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By Ashley Legassic

YOU'RE NOT ALONE

YOU’RE NOT ALONE: Picking up the pieces after a suicide loss

Sep 12, 2019 | 4:09 PM

KAMLOOPS — In our fourth part of You’re Not Alone, we explore the options available for people who have lost loved ones to suicide, and how some of them are already making changes in the system. The impacts of suicide are wide-reaching. BC Coroners Service numbers show for every one suicide death, there are five self-inflicted injury hospitalizations, 25 to 30 suicide attempts, and seven to 10 people profoundly affected by suicide loss.

“We notice the initial splash, but maybe we’re not paying as much attention to the ripples.”
_{– Heather Grieve}

Heather Grieve with Interior Health compares losing someone to suicide as a pebble dropping in still water.

“Those ripples eventually hit a shoreline somewhere, and they often are impacting so much more than what we see,” Grieve says. “I think that really the impact of suicide is really immeasurable because we don’t have the opportunity to check every path that small splash in the water has gone on.”

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There are the ripples close to that pebble — parents, siblings, grandparents. And the crests that roll further out can include friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and anyone else who felt impacted by the death.

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“With suicide loss, the grief was different. The grief was very different.”
_{– Jolene Lindsey}

Jolene Lindsey is a social worker who knows the unique pain that comes with losing someone to suicide. Her dad died by suicide when she was 17 years old.

“Absolutely there’s some guilt, there’s the what-ifs — people replay those tapes over and over, and not having answers and wondering,” Lindsey says. “There’s certainly a lot of those questions people have.”

Lindsey works at C&C Resources for Life. It’s a private counselling agency that offers free or reduced-rate counselling services through the work of practicum students that are supervised by counsellors on staff.

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Grieve says it’s important for people to be surrounded by a group who knows what it’s like to be left with those unanswered questions.

“Because the shame and guilt around maybe not being able to do enough or say enough, or ‘How did I not know?’, those kinds of questions that can come up that were not the same kind of questions that we see in people who have maybe had other causes of death.”

Although Irene Buckle feels the devastation every day of losing her daughter Edyn and grandson Mykel to suicide, she could never consider that path for herself.

“Well, I mean is there a choice? To me, there’s no choice.”

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People who have lost loved ones to suicide have an increased risk of dying by suicide themselves. Buckle has seen the destruction left behind by the loss of Edyn and Mykel, and she sees how it impacts the lives of everyone who loved them.

“I have other children, other grandchildren, I’m not going to do that to them,” she says. “My nine-year-old grandson said to his mum not too long ago, ‘If we told Mykel more that we loved him, do you think he wouldn’t have died?’ I would never do that to them.”

Buckle goes to a compassionate friends group. She says at least half of the people there have lost children to suicide.

Grieve says those who have lost someone to suicide should have a community to rely on in the aftermath.

“I think the people who are left behind can probably benefit from having a community around them that does not stigmatize the act of suicide and certainly doesn’t have any judgments around what that looks like.”

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“How can we take what has happened to us and help people moving forward?”
_{– Shelley Breen}

Shelley Breen lost her husband to suicide just over three years ago. She’s now the project lead at the Thompson Division of Family Practice.

She’s part of a team working to identify gaps in the mental healthcare system in Kamloops, and increase access to resources. Her husband Billy and their three sons are a driving force for her.

“We did try to access some services locally when we moved to Kamloops but the system was really difficult to navigate,” she says.

With Breen’s personal experience around the struggle to find resources, she’s turning the pain from Billy’s loss into a motivation to make changes in the system.

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For every suicide death, there are at least seven to 10 people profoundly impacted by that loss. But after that pebble drops and those ripples widen, we see the impact of suicide is immeasurable.

For those who have lost someone to suicide, there is a support group that meets the second and fourth Monday of each month at Kamloops United Church between 6:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental illness or suicidal thoughts, there are several resources available throughout the Interior.

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