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    Standing in the Shadow: Help and Encouragement for Suicide Survivors
    Standing in the Shadow: Help and Encouragement for Suicide Survivors
    Standing in the Shadow: Help and Encouragement for Suicide Survivors
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Standing in the Shadow: Help and Encouragement for Suicide Survivors

    By June Cerza Kolf

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    About this ebook

    Grief counselor June Cerza Kolf is repeatedly asked for specific guidance in helping suicide survivors function and heal. Their grief is unique in that the trauma of suicide leaves them in such a devastated state that the typical coping mechanisms no longer work.
    With deep sensitivity, Kolf leads readers through mourning to acceptance. She helps them realize the tragedy was out of their control, release their guilt and anger, and gain the power of prayer. Standing in the Shadow covers the heart of thirty-four topics, including depression, forgiveness, and the salvation of those who commit suicide. The gentle, honest writing provides answers, hope, and comfort for the bereaved.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateMar 1, 2002
    ISBN9781441237392
    Standing in the Shadow: Help and Encouragement for Suicide Survivors
    Author

    June Cerza Kolf

    June Cerza Kolf has worked in hospice care for years, teaches grief seminars, and conducts grief recovery sessions. She is the author of several books and lives in Quartz Hill, California.

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      Book preview

      Standing in the Shadow - June Cerza Kolf

      childhood.

      Preface

      I had begun receiving a multitude of requests for a book for suicide survivors—people whose loved ones had died from suicide. This had happened to me before. Specific requests for a book would come over and over again until it dawned on me that it was time for me to write a book on a particular subject. I had thought each book was my final one, but here it was happening all over again.

      As I listened to persons whose loved ones had died from suicide, I realized that their needs were basically the same as other grievers’, but there were also some new factors that needed special attention. Suicide survivors deal with specific areas that need to be addressed. The trauma of suicide may leave them in such a devastated state that the typical coping mechanisms do not work. Also, the period of mourning is much longer and more intense. Every sentence seems to begin with the words, if only.

      Unlike when a death is from illness or natural causes, these additional concerns haunt suicide survivors: the stigma of a curious society; possible unwanted media attention; a complicated legal system; dealing with the coroner’s office or homicide detectives. Multiple lists of unanswered questions arise as the survivors struggle to regain their balance. Despite family members’ depletion of their own inner resources, they continue to need each other for support.

      On top of all this, families often struggle with questions about the eternal destination of a suicide victim. Religious denominations have differing opinions, and these can change over time. Who can be sure? Each person stumbles through his or her own dense fog trying to come up with reasonable answers for an unreasonable situation.

      I don’t profess to have deep theological knowledge or answers to difficult questions. However, I do have a caring heart and a gift from God to minister to people who are grieving. Therefore, I would be remiss if I ignored the specific needs of suicide survivors.

      So, I dusted off my computer once more and began my search for a way to address suicide that would comfort those left behind. I started by interviewing a variety of survivors to try to find the common threads, and I went to work prayerfully.

      If you are a suicide survivor, I hope that reading this book will help you find your way along this unfamiliar path. The actual work will be up to you. It will take a great amount of time, unending patience, and intense involvement to reach the end of your mourning. You will never be the same again.

      One mother, whose son died from suicide, said she does not want to be admired for going on and does not see her progress as remarkable. People throughout history have gone on. For all of us the worst thing that could happen has happened. We’re still here and we have lives. We’ve grown. The awful moments in your life are what give you character. That’s when you find out what you are or what you aren’t or what you need to become.

      After writing this book, but before it was published, I had a life-altering experience of my own. My husband was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer, and we began a sixteen-month battle against the dreadful disease. As I put finishing touches on my manuscript, which sat dormant as I cared for my husband, I became a griever also. I knew the information in this book was God-given especially for suicide survivors. However, I have found much of it applies to anyone with a broken heart.

      I edited many pages with tears running down my face as I took breaks to gather my strength. Yet I can testify, without a doubt, that there is life after death . . . life for me after my husband’s death. I am picking up the pieces and trying to turn them into something beautiful that will reflect my faith and all the things I learned from my husband in our forty-three years together.

      Through my experience I have come to realize that everything in life serves a purpose. As L. B. Cowman writes in Streams in the Desert:

      In some realms of nature, shadows or darkness are the places of greatest growth. The beautiful Indian corn never grows more rapidly than in the darkness of a warm summer night. The sun withers and curls the leaves in the scorching light of noon, but once a cloud hides the sun, they quickly unfold. The shadows provide a service that the sunlight does not. The starry beauty of the sky cannot be seen at its peak until the shadows of night slip over the sky. . . . And there are beautiful flowers that bloom in the shade that will never bloom in the sun.[1]

      I know God has a plan for my life, just as he has for yours. The shadow of grief is preparing us for the most beautiful part that is yet to come.

      1

      Midnight Descends

      I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until this violent storm is past.

      Psalm 57:1

      Tragedy knows no bounds. It visits the house of faithful Christians, law-abiding citizens, and loving families as easily as it strikes within the war zones of inner cities. There is no foolproof way to protect ourselves from painful experiences. How wonderful it would be if there were! The death of a loved one is one of life’s sharpest blows. When the death results from suicide, shock multiplies the loss. Those left behind feel as if they are standing in a dark shadow. Suicide is one of life’s worst unspoken fears. And when it happens to a loved one, fear becomes reality. It is especially difficult to move out of this bleak shadow back into the sunlight.

      Judy, a suicide survivor, told me, When I received the news that my daughter had killed herself, I began to shake in shock and with cold. I had never felt so cold before in my life. I remained chilled for months. It was as if my inner being was frozen solid—so solid that I couldn’t feel anything. I felt no pain, no sadness, and no joy. As long as I remained frozen I could carry on. I thought that if I accepted the truth about my daughter’s suicide it would crash into me and shatter my entire being into millions of fragments of ice. I protected myself against the collision and didn’t allow myself to thaw out even a little bit.

      Judy was in shock and denial. She could handle the everyday tasks as long as she did not think about her loss. Gradually she began to defrost and face the truth. Only then could her healing begin.

      Shock and Denial

      The first reaction most people have to any trauma is shock. In the beginning, shock and numbness are necessary and welcome. Shock, the body’s protective mechanism, allows you to function while you gradually come to grips with devastating news. Shock can best be described as nature’s psychological painkiller. It numbs the psyche to give you time to begin the process of acceptance. Your mind will accept only what it is capable of handling at any particular time.

      Denial walks hand-in-hand with shock, offering you an extra layer of protection while you try to process as much of the situation as you can handle. When you first receive the news, your mind retreats into an automatic mode, using shock and denial to lean on. You go about the necessary tasks, call others who need to be informed, and move about in a daze. Only later, when you look back to the early days following your loss, will you actually realize that you were moving around in a deep, protective fog. You wonder, How did I ever get through those first few weeks?

      Grief in general is difficult to deal with, but when the death results from suicide, additional factors

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