Shocked and confused

[LaCiccolina]

i found out that a mum I met since giving birth has tragically killed herself. I'm told it's surrounding a terrible bout of pnd. I met her only a handful of times, I'm barely an acquaintance let alone a friend. I'm just very confused by it. People I've talked to change the subject pretty quickly, it is too heart wrenching to contemplate I agree so I don't blame them. I can't stop thinking of her. What kind of hell must she have been in? Seems noone knew or guessed even or especially family. I too would never have thought it talking to her although it's been a few weeks since I last saw her and the babies.

I hope you found peace. I wish I'd been able to see it, to have helped although that would have been unlikely. I am so terribly terribly sorry for how bad you must have felt.
How do u make sense of something like this?

[GollyHolightly]

The only thing that made any sense to me when a friend committed suicide (she had two pre-teen children) was that depression is sometimes a fatal illness.

I'm sorry for your loss. It's a tough one to navigate x

[LaCiccolina]

Yes I suppose it is. Not thought of it that way. There but for the grace of god too...

I'm very lucky - good to count ones blessings again, however big or small.

[samels001]

That happened in my area. A mum killed herself due to terrible PND. The family are still local and receiving local support from the community so not necessarily from old friends and family (as the children grow older). Could you support the family practically at all if your child(ren?) are of similar age?

*sorry I haven't name changed so wanted to keep info very limited

[GollyHolightly]

I think you have to allow yourself to ride the waves of emotion. I wasn't especially close to the person I knew (known several people commit suicide, but this one hit me hardest as she was so like me in many ways) but I went through all the stages of grief at a rapid pace. The anger bit was hardest, until someone told me what I posted previously. I still see her children around and it makes me very sad to know what they've been through.

[LaCiccolina]

I agree. I could have rung her neck myself when I first heard. Daft! Then I just felt crushing sadness. Just so bloody unfair to them all isn't it? Someone else knows her better so I've passed a msg back.
Whole scenarios I'd not contemplated. Just so......ugh....words fail me....

[GollyHolightly]

Did she have a partner? I sent a card to my friend's husband with a little paragraph about something really nice she'd done for me once. I remember when my dad died (very different circumstances, but still!) the one thing I really liked was when people told me little stories about him that I didn't know. It's not like you'd be upsetting him with a card because it will be on his mind constantly anyway.

I also sent a little card a year later on the anniversary because I didn't want him to think that everyone had forgotten, a year later.

[LaCiccolina]

Good idea, will think about that and what to put. Poor man....

[StealthPolarBear]

I remember feeling (what I felt to be) overly affected when I found out someone I went to sixth form with had committed suicide. I wasn't a friend of his but it really affected me. I later found out more details that just seemed to bring it even closer to home...don't know what the point of this is, but sometimes these things just touch us.

[Toffeefudgecake]

When a teenager that I knew commited suicide, leaving his mum - who had done everything in her power to help him - childless, I really struggled to make sense of it. My conclusion, in the end, was the same as Golly's: that depression can be a fatal illness and that it can feel so bad and so hopeless that death seems the only logical way out. Suicide is such a violent and unnecessary death that it affects everyone who knew the person, even acquaintances. I'm sure you are particularly affected because you are a (new?) mum too and it must be hard to comprehend how a new mum could decide to leave her babies. But when people say suicide is selfish, I think they miss the point: people who commit suicide generally believe, wholeheartedly, that their family will be better off without them.

[Toffeefudgecake]

I also agree with what Golly said about writing down a memory of this woman and sending it to her DH. After my father died, I really treasured the letters from people who shared their memories of him with me. They were a great comfort.

[Northernlurker]

I think at points in our lives we will face deaths that cut right through us because we have fellow feeling with the dead. For me the first time this happened was the summer before I went to university. A girl from the year above me was killed in a car smash. I didn't know her but I can still see her face. We were both oxbridge rejects The funeral was held in my home village and I felt I had to go. I will never forget the brightness of the sun, the heat on the top of my head, the look on her mothers face, the sound of her friends crying. That will be 16 years ago this month. Sometimes these losses just connect with the very deepest parts of us and we can't make sense of it. We can't rationalise our feelings. It is what it is but we wish it hadn't happened.

[Toffeefudgecake]

Or we have a connection with the bereaved, Northern. I am haunted by the suicide of this young man because I feel so deeply for his mother's loss, as well as deep sadness for his own misery. He was her only child and she loved him so, so much. I knew them both and I know what a loving, close relationship they had. I struggle with understanding why he left her in such a brutal way, although, as I said above, I have reached an uneasy conclusion.

I know how much I love my boys and that what happened to her would be my worst fear.