I’ve noticed in the various support forums I’ve seen around for friends/family of suicide victims that a large number of the people there speak of the day their loved one died as the day their world ended, or something of that sort. I don’t know if that’s something that’s unique to unexpected or traumatic death, or suicides in particular. As Ian was the closest person to me who has died unexpectedly (even my grandpa was at least a little expected. I knew he’d been getting less healthy, and figured it would happen in the next few years, though not that way/suddenly), I only have that one death to draw from.
For me, yes. I definitely think that was the day my world shattered. It laid low a number of fundamental beliefs that I held; ruined most of my future plans/dreams; changed me at my core.
I can believe that any unexpected death has a similar effect, though I think a suicide death has a different flavor than anything else. For me, with a death that’s accidental, or otherwise outside the control of the deceased, there can be an element of hope left. Even with my grandpa’s death, which I believe was his own doing, I knew that his life was on a down-slide. His health was failing. He was very old… It made sense to me that it may well have been for the better. It left me room to believe that things always turn out for the best in the end.
With Ian… all that was destroyed. While I can see that there ARE good things that have been happening since – even because of – his death, I can’t believe that things always turn out for the best anymore. There’s no way that this was the best for him. I doubt his family would say it was the best for them. It’s certainly not the best for me…
I’ve only had one other world-altering shift in perspective before, and that was a relatively gradual crumbling that happened over the course of a couple months. This? This, in the 2 minutes between when I first found him and when I realized he was gone and there was no chance, this obliterated the foundation of my world view.
So, yes. That day was the day my world ended. I will never be who I was before. That person is gone forever. And while I’m figuring out this new world, getting used to it, I will never rebuild the old one. The foundation for it no longer exists.
Do you have a similar experience?
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