Suicide’s Collateral Damage

When I was in a psychiatric treatment facility for major depression five years ago, I was appalled by a terror tactic used by one of the docs. He had asked me, “Do you love your children?” and I had said of course I do but they had nothing to do with my depression. He then informed me that the offspring of parents who commit suicide are statistically more likely to commit suicide themselves, and he asked me sternly, “Do you want that legacy for your children?”

Hell, no, I told him. He told me to think about the statistics next time I was suicidal. “If you don’t wish suicide on your children, don’t wish it on yourself either,” he said.

I thought he had a pretty unusual approach to dealing with my depression. He didn’t do a thing to help the depression itself, but that was the last time I gave any serious thought to offing myself. So his method of suicide prevention was 100 percent effective.

Two years ago, a friend of mine killed himself. He was a brilliant guy, and he had kids. On Saturday his teenage daughter killed herself, using her father’s method, after her boyfriend broke up with her. I just saw her death notice in the paper.

Just now I did a search on the “statistics” referred to by that doctor. I found them in a Johns Hopkins study of 300,000 Swedish kids, published in 2010. Those who had lost a parent to suicide were THREE TIMES more likely to commit suicide than offspring of living parents.

If just one depressed parent reads this and, like me, forsakes the idea of suicide as a solution for a living problem, then maybe my friend’s daughter’s death will save another child’s life someday.

I wrote two poems when my friend died two years ago. One of them, titled “Collateral Damage,” addressed his suicide’s impact on his family and it is too horrible to read now. Here’s the other poem.

How Much More Loving Did You Need?


We met in the park
two hundred people
maybe more
who loved you

The sun blazed
in the blue sky
Big white clouds
drifted by
It was March
cold in the shadows

One of your family
read Kaddish
You never told me
you were Jewish
You never told me
many things

I waited to read
my eulogy for you
It would have
made you laugh
Then I saw
that park bench
where you
made me laugh

I know you would
have stopped it
if only you had seen
four hundred eyes
loving you

I know I would
have saved you
on that bench
if only I had known
you needed saving
from that black
hole your heart
dropped into
while I laughed