The Hardest Task of All: Cheryl Cottle and Dealing with Suicide

If you have not heard of the events surrounding the suicide of Cheryl Cottle's husband, Sonny Graham, 69, then you will probably find this interesting. Graham, the second husband Ms. Cottle, has had commit suicide. In itself that is not terribly unusual, except that Mr. Graham had received the transplanted heart of her first husband after his suicide in 1995.

Police have ruled out foul play and discounting mumbo-jumbo about "transplant memory" or the like, this boils down to a widow who has the incredibly bad misfortune to survive not one but two suicides.

I can scarce imagine what Ms. Cottle is going through right now, having to go through this a second time. Unfortunately I can only "scarce imagine" it, I do have a fairly good idea. My first wife committed suicide on the 26th of February 1996. She left me with a four-year-old daughter to raise on my own. My wife had been unable to bring herself to deal with the death of our son a year and a half earlier and had suffered a series of breakdowns culminating in her suicide.

The hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life was coming home one afternoon, taking my four year old daughter outside and sitting her down on the bench under the tree to explain to her that "mommy is dead, she will never be coming back." My daughter kept asking, "but when will I see her again?" How does one answer that? Forgiving my first wife for putting me through that was hard. I must admit to feeling some anger towards my wife, from time to time, in that she left, just checked out, and I must remain to deal with the hard parts or raising our daughter alone. I have had the help of family but I have been acutely aware that it was not what it should have been.

Then again, my wife left me with a big empty hole which could never quite be filled. Oh, I finally remarried to a wonderful woman but she was my first love, when I married her I planned to spend the rest of my life with her. We spent the days of our youth together and there were memories which we shared that now there is no one else but me to recall them. Someone who is divorced knows the other person is still out there, that is not so when the other person is dead. I imagine, if the spouse should die a "regular" way, that is too say not of their own choosing, then that would be one thing to deal with. It would have been an "act of God" as it were. But when your loved one dies by their own hand, this hurts in a totally unique way. It leaves you wondering, "What did I do to drive them to that?"

My first wife was a Yu'pic Eskimo and, I suspect, she never quite got used to being away from Alaska. We were an Army family and she took being bounced around the world hard. The death of our son was the proverbial, "straw which broke the camels back."

After the death of my wife I thought, "Man, I never want to go through that again!" I thought I knew what to look for, what signs watch out for. About two years after my wife died I received a call, relayed from a worried aunt, to please go and check on a nearby cousin, one who I was fairly close too and who was going through a bit of a hard time. Oh yes, I should have known what to watch out for but I didn't. I worked on a rescue squad by this time. I dealt with suicide calls on a regular basis. I should have known how badly she was hurting. I was off duty but still in uniform when I went to check on my cousin. I stood there and watched the Medical Examiner bag her body and take it away.

Well, I have learned that it is very difficult to spot someone who is truly suicidal. I have also learned a few things about dealing with the aftermath of a suicide of a loved one. I am a Christian so I offer my advice from a Christian perspective. I do not apologize for this, if you do not like it, read a different article.

The first thing I would like to address is this, your loved one did not "go to hell because they committed suicide." This troubled me for some time after my wifes' death, particularly since she was raised Orthodox. I know that the Catholic and several Orthodox churches have long taught that a person who commits suicide cannot get into heaven. I have read the Bible through and consulted with several ministers and biblical scholars on this. I can find only one unpardonable sin in the Bible and that is not accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Everything else is forgivable and this includes suicide. I doubt God is thrilled with it but it is never specifically listed as "unpardonable."

The second thing I would like to mention is guilt. Some call it "survivors guilt." It is the feeling that you, the survivor, drove your loved one to kill themselves. You may have. I cannot sit here at my computer in Virginia and say that everyone who reads this is completely innocent of ever having been a total jerk. We are all jerks sometimes. We can all drive other to exasperation from time to time. What I can tell you is this, you are NOT responsible because your loved one could not deal with the day to day pressures of LIFE. Ultimately each of us must go through life ourselves. We must wake up in the morning, go through the day, go to bed at night and deal with every little thing which come along in between. In today's ridiculous "somebody else is at fault" world, we always look for someone to blame but the bottom line truth is we are each responsible for our own life! If your loved one killed themselves it is because they thought they lacked the strength to deal with their problems, not because of something you did or did not do.

This brings me to the third point, don't you fall into this trap. You DO have the strength to deal with your problems. God will never put more on you than you can handle. It only seems that way sometimes. I know, I have been there; I have buried a wife and a child and lost my career, having to face the world as a newly single parent with no money and no job. THAT was a feeling of having more than I could handle. If I had killed myself where would my daughter be? Always remember this, whatever the problem that seems so deadly earnest is, it is temporary. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

My fourth point, you have to wrap up. Reach a conclusion with your loved one. This will be hard confronting what they did face to face. Look at the facts head on do not turn away from them. When my wife died I made a point of reading the coroners report, and even spoke with the coroner so I understood what she did and how she went about it. That might be a bit extreme for some, there was some question in my wife's death at first, it was initially ruled "unknown causes" until her suicide not arrived in the mail. None the less, you must understand how and, most importantly WHY they did what they did in order to reach the fifth and final point

Letting go. This one sounds a bit harsh, I know. Yet, we have to let go at some point. Do not misunderstand me her, I do not mean to "Forget" your loved one. Never forget them. I do not forget my wife, son and cousin. I will always remember them in my heart. But I have let go of them. Especially my first wife, if I had not let her go I could not have remarried, it would not have been fair to my new wife. Again, I am a Christian, as was she. One day I will see her and my son again, in Gods' good time.