FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Compounded Loss
Guest: Albert Hsu
From the series: Grieving a Suicide (Day 2 of 2)
Bob: If you have a friend or a family member, and you’ve been concerned that they might be contemplating self-harm, is there anything you can say or do? Albert Hsu says there is.
Al: The Bible actually gives a great example of suicide prevention. In the Book of Acts—in Acts 16, Paul and Silas are in prison in Philippi. The earthquake happens and they’re released from their chains. The Philippian jailer is about to kill himself, because he knows he’ll be held accountable. He’s drawing his sword—he’s about to take his own life—and Paul cries out: “Don’t harm yourself. We are all here.” He intervenes—he gives him hope; he gives him a reason to live—and the jailer and his whole household come to Christ.
We can do the same. When we see people at risk around us, we can say: “Don’t harm yourself. We are all here. We are here for you,” and “Life is worth living,” and “You don’t have to take this path.”
1:00
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, October 5th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We need to be aware and alert to others around us who may be in a season of dark despair, to know how we can help and minister to them. We’ll talk more about that today with our guest, Albert Hsu. Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We’re talking this week about double grief—about the loss of someone we love / the trauma when that loss happens because that person took his or her own life—and then, in some cases, Dennis, the need for the person, who’s going through that double grief, to turn around and be a caregiver to others who are grieving in your family or in your circle. It’s a hard place to be.
Dennis: It really is, but there is a passage in Paul’s writings to the church at Corinth—
2:00
—he says, “Comfort others with the comfort with which you have been comforted.” God doesn’t want us to waste our grief. He doesn’t want us to feel like it’s minimized either, because there is—I don’t think there is any grief like those who grieve a suicide.
We have the author of a book called Grieving a Suicide, Al Hsu, with us again. Al, welcome back.
Al: Thanks for having me.
Dennis: Your dad took his life how many years ago?
Al: Twenty years now.
Dennis: Twenty years ago. What percent would you say you’re over or you have grieved the loss of your father?
Al: I don’t think any of us ever fully get over anything like this. I was talking to another person, who lost her dad to suicide; and she said, “It’s been 25 years, and I still grieve him every day.”
3:00
Just this week, actually, I talked to another person who lost a friend in high school to suicide. There were some recent things that had just triggered some memories, and she’s still grieving that particular loss in a very powerful way. It does stay with us for a very long time.
It does change, though, over the years. When I lost my dad in my 20s, I grieved him, as a father, at that stage of life—I wished he would have been there, present, as a dad. But now, 20 years later, I grieve him in my 40s, as the grandfather that my sons have never known. I lament all the birthdays, and celebrations, and family things that he was not part of—that’s another layer of grieving that we do in this era.
Bob: Any of us, who have lost parents, for any reason, experience that level of grief. How is it compounded, do you think, for those when the grieving has a suicide connected to it?
4:00
Al: Suicide heightens and intensifies the regular grief. If it’s a child/teenager that dies by suicide, what would already be a very sad teen death is heightened in even more painful teen suicide. It introduces all different layers of complexity as far as, not only is this person no longer with us, it is also that we have to grapple with how they left us.
If it had been a car accident or cancer, or something like that, we could blame the drunk driver, we could blame the cancer; or if it had been the murderer, we could rage against the murderer. But in this case, our loved one died at his own hand. We grieve them with all the sadness, and love, and pain that would be normal; but we also rage against them, and we are angry at them, and we hate them for doing this to themselves.
5:00
Anger is very common as another emotion after a suicide.
Dennis: Al, thank you—thank you for saying that anger is a normal response. I have a feeling that there is more than one survivor of suicide in their family who has felt that rage and felt like it was wrong—it was wrong to feel that way. But you’re saying, “No; anger is a secondary emotion that is expressed when one’s hurt.”
Al: Right; and it’s very common. One bereavement counselor told me that she sees people in cemeteries, all the time, yelling at gravestones. Anger is a very common response to grief.
Bob: When you got the news of your father’s suicide from your mom, you got in the car and drove from Chicago to Minnesota. You were grieving; but now, you were in a position to try to comfort your mom in her grief.
6:00
So, how did you handle the grieving that you were going through and the need to be a comforting son in that moment?
Al: In many ways, we just sort of kicked into handling logistics and being busy—taking care of details with the funeral home—and things like that. I was feeling pretty numb. People who specialize in trauma tell us that, after trauma, we are often immobilized in many ways. Our normal fight-or-flight response shuts down, and we have a freeze response. In some ways, I’m very grateful for how my wife and others helped fill in around us; whereas I didn’t always know what to do / I couldn’t always act—
Dennis: Yes; let me stop you there. You’d only been married a few months; hadn’t you?
Al: Yes; yes—nine months.
Dennis: So, Ellen stepped in. How was she a helpmate?
Al: I’m so grateful for her walking with me throughout all this. She was my shoulder to cry on; she gave all the practical support needed as we were r...
