I'm just having a really hard day. My husband's second cousin took his life. He went to our wedding, and was a really sweet guy, but we were closer to his parents. My heart aches for them. He died in a way that is so tragic, I gasped when my husband told me. H's second cousin went to a cemetery and lit himself on fire. He was treated, in the hospital, but finally succumbed to his injuries, today, and was removed from machines. It is so heartbreaking to think about what he must have been thinking.
For all that know me, my grandmother took her life several years ago, on Christmas eve. I tortured myself for years over my Grandma's death: blaming myself, looking for signs I missed, thinking about what I could have done to save her. I thought for years about the instant my grandmother died, and how alone she must have felt. It was agony. Now, our loved ones are probably going through the same process.
If I could, I wish I never knew how my grandma died. Suicide is a legitimate cause of death, but hearing the details of how their loved ones took their life is not important for the grieving. It took me a long time to get past her death and. instead, remember how she lived. I told my husband he should not mention how he died, especially to his family. I cannot imagine their pain, right now, and being in their shoes before, I know casual talk of suicide hurts almost as much as their loved one's death. I don't want to talk to anyone about this IRL, but my bad memories of my grandma's death are flooding in... it is going to be a long night.
Even though my husband wasn't close to his second cousin, I hate to talk about how I am hurting to H. I can't really help my thoughts, though. So I thought I would be a terrible person here, and tell people how this pain in my H's family's lives is making me think about my pain, and how it never really goes away, it just gets managed. I just feel like crap, though, that I am thinking about something that happened 8 years ago, at a time when someone else is hurting. It's pretty shitty when you think you've gotten over something the best you ever will, and you realize the pain isn't too far beneath the surface.