“I Learned To Love After My Mother’s Suicide”

In the lines that follow I am going to narrate the most transformative life experience that I have lived to date. It blackened everything around me, but, to my comfort, I also found a lot of light. And it is that from the abysmal pain that my mother took her own life caused me, a new person was born.

My case is not unique, nor is it an isolated event that a person takes their own life. Suicide is the leading cause of unnatural death in Spain (3,910 cases in 2014, according to the National Institute of Statistics), but it seems that these figures do not reflect reality, since many suicides are difficult to compute.

The phenomenon of suicide is not new, it has been since the dawn of humanity. Nor is it an event that occurs in certain social groups, but it is a cross-cutting phenomenon. It is not a romantic act nor is it easily predictable. Rather, it generates many questions and interrogations that shake the foundations on which the lives of those of us who remain are sustained.

The figures mask real stories of people who, like my mother, died by suicide, leaving around them suffering, pain and a great vital challenge, that of recovering interest in life.

It was 11 am on Saturday, December 11, 2010. I was participating in a group psychotherapy activity when I received a call from my sister telling me that our mother was not answering the phone or the ringing of the doorbell.

We both feared the tragedy, confirmed by the firefighters and the Mossos d’Esquadra patrol, necessary to force the door and enter his home. At that moment began a long and terrible journey through a barren and hopeless desert.

Until the moment of her suicide, my mother had several previous attempts. In fact, I had become used to living with that risk, I had even turned it into the worst fantasy I could ever live.

Each of his suicide attempts was a dagger that drove me deep

He knew that some were not determined attempts, but calls for help that those of us around him did not know how to answer or handle. Paradoxically, each of his attempts represented a dagger that was driven deep into my chest, until I stopped feeling. And with it, pain, joy and love. Which has brought me enormous difficulties to establish meaningful relationships in my life.

A few days before the consummation of her death, in private, my mother had told me that she no longer had the strength to continue living. He had used up all his vital impulse enduring the chronic pain that had accompanied him for more than 20 years. He did not see for himself an encouraging or hopeful future, but rather the crushing weight of his incapacity that did not allow him to live with dignity.

I will never forget that moment full of love, pain and lucidity. I did not imagine that he was saying goodbye to me.

Despite the traumatic experience that I went through, I can feel partly lucky, and that is that my mother freed me from much of the guilt by expressing to me her inability to continue living. Certainly, that freed me as a son and as a person, since many of the questions that remain unanswered – from what I know of others who have lived the same experience – create a great emptiness and feed the feeling of guilt: has done? How come I haven’t noticed? What if there were …?

Accepting that love can’t do everything was extremely frustrating

Accepting that the person I loved the most could not bear to live was extremely painful and raw. And that hurts a lot, a lot. The extremely frustrating thing was accepting that love cannot do everything and that there are certain existential conditions that are impossible to change.

As a son I let her go, as a son I failed to heal my mother; nothing he had done had served to hold her back. My mother’s suicide was the biggest failure of my life.

Now, after a profound therapeutic process of more than five years, I can understand that little can be done to change the destiny of other people. Of course, you must not stop trying or stop following the dictates of your own heart …

Returning to December 11, after receiving the news came two days that I do not know how to describe in words. Incessant calls and visits began to add to the initial disbelief, as well as the need to attend to bureaucratic procedures.

I did not believe what had happened, I was in the most absolute confusion. The feeling of hunger had been nipped in the bud, my life had stopped in its tracks. Not only family and friends were summoned at the funeral home, but also neighbors and lovers of the yellow press.

We only had my sister and I, with all the support of my father. I remember the ceremony especially. The room was packed with family members and all my friends, those of now and those of yesteryear. I remember feeling happy to see them. I remember feeling comforted and supported. I remember the warmth of the hugs received.

I also remember feeling very angry towards the priest who officiated the religious ceremony. One after another, his Christianly correct words hurt me, caricaturing the moment. I had no idea that my mother had died by suicide or that what she left between us was not happiness, but pain and suffering.

They were days with a great accumulation of emotions, memories, reunions and tasks to see the magnitude of what my mother had done and the repercussions it would have on my life.

Three weeks came from which I don’t remember anything except the need to sleep

But everything disappeared after the ceremony. People disappeared, life returned to normal, and three weeks followed of which I don’t remember anything at all except the need to sleep. I no longer received calls or visits, except those from my partner at the time, whom I left a few days later due to the imperative need to be with myself.

Many other things went with my mother’s death. The day of the week fixed by both of us to go to eat and catch up disappeared, as well as the trip we had planned to visit the town of my maternal grandparents. My relationship with my sister also changed, sustained until then by the need to support each other. Definitely, the many years of tortuous and stormy family relationship are over.

Being able to look at my mother’s corpse in the mortuary without a single line of expression on her face was a relief. I said to myself: “He has stopped suffering.”

My yearnings to receive the love that he never gave me could no longer be fulfilled

Psychologically, a deep process of rebuilding myself began, because a part of me also died the day we found it. My wishes for him to be cured were meaningless, he could no longer be cured, he had given up living. My yearnings for the love he never gave me could no longer be fulfilled.

I went back to work almost a month later. He had decided to quit – in fact, he couldn’t work. I communicated it to my students as naturally as possible. I was aware of the tragedy that had happened to me, I was aware of my suffering and I did not want to hide it from myself or anyone else, anything that happened.

Here I began to accept the reality of the loss and to feel excruciating physical and psychological pain that accompanied me for more than a year before slowly beginning to remit.

My bones ached, my muscles ached, my joints ached, my heart ached, my skin ached, and my soul ached. An unpleasant sensation had settled in my chest, a kind of bottomless black hole that my attention could not evade.

I began to understand my mother, feeling so much pain made me empathize with her

There were days when the suffering was unbearable and there was no point in continuing to live. I thought about my death, I wished for my death … and I began to understand my mother. Feeling so much pain made me empathize with her for the years and years of suffering.

Then a deep love for her began to emerge, a compassionate and human love that appeared by the drop of a hat, a love that has allowed me to be able to forgive her and forgive myself for what we did, for what we lived.

But the pain and suffering, which are already difficult to handle on their own, were not alone. Torrents of disconcerting emotions were added. A deep sadness and a feeling of loneliness and need to be alone, along with the overwhelming need for affection and love.

Fear and anxiety about my future, since in many moments I did not feel strong enough to overcome the hell I was living; guilt and shame for allowing my mother to take her own life; bewilderment and surprise because many people told me they loved me. Anger towards my mother for all the pain she had caused me, the person I loved the most was the cause of my suffering.

My life was unbearable. I felt dismembered and without the strength to be able to get up. But my mother had taught me with her life to endure discomfort and suffering.

I found little things that fed my existence little by little, ways to attend the torrent of emotions, to process and digest the pain that was flooding me. From him emerged concerns and inclinations of my childhood that I had forgotten. I immersed myself in them to explore them, I needed to fill a huge void. I also needed to leave behind situations and people that I was uncomfortable with.

I did not judge myself, I did not hold back, I only responded to what came out of me.

I did everything I felt I had to do. It was the food for my life. I did not judge myself, I only responded to what was born of me. I didn’t hold back, I just put myself into action. In this way, and slowly, with psychotherapeutic support, I was finding moments of satisfaction and well-being and I gradually recovered my interest in life.

Looking at the path made, I have realized that it has made me more mature, wiser and more authentic. I know that I have done what I could and that I have done it as best I could.

Opening myself to live the pain, that inescapable feeling that can be buried but not eliminated because it is the result of the breaking of a bond, has transformed me. So much so that I am not the same as I was before my mother’s suicide.

I have been able to forgive her for all the damage she caused. I understand the existential suffering that led to her suicide. She lived as best she could, she did what she could and I love her for that.