Suicide Is Not Painless!

It’s Tuesday evening and an elderly lady drives her car from the brand new assisted living flat she moved into a month ago, to a bridge over the fast flowing river that runs the length of the valley. She parks up and what exactly happens next we will never know.

The next morning her car is spotted by early morning joggers who alert the authorities. They begin a search and some hours later her body is discovered downriver by a search and rescue team.

In the valley where I live, it’s far from unusual to hear of yet another life lost to suicide and the locals react the same way they always do – with a shake of the head, a few words about how sad it is and they move on.

It’s not ok to be so desensitised to such hidden and terrible suffering, whether chronic or acute, and it’s not ok to simply move on without asking as a community what did we miss, could this have been avoided and what can we do to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Its not!

I knew this lady too, I visited her once with an elderly friend of mine and she was present at the launch of the German version of my book about mental illness. I recall her telling me she had been treated for depression on several occasions, but that she was doing better these days. You see, I used to be a psychiatric nurse and occasionally people will tell me things they might not tell others, somehow sensing it’s safe to do so. What also helps is that I’m not from this small mountain community of just under 3000 people, so talking to me doesn’t count.

Her death haunts me and I begin to ask questions of those who knew her better and had spoken to her much more recently. I discover that the signs were all there.

After the death of her husband she continued to live in the guesthouse she still ran, the house that had been her home for more than half a century. Her children however, worried she might not cope with the big old house on her own, and eventually persuaded her to move into the new and modern assisted living complex in the village, just a mile or so away. She hated it from the beginning, finding any excuse to return to her own home. Fellow residents reported her being unsettled from the start and becoming ever more agitated, confused and finally despondent. Nobody did anything. Not because they didn’t care, but rather they didn’t wish to intrude.

Would it have made a difference if someone had talked to her about how she felt or contacted the local doctor who knew her well? Could she have been saved? I guess we’ll never know.

A few days later, I’m out on the street with my dog when I meet a neighbour who also bought my book a few weeks previously. She asks if I’ve heard about this lady’s death and goes on, somewhat ashamedly I must add, to tell me she has lived with depression all her life too and has been in hospital several times to be treated for it. She asks if I’ll stop by and sign her book sometime and we fix a time for the next morning.

I ring the bell and she opens it with what appears to be acute embarrassment. It’s more than possible that she’s regretting her admission to me yesterday, but I smile and brandish my pen, stepping over the threshold before she can change her mind. She makes us a coffee and as we chat she begins to relax. The conversation moves to the lady’s tragic death and she offers a little of her own story. I tell her that although I know she lives with family, it can often be easier to talk to a stranger and if she ever needs to reach out, I will be there. She looks at me and asks if I feel I belong in this out of the way place that’s so different to what I know. Before I have time to answer she says, “Your heart is bigger, I sense your dreams are bigger and you think differently to the people here. Be careful not to stay too long.” Just then, her husband arrives back from his weekly recycling depot run and the spell is broken. I drink the last mouthful of my coffee and get up to leave. She shows me to the door and I remind her of what I said. She knows I mean it.

Two weeks later I’m with an English student when we’re interrupted by her phone. It’s her daughter ringing to tell her that a neighbour of theirs has taken her life in the same way and in the same spot as the lady two weeks previously. After she hangs up we talk about it and she tells me that this lady had been telling various people how brave the lady who took her life was and how she envied her. Nobody listened. Nobody saw the huge red flag flapping wildly in the summer breeze. And now another life is over.

When it comes to suicide statistics, Austria ranks 21st out of 112 countries, with a higher rate per 100,000 people than the United Kingdom, the United States and every country in the European Union except Belgium (2016).

The rate is declining overall, but here in the mountain communities it’s dark and cold in winter and easy to become and to feel extremely isolated. It’s not the done thing to talk about your business or how you feel. Whilst every person will greet you with a smile and a cheery wave, it’s impossible to know what’s going on inside.

And then there’s this, my biggest bugbear of all. It really gets under my bloody skin:

“Hellohowareyou?”

“Finethanksyou?”

“Yeahgreat!”

This is a superficial bullshit exchange that means absolutely nothing, it’s just a prolonged version of hello. One or both individuals might be dying inside but we are programmed like robots to say I’m fine! We are real people connecting with other real people – sometimes we need to listen to others and sometimes we need them to listen to us and we can start by stopping the use of this harmful inanity in our communication and especially in our greetings. We need to stop it, right now!

A life may well depend on it!