Cindy. The church was
packed. Cindy’s husband had written a eulogy which was read by his
sister. It was the sweetest, most eloquent celebration of a wife that
I have ever heard. As the reading went on, I kept thinking, every
woman should have something like this written about her. I hoped that
she heard many of those words in her life.
As the service
continued, however, I was haunted by one glaring omission: No one
ever mentioned the word suicide. No one ever hinted that Cindy's
death was not an accident, not the result of a socially-acceptable
illness like cancer or heart disease. No one spoke the hard truth:
Cindy leaped from a bridge.
But that's what she
did.
What can we say when
we confront the heartbreaking reality of suicide? Cindy’s suicide
was not a “cry for help.” She no longer believed help was
possible. Her leap was a declaration that she could not bear the pain
any longer, and she could not muster any hope that it would get ever
better. Her leap from the bridge was an expression of utter
helplessness in the face of overwhelming pain.
How do we, the
living, keep hope alive in the face of such desperation and pain?
What do we do with our own grief and bewilderment when confronting
the reality that someone dear to us found life itself too much to
bear?
Our faith does offer
consolations. It does not answer our most urgent questions: Why? What
did I miss? What could I have done? Faith does not fill the aching
void. But the consolations, even if meager, are real.
The first
consolation is expressed in Jesus’ words about Lazarus: He is
sleeping.
Cindy no longer
suffers under the crushing weight of hopeless, agonizing depression.
Her mind no longer churns and writhes. The torment of the depression
is over. She is at rest. Her rest comes at an enormous cost–to her
husband and child. To her friends and church family. To the heart of
God. To us. People who commit suicide cannot calculate the cost of
their action to those who are left behind. The pain of their
depression shrinks their universe until scarcely anything else exists
outside their pain. They cannot comprehend, they cannot feel, the
pain of others, the pain they will create. But we who carry the pain
of their departure can take a small measure of comfort in knowing
that they are finally at rest. After months of sleeplessness, months
of anguish and tortured misery, Cindy no longer hurts, and we who
love her find tiny comfort in knowing that truth. She sleeps. She is
at rest. She does not hurt.
A second consolation
is pictured in Jesus’ words: Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do.
Cindy’s leap was
wrong, but God knows that in the fog of her pain and tortured mind
she was unaware of the harm her action would cause to others. The
very fact of her suicide is evidence that pain had overwhelmed her
reasoning and judgment to the place that she could not know what she
was doing. She could not know the impact of her act. She had no
malevolent (evil) intentions. She was running from pain . . . which
kind of makes sense. We all move away from pain when we can.
As I contemplate
Cindy's dark act, I bring to mind also the radiant words of Jesus,
"Father forgive her. She did not know what she was doing."
A third consolation
I find in the Bible is the way God has dealt with others’ loss of
faith.
When the prophet
Elijah fell into depression and ran into the desert hoping to die,
God twice sent an angel to feed him. God did not try to shake him out
of his depression. God did not even argue with him. At least, not at
first. God allowed him to cycle through the worst of the depression
and then gave him another assignment, reinstating him as prophet.
Then there is the
story of Samson. Samson’s life is a tale of repeated failing. He
fails morally and strategically. His life is a mess. And then he
commits suicide, the final failure. But God, instead of writing
"failure" as his epitaph, uses his suicide as a
masterstroke against the enemies of Israel. Later in the Bible,
Samson is included in the list of faithful heroes in Hebrews 11. God
somehow figured out a way to use Samson no matter how screwed up he
became. Cindy’s loss of confidence that God could sustain her
through the darkness of her depression will not keep God from
blessing her years of faithful service in her church where she worked
with children and young people. Our brokenness does not make God
helpless. Cindy's lack of faith in the moment of suicide does not
require God to remove her from his list of the faithful. And
certainly we will not erase our own memories of her beauty, goodness,
and service.
Beyond consolation
there is also this lesson:
The church was
packed for the memorial service. Hundreds of people heard the
beautiful eulogy. Hundreds listened to the testimonies of friends
whose lives had been touched in wonderful ways by Cindy. But Cindy
heard none of it.
At funerals it is
customary to work hard at remembering and speaking of the good things
we saw or imagined in the lives of those who have died. Too often,
when not attending memorial services, we work at remembering and
speaking of people’s defects and failures. God calls us to make our
conversation wholesome and helpful (Ephesians 4:29). Let’s learn to
say good things, sweet things, encouraging things. And say them now.
Beyond suicide we
can find comfort in God’s tenderness and the ease of torment for
the one we loved. We find hope in God's forgiveness. We find purpose
in God's call to serve in his place as lovers. We pledge ourselves to
do good and to say sweet and good words . . . now.
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