Is Suicide a Sin or an Act of Bravery? 1

16th Aug 2008

Hello lovely people

Many years ago I heard that an old school friend of mine had committed suicide. We were not very close, but we went to school and to Sunday school together, and we formed the kind of bond that result from sharing such activities. I remember not really being touched by the news, because all I could recall about him was his cheerful nature and his inability to spell a particular word correctly.

For some reason I was surprised at how much the people around me were disturbed by his suicide. One person cynically revealed that it was not my school friend’s first attempt at suicide, and that once a person had made the decision to kill themselves, nothing and nobody would stop them and they would eventually succeed. The implication was that people who wanted to kill themselves might as well be written off, because in their minds they had already violated the sacred life that was given to them.

The other thing I noticed at the time was the lack of compassion from the church. I became aware of an ancient practice where people who committed suicide were not entitled to a church funeral and their dead bodies were not even welcome in the graveyard. Of course that was meant as a sanction to the deceased, but in fact it added to the punishment of a grieving family who had many questions.

I was not particularly disturbed by the suicide, and also did not really think about my reaction at the time. I was young and busy, and this person did not touch my life.

However, later in life a person close to me died of an overdose of alcohol and drugs. She had a long history of abuse and spent the last years of her life in and out of mental hospitals and rehabilitation centres, but obviously nothing could relieve the inner pain she wanted to get rid of.

I started asking questions about death and dying. I had already become involved in Lifeline (the South African version of the Samaritans) where I had been trained to deal with suicidal people on the helpline.

The most important part of the training was to not react emotionally when a person tells you they would kill themselves, but to rather confront them with the permanency and consequences of such a radical solution, and then help them to realise that they have other choices.

I had two such phone calls while working on the helpline. In both instances the people had a logical discussion with me where they explained why they had decided to take their own lives. In their minds that was the only and best solution. In my mind they were completely irrational and very disturbed.

One of the callers was located as a result of the call and given medical treatment, but the other one put the phone down and I remember reading the local newspapers with a feeling of trepidation for months afterwards, expecting to find a description of a suicide case that would coincide with the information that the caller gave me.

That is where I first became aware of the very important lesson that I can and have to take full responsibility for my own life, but I cannot do much to change other people’s life choices.

Somehow I was surprised at the nature of my questions about death and dying, because people normally fear and avoid the topic of death and do not ask questions. I wanted to know exactly what happens when a person dies. I wanted to understand the process, because I knew intuitively that death was not the end, but a process.

I discovered that death is the moment when a spirit leaves behind the body that it inhabited during this incarnation. The spirit is not destroyed, but lives on. The spirit is energy and energy cannot be destroyed. It can only change shape. To be continued.

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Love and Light
Elsabe