Thank you all for your words. It’s horrible, no words to describe what everyone is feeling. You can get your head around the death itself, but then remembering the second bit - how he died - makes it unbearable.
My mother-in-law is the main one who is intent on concealing it from his siblings. A mix of things I guess, to do with what others will think: feelings of shame, fear guilt, unwilling to face the endless questions, presuppositions, even accusations that might be directed at her. Wanting to preserve his memory in everyone’s minds as the peaceful and very pious man. Cultural and to some extent religious stigma.
Others have different motivations: my sister in law wants to keep it from her teenage son, who has suffered from mental health issues in the last year, spoken about self-harm before, had counselling.
And once you tell a few people in that community, it spreads like wildfire. Very hard to contain.
My husband has mixed views. In one sense we agree that this stigma around suicide has to be broken down. That there is a way to have honest and healing conversations around it. That there’s a dire need for faith leaders in our community to have training on suicide prevention. Things like that.
But he’s unsure about the extent to which those conversations can actually be had- without running the risk of sensationalising, romanticising, lambasting what happened, or any other unhelpful response,
It’s a shit situation. And to me it seems like every person you let into this situation - who knew him - will now also experience the ripples of this event. Feel somehow implicated. Shouldn’t they be spared that knowledge?