As much as I agree that a great deal of sympathy should be felt for people who attempt suicide, I am still torn as to whether that sympathy may extend too far sometimes and it may have the tendency to allow the person to believe that they are not really hurting anyone. (By nurturing them, it's almost as if they will feel support and not change their ways.)
Here's one thing that happened with my suicidal father that seemed to screw with my mind for a long time:
When I was six or seven, I woke up in the middle of the night and my father was on our couch. He was upset, so despite not really being close to him, I went to comfort him. For some reason, eventually the whole family got up (four kids and mom and dad of course). What he ended up telling us was that he had taken a bunch of pills. I don't remember my older siblins being mean to me that night, but for some reason my father told the older kids to be nice to me because "if I hadn't gotten up to talk to him, he would probably be dead." (That statement also had the unfortunate effect of my siblings and I not staying very close to each other, even starting at that young age.)
I didn't necessarily consciously understand what devestating effect that statement had on me at the time, but my actions over the next twelve years or so prove it. Over that time I "saved" my father's life numerous times. Acouple of times it was running down to the river near our house to try to stop him or pull him out. Sometimes it was just asking him if he wanted me to go out with him for a walk when he had either insinuated or even said it flat out that he wasn't coming back. One time it was racing into town at over a hundred miles an hour to try to convince my mother to meet him and the ambulance at the hospital, since if she was not there to apologize, he would not allow them to pump his stomach.
Needless to say, likely mostly because of what I now realize was a very manipulative statement made when I was six or seven years old, I knew that I was responsble if he died.
To say that I am completely over that would be a load of horsesh*t, but I'm mostly saying this stuff to make this point. Despite these people being depressed and needing support, at what point do yo draw the line to protect the innocent? I know my father was an emotionally screwed up man, but I honestly feel that less harm would have come to the rest of the family and even he would have been better off if he had succeeded one of those times.
When my father did die of natural causes in 1997, I was sad, for sure. I still miss him a bit but as insensitive as some people may find this statement, my family and I would have had less baggage to deal with had I not woken up to talk to him that fateful day when I was six or seven. (I understand now that he likely would have not really died that night, but try telling that to a six or seven year old. I never even conceived that he was doing anything other than really trying to kill himself until I was about 21.)
Any thoughts?
Brad
