Suicide
Living With the Question
by
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We live in a culture that worships youth, a land of opportunity where everything is possible. Death is treated as an aberration and we find it easier to mask it and deny the inevitablity of it. When an older person dies, we grieve, but knowing it was time for them to go comforts our sorrow. When a younger person dies, the universe loses all credibility, and the old order seems to crumble. To have that person die by his or her own hand is a mystery beyond our understanding. There is no format for dealing with such an issue, and the mourners feel not only their grief, but also guilt and abandonment. The rules have been broken. The word is whispered, "suicide." Questions are in everyone's eyes. Denial and secrecy become the new mode, acid added to the open wound of grief, and a code of silence is begun. I know, for ten days before his thirty-sixth birthday, my son committed suicide. This was not a boy with a drug problem or a young man with a broken heart, not someone defeated by life. This was a man, handsome and smart, married to a beautiful loving woman, father to two adorable boys, beginning what was expected to be a profitable career in his dream job. My grief was brutal, rock-hard, stripped of all but the raw reality of death. I wanted to drop out of life and desperately needed to find an answer.
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About the Book
SUICIDE: LIVING WITH THE QUESTION is a personal journey of healing and recovery. It shows how one family struggled to survive the agony and shock of a loved one's suicide. Although it cannot answer the question of "why," it can offer comfort as it asks other questions that open the possibility of looking at suicide in new ways. This book can offer solace to the many who are affected by suicide: Parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, co-workers. For each individual left behind, the suicide is devastating. And the attitudes and lack of understanding in society add salt to the wound. SUICIDE: LIVING WITH THE QUESTION offers hope to others, a small ray of light to penetrate the dark shroud that covers the subject of suicide.
About the Author
Ruth Maxwell is fortunate to have the best of several worlds. She has a loving family and friends, is a successful author of children's books, and a dedicated blogger. Mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she continues to be passionate about life and the process of living. She lives in Seattle, Washington.