the editor talks with you

o ne thing we rarely discussed in my family was my mother’s failed suicide. Like madness, drunkness and other addiction, suicide was not talked about. It had a stigma. Admitting that someone you loved tried to take her life was a black mark on your family. It shoud not have been that way – but it was. When I was 10 years old, I had walked home from the YMCA where I played soccer after school. Coming up the hill in the early evening darkness, I could see our house. Where the kitchen windows were usually lit, the house was dark. I knew something was wrong and feared going inside.

When my father arrived, he asked why I was waiting outside and why the house was dark. I told him I didn’t know. Lets go inside and find out, he said. We found my unconscious mother lying across the bed in their bedroom. I was afraid she was dead. My father grasped her wrist and found a pulse. “Go next door and see if your sister is there,” my father said. “Stay there until I come to get you.” We later learned my mother had tried to down a bottle of medicinal alcohol. It is providential that it didn’t kill her. My father took her to Columbia to a priovate sanitarium where she could be cared for until she recovered.

Electric shock was one of the therapies of that time. My mother later told me she hated it. It was painful and robbed her of years of memory. But it had an effect. When she came home, she had renewed her faith in God and was much happier. It had been painful for my father, too. He had to take care of his own patients and find someone to look after my sister and her rebellious brother. I missed my mother and was hateful to the women our father hired to care for us. Most of them lasted less than a week. I hold myself accountable for this. Now, when we learn of a suicide, it rarely is reported in our newspaper. We know how painful the loss must be for the families. But I wonder if we are co-conspirators in perpetuating the stigma of suicide.

Research indicates suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in South Carolina, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For each suicide, 25 unsuccessful attempts are made, according to the American Foundation for Prevention of Suicide. Suicides are increasing from mental health problems like the depression my mother suffered. Many may be unintentional from opioid or other drug overdoses. My father was my role model. He stuck by my mother through all of her troubed days and looked after his children in what had to be trying times of his own. My behavior toward the women he brought into our home was reprehensible. Now that I am an adult and an editor, I wonder if keeping silent about suicide is really in the best interest of our community. We consider suicide commited in privacy by an ordinary person a family tragedy and don’t report it. If it is a promiment person or commited in public where others are witnesses, we probably will report it. I welcome your thoughts on this.

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