After a suicide
By Chris Banks
It's been nearly 14 years since Tricia Henry lost her husband to suicide. Her three children were all under 10 at the time, her youngest daughter only two years old.
“I think I understood suicide always as a tragedy, but I'd never had to personally own it, or really look it in the eye. I'd known people who died by suicide, but no-one really close to me.
“I remember when I got my husband's note. I remember it falling out of my hands, like I was in this weird sort of movie. Picking up the note, reading it again, thinking this has happened, this is real. My next thought was - I could tell everyone it was a heart attack. And then I thought - I probably could pull that off."
Like all families and friends of the 500 New Zealanders who die each year by suicide, nothing prepared Tricia for the journey she was about to embark on.
“I knew that I had to call key people, but after calling three or four people, I actually went into this weird kind of emotionless automatic mode where I knew I had to call this person, this person, this person, but after that - I mean, their reactions at the end of the phone were dreadful - but I didn't feel anything. I was in this numb, cotton wool land. But I knew it wouldn't always be like that.”
When grief finally came to Tricia, the intensity astonished her.
“For me, I remember lots of shaking, lots of physical shaking for weeks, even months after it had happened. I remember having a bowl of soup in front of me and hardly being able to get the spoon from the soup up to my mouth, that's how drained I was. I have memories of just lying there, aching from head to toe, thinking can grief do this? And yes, it jolly well can.
“But it's not just physical, it's of course your emotional, your mental side, like getting confused, being forgetful, being distracted, thoughts going over and over and over in your mind, and you know when it's been a suicide it's often the, well, what could I have done, and who's to blame, and why has this happened? Not just a thought floating in and out, but repeating inside. And that can go on for a long time."
As Tricia worked through her own grief, she also had to help her children make sense of what they were going through.
“Children might ask the most unnerving questions and details that adults feel uncomfortable about telling them, and they do it with seemingly no emotion. One of my children cried a lot for a very long period of time - years - fretting and being incredibly sad, and expressing that. Another child didn't, and said to me, does that mean I love my dad less? And I said no, it just means you're wired differently, and you're grieving differently. We're all hurting, but we just show it in different ways."
In those early days, Tricia learned to reach out for help, and found it in many places - from friends, family, counsellors, and other bereaved people.
“I think I just intuitively moved toward the people I could be myself most with, who I could trust. And the kids did the same. They used to go to the homes of families where they were just ordinary old kids and they weren't special, they were just who they were before their father died.
“I think I was quite astonished at how much people wanted to help. And people feel so helpless. When you actually give them ways to help, they really go the extra mile for you."
Tricia took solace in music, writing, and taking time out for herself. Eventually, her mind turned to the unanswered questions.
“If something happens, it doesn't matter what it is, the first question tends to be - what happened? So I did whatever I could to understand the nature of suicide, to come to terms with the fact that he had been depressed but we'd called it burnout and being tired, and looking back it's so obvious. I'm stunned that we missed it, but we did."
Like many left behind after a suicide, Tricia started to blame herself.
“But as time went on and you got more perspective, you realise there's no one thing that caused this, this was a mixed bag of life experiences that impacted his life and made him incredibly unwell and distorted his thinking.
“But I don't want to focus on how he died. I've tried to raise the kids and move on based on how he lived, if that makes sense. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's really true for us."
Bringing people together after a suicide, particularly in communities where there have been a series of deaths, requires understanding and respect for the culture of the community where support workers are.
Suicide in a community creates a ripple effect, touching not just the lives of loved ones, but others who may have felt connected to that person.
In Maori communities, Eliza Snelgar, a registered nurse from Clinical Advisory Services Aotearoa (CASA) works with whanau, iwi and hapu to gain trust before work begins.
“With Maori communities there are definite steps that we take around the mihi. Being able to first of all acknowledge the atua. Acknowledge the whare that we’re in. Acknowlegde the awa, the maunga, the whenua, and allow the grieving and the wairua to take place.
“It’s different to a tangi – they’re here to get some different results, under a different kaupapa, a different take.”
A large and diverse group can be at this initial gathering.
“It’s usually a really wide cross-section of the community there, made up of kaumatua, kui, GPs, school principals, teachers…sometimes there will be the whanau pani, or the bereaved family, there, and that brings another dynamic into the group situation. We need to show particular sensitivity.”
Once the discussion has begun, and the taboos are broken down, the results are very positive for whanau and communities affected by a suicide.
“One kaumatua said to me, you know, I walk up the street and I see Aunty so-and-so coming towards me and we can talk now about suicide,” Eliza recalls. “They weren’t able to do that previously, because of the mamae, the hurt, the grief, and maybe the guilt may still have been there.
“So they get that opportunity to share it rather than carrying it themselves.”
