Suicide Grief

This is different.

 I have lived nearly six decades and suicide has never entered my personal sphere of experience. On the 4th of July, while we were out boating with friends and family, another friend, in the pit of discouragement and likely a drug-induced haze, took an overdose of meds and began a rapid downward spiral.  Four days later, she was gone. A pastor's wife, a mother of three young children, a beautiful, loving friend to me, my daughters, and so many others.

Thud.

This is not the same as my grief for my son. That was clean. Pure untainted sorrow. Tears flowed.

With this, grief comes after.

After the plaguing questions, the hindsight regrets, the shocking anger, the self-recriminations.

How did we miss this?
Did we understand her so little?
Were we blind, deaf, silent to her need?
Did she withhold information from us?
Did she do it in a rage, a fog, an impulsive desperate moment?
How could she do this to her kids?

She is in Heaven now. I believe that. But the hurt and pain left behind?
How does that get fixed?
Slowly, I think.