Death by violence

The pain and shock of a normal bereavement are intensified if the death was violent – the violence of the act some how becomes reflected in the sharpness of the grief.

Here are some of the features that frequently mark out this sort of death.

• The cause of the death came unexpectedly from outside; other sudden deaths are usually preceded by some ill health or anxiety, but with these deaths – fatal accidents or murder – there was no time to take stock of what was happening – not even the opportunity to recognise that death was imminent. This goes against our deep sense that we ought to have even a short time to put things in order and say goodbye.
• There is usually some explanation for the death, which could involve blame – the drunk driver, the fanatical terrorist, the inadequate safety arrangements. This can bring a third person into our grief work – whether they intended the death or not. We can, understandably, become preoccupied with feelings of recrimination and revenge, which will interfere with our bereavement.
• Often violent deaths are accompanied by mutilation of the body. The image that we have of the disfigured dead person will colour our future memories and emphasise their dramatic end. It’s little comfort to know that the severity of any mutilation rarely reflects any extreme suffering – in fact the more brutal and overwhelming the trauma the more the victim’s response to the shock will protect them from any pain at all. We may ponder on whether it’s good or bad that they may not have had any consciousness at all of what happened.
• Unlike most other deaths the violent death could usually have been prevented; the closer we were and the more we were able to influence the person’s life, the more opportunity we will have to scratch at our own possible responsibility. If we dig deep enough in our fantasies we will always find some way in which we could have changed things.
• This is unlikely to remain a private event. There may be some sort of investigation perhaps leading to prosecution: there will be lots of questions, rumours and media interest. The course of our grief can be overlain with an administrative timetable that extends for months or years. Forensic enquiries may prevent an immediate disposal of the body – causing greater distress.

Dealing with a sudden, violent death is often difficult to manage on our own and it may be worth considering professional help if we don’t have someone we can talk to.

Suicide

I suppose you feel entirely responsible?

Anon (and just as well)

• About 5,000 people commit suicide in the United Kingdom every year.
• At least 200,000 people attempt suicide every year.
• In the 15–19 age group 750 people in every 100,000 attempt suicide – more than twice as many as ten years ago.
• Suicide attempts and successful suicides are increasing faster for young people than any other age group. It’s the third most frequent cause of death for young people.
• Someone who has previously attempted suicide is more than 1,000 times as likely to try again than someone who has not.

When someone takes their own life they are making a statement that their life was too intolerable to continue. If we were part of that life – sufficiently close to cause us to be bereaved – we may feel that we should and could have affected the outcome, but failed. ‘Look what you made me do’ is hard enough to bear but look what you failed to stop me doing’ is harder. We all (well, nearly all) like to think of ourselves as sensitive, caring people; a close suicide knocks all that aside.

With ordinary deaths there is usually a general feeling of goodwill, with everyone wanting to behave well. The circumstances around a suicide may be very different. The time leading to the act itself may have been one of bitterness, disturbed behaviour, anger and broken relationships. There may have been ignored threats about self-harm.

We may find it very hard to deny that we did, indeed, share some of the responsibility. Most people close to the dead person will be able to think of something they could have done which might – just – have changed the outcome.

Other people don’t like it either – attempted suicide was a criminal offence until the 1960s. There still remains an almost universal taboo against it – maybe because many people will have had fleeting thoughts themselves about it but fought them off: ‘If I can put up with life’s difficulties, why couldn’t he?’ It feels like a slap in the face to all of us.

However, it seems wrong to condemn it as an aggressive act – a pointless, attention-seeking gesture intended to hurt us. It takes no account of the person’s distress, self-absorption and muddled thinking.

Suicide happens because life is either too much for us or there is not enough to he worthwhile.

Although suicide makes a statement about self-worth, there are three distinct types:

Anger suicide

If we endure extreme injustice, abuse, neglect, bullying or other continual negative experience and, for whatever reason, we feel impotent to respond, there will be a build-up of unexpressed frustration, which will eventually turn into a violent inner rage.

Usually we have ways of complaining, seeking support or simply getting out of the way which will defuse the situation, but some people are:

• without the confidence or self-esteem to stand up for themselves
• conditioned by others not to express violent feelings
• unable to escape.

Eventually there is nowhere where their rage can be contained. The pressure explodes and damages or destroys the only thing that they have any control over – themselves. Typically, because of the intense anger that is driving it, this sort of suicide will be a violent one.

We may feel that there was an aggressive intention to hurt the survivors. If this was so, we can take some comfort from the fact that it was a decision made at a time when they were disturbed and irrational in their thinking

Fear suicide

This is the other side of the coin. Anger suicide happens because ‘The world thinks I’m worthless’. Fear suicide is a statement that ‘I think I’m worthless’. The basic experience of being oppressed, depressed or hard done by may be similar to anger suicide. However, maybe because of their personality or past experience, these unfortunate people become the victims of a turned-in apathy and hopelessness which feeds on itself. At some point the fear of living will become greater than the fear of dying.

There will be no visible violence – they are beyond the thought that they could make an impact.

Although, again, as survivors we may be drawn into thinking that we are being punished or made to feel guilty, we ought to realise that, according to their distorted sense of reality, they may genuinely have thought that we would be better off without having them and all the worry they were inflicting on us.

Rational suicide

It is possible for people to take their lives in a reasoned, planned way – people suffering from terminal or chronic disease who judge they no longer have sufficient quality of life. Part of their planning, however, will have included the intention of looking after the feelings of their survivors and absolving them from responsibility. The people who cause the most distress usually do it unintentionally by ill-judging their potential for recovery and by not realising how much support there could have been for them.

But that’s no comfort...

It may be particularly hard for us to come to terms with our guilt and responsibility. There is no easy way out of this because it may, indeed, be true that if things had been different, the suicide might have been avoided. However, we can’t go on trying to account for all the ‘if onlys’ of life. We’ve all caused unthinking distress to someone in our lives – but then, our occasional kind word and warm smile has also brought unknown, accidental happiness to others.

The best solution is to allow ourselves guilt feelings only if we actually wished the suicide to happen. Otherwise, try not to allow such feelings.

Our neighbours and friends will be sympathetic, but they know how guilty they would feel in our position: maybe they think we are to blame. They may be reticent about offering us support – they may even be hostile. If there was no obvious reason for the suicide, people might press us for an explanation – trying to get us to make sense where there is none. Suddenly, the awkward reticence usually associated with death seems cruelly absent; the dead person would have been hard put to give a rational explanation for what they have done – how can we, with our guilt and self-accusations, be expected to come up with an answer.

It is unfair for others to encourage speculation and we have no responsibility for giving a public diagnosis of their state of mind; we should be courteous but firm:

I know everyone is looking for an explanation; maybe why she did it will become easier to work out in time – but I’m feeling dreadful, as you 11 understand, and that’s all I can cope with at the moment.

On top of all this – to add to our distress – there will be a police investigation where it’s possible that we may be initially suspected of murder. The details of the incident will be newsworthy so there may be media interest in family relationships just when we want to be left in peace.

There is evidence that bereavement for survivors of people who have taken their own lives is much harder and that recovery takes longer than with a ‘normal’ death.

We’d been away for the weekend. When we got back on Sunday evening there was a message from him on the answering machine: ‘It’s teatime on Saturday. Can you come round. There’s something important I need to talk to you about.’

There was something urgent in his voice, which made me ring immediately. No reply. I went round to the flat. A neighbour had found him hanged that morning. That was three years ago now and not a day goes by without me wondering if I could have made a difference.

Suicide is not necessarily the rare event that we suppose:

Authorities have estimated that reported suicides may constitute as little as a quarter of actual suicides. This discrepancy results from the misclassification of thousands of deaths each year as automobile or shooting accidents, heart attacks, accidental drug overdoses or unintentionally fatal combinations of drugs and alcohol.

Carol Staudacher, Beyond Grief, Souvenir Press 1988

This misclassification can result from the family wishing to avoid the guilt and stigma of suicide, clever concealment by the dead person or a well-meaning conspiracy of doctors, police and family to avoid pain and protect any insurance benefits which would be invalidated by a verdict of suicide.

There’s something about the way we feel ‘provoked’ by a suicide, which draws and binds us to the act; our feeling of self-worth may be dented. It’s not uncommon for survivors to feel that because of the way they have been implicated, they themselves are fated to die in the same way. There’s something so special about it that it seems we will only ‘meet up with’ the dead person if we take the same path. Also, because of the immediacy of what has happened, suicide is no longer seen as unthinkable and forbidden, something that happens to others; it becomes an option for us as well. Self-harm can run in families.

There may be a sense of deception. We were not, apparently, as important as we thought in the relationship and we have also, apparently, misjudged the intentions of the dead person. We have ‘got things wrong’ in a spectacular way and our self-image (and the image we had of the other person) may be seriously damaged.

How can we come to terms with suicide?

• Suicide is usually outside most people’s experience. We may feel free to interpret the reasons for it ourselves and we are usually wrong. It’s worth finding out some information about the subject. We’ll discover that the reasons for suicide are complex – usually a lifetime’s interaction of personal, social and cultural factors. These are major influences, hard to define and change – we should take some comfort that even the most practised researchers disagree about their relative importance. Who are we, amidst all this complexity, to decide that a major cause of the despair was the sarcastic remark we made last Thursday?
• There is no evidence that anyone has been prevented from taking their life by someone restricting the availability of the means for self-harm: if there is a strong enough intention it cannot be thwarted.
• Because of the public discomfort about the subject it is harder for someone bereaved by suicide to talk easily about their feelings, and yet – more than with other deaths – there may be a greater urgency to talk. Usually with ordinary deaths it is helpful to talk to someone who knew the dead person. In this situation any overlaying difficulty can be avoided by seeking out someone who never knew the dead person – someone who can give all their empathy to us.
• Often a letter has been left behind giving explanations, expressing aggression or despair. This may be read repeatedly for clues and nuances and can be the source of bitter frustration because it is a one-way message. We can do something about that: we can reply to it. This means a full statement showing our understanding of the pain and sharing our feelings about our responsibility, regrets and unfinished business. The process of doing this may clarify our thoughts and uncover unexpected feelings.
• People whose spouse has died by suicide should be especially careful when they later wish to enter a fresh long-term relationship. It is not uncommon to seek out someone who needs to be ‘cared for’ – who has problems that we can ‘solve’. In this way we can go some way to ‘make up for’ our imagined ‘faults’ which lead to the death. A relationship whose main purpose is solving the unresolved problems of the previous one is doomed to failure.

Extra-marital grief

There are some situations where normal grief feelings are not only ignored but positively discouraged. Many men and women develop extra-partnership attachments to other people. The lover will not be a welcome mourner at the funeral and, because there’s likely to have been secrecy, they may have no one to talk to about their distress. This can be a very painful considering how much consolation and support we normally get from our close family. On the other hand, if it is the lover who has died, the person in the partnership will be stranded with their clandestine grief in the middle of day-to-day family life.

There may be similar difficulties when an ex-partner dies. The attachment we had for them may still remain alive even though we separated a long time ago – we may have spent some very good years together. There may be some ambivalence about how much distress we are permitted to show in public. We can only hope that our existing partner understands enough to know how these things work. Will the bereaved partner welcome us to the funeral? If we wish it, it may be a good idea to make discreet enquiries – the chances are that they will not know whether we would welcome an invitation.

Grief for pets

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), ‘The Power of the Dog’

An outsider might well consider the grief expressed for a dead animal to be a rather shameful indulgence. That is to deny the complexity and depth that many people have in their relationships with pets.

We remember that our cat died when we were seven and how we were upset but had got over it the following day. When the elderly family dog died you and your children had been upset but you couldn’t help but feel privately relieved that you wouldn’t have to clean up after it again.

Many people, however, invest a great deal emotionally in their pets. Many people without children have an almost parental attachment to their animals. Whilst we may have our own opinion about this, when their pet dies we must not minimise their authentic bereavement – in quality it may be as sharp as the death of a child.

Older people on their own often cling to the physical comfort and company of a pet. The consequent loneliness and isolation can sharpen the grief for the loss of such an animal.

Not the least hard thing when they go away from us, these quiet friends (dogs), is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.

John Galsworthy (1867–1933), Memoirs