When Talk of Suicide is Off Limits: On Both Sides of a Gag Order

It’s been five and a half years since the suicide of our son, Noah. We thought the days of dealing with other people’s discomfort with what happened were long past. So my husband and I were taken aback when a relative told us that if we planned to visit, they would ask that we not talk about Noah.

My pulse surged. The request was a stab in the gut, censoring the most important thing in our lives since 2013, as if Noah had never lived and his traumatic death had never happened. It heaped more hurt on the pain we’d swallowed in the early years when the relatives stopped asking how we were and missed Noah’s memorials. Now, Bryan and I felt silenced, shamed, and isolated all over again, as if our very presence was considered toxic.

I couldn’t live under a gag order. I knew I’d have to say something in response, but I was uneasy. Something felt dreadfully familiar.

It came to me with a pang: What had been done to us, I had recently done to an old friend during a phone call. I had silenced her, a fellow suicide loss survivor, when she was telling her story by setting limits on parts of the story that I didn’t want to hear. In shutting her down, I was protecting myself from things I found disturbing—just like my relative. Later, in apologizing to my friend, I learned that I’d said other things during the call that upset her greatly and that my whole sense of what was over the line was off the mark.

So here I was, on both sides of a gag order, impaired in my understanding of others. I felt humbled, my righteous indignation at the relatives deflated.

The email to them that I’d been agonizing over now flowed easily, touched with compassion. I wrote that Bryan and I were saddened at how their needs and our needs seemed to be in conflict. That they were entitled to protect themselves as they saw fit, and we would never wish to harm them. That when we talked about Noah among relatives, it was usually to share good memories, and that it hurt us that even this was not welcome. That we wouldn’t come to visit but hoped that we could talk in person sometime soon to clear the air.

“Thank you so much for your understanding,” came the quick reply, with a “yes” to talking it over one day. I look forward to that day, whenever it comes.

                                                                          

Suicide and the grief that follows it lay bare so many human limitations. The limits on our suffering loved ones’ ability to withstand the pain, have hope or seek help. The tragic constraints on our own ability to understand, help or save them. In the aftermath, limitations on how ready we are to look at pictures, deal with the person’s possessions, accept that everyone grieves differently. Some survivors avoid support groups because they can’t bear the burden of other people’s stories. In staking out what’s off limits, they are taking care of themselves—like my relative with me, like me with my friend, maybe like you.  

To my fellow survivors: How have you navigated the limitations others place on you in the aftermath of suicide? What about the limitations you notice within yourself?