There are three dates on the calendar that Ana, Miriam and Mònica will never forget. The days his brother, sister and father respectively died by suicide. “I had the feeling that my life was over and that I would never be happy again,” says Mònica. His father, Francesc, died in September 2020, aged 64. For her part, Ana wondered when she would smile again in the same way she did in the photos after mourning the death of her brother Dani, who was only 42 years old. And Miriam built herself a cuirass, which she believed was indestructible, to continue with a “normal life” and overcome the suicide of her sister Anna (44) as soon as possible.
Despite everything, in the middle of the dark abyss of loss, in which pain and sadness seem to be infinite, there are safe spaces to “speak freely” without fear of being “judged”: mutual support groups. In a society that often silences and stigmatizes the grief associated with this tragedy, these groups become havens of understanding, empathy and companionship. Taking the step is not always easy, but for the three protagonists it ended up being their “salvation” after losing their loved ones throughout 2020.
According to the provisional results of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) for 2022, a total of 4,097 people have died by suicide, an increase of 94 deaths (and 94 shattered families) compared to the previous year (4,003). Far from decreasing, suicides have not stopped growing since 2018. Suicide remains the main cause of unnatural death in Spain and, between the ages of 15 and 29, suicide is the main cause of death.
“I cried everything I hadn’t cried before and I spoke everything I had kept quiet”, expressed Miriam, 41, when she attended her first individual interview with the Catalan organization Després del Suïcidi – Associació de Survivents (DSAS). A pioneering association that provides support and accompaniment to relatives who have lost a loved one by suicide, also called survivors, because losing someone like this means surviving unanswered questions, guilt, stigma and social judgment.
Mònica still remembers the day she arrived at the association, accompanied by her sister and her mother. “We were terrible. We needed to find a way, something to hold on to.” And they found her. “People want to help, but no one knows what to say to you. This was the first place where I found people who understood what I was talking about”, he explains.
This tragedy permeated the lives of Ana, Miriam and Mònica with pain and loneliness, but it also left room for their lives to cross and weave an unbreakable web between them.
The person responsible for intertwining these paths was Anna Lara, coordinator of her group at DSAS and also a suicide survivor. The association has five support groups, four are monthly and one is biweekly, which are organized according to the date of the loss and personal situations.
“It was a very simple group because there was a lot of chemistry between them and they helped each other”, explains Anna Lara about these women, who left group meetings just over a year ago. “In the end, I was just a spectator”, she admits, between laughs, while the rest deny it and praise her role.
What they can now say with some naturalness could not even be mentioned before. “Only 40 years ago, people who had died by suicide could not even be buried”, explains Anna Lara. This silence still lasts today and the first sessions are a sea of ??tears in which the survivors find, in the end, a safe space in which to “liberate”.
“Coming here helped me to be able to articulate words and say that my brother had committed suicide, and that nothing was wrong. I was afraid of feeling judged and kept quiet, but inside I couldn’t do it anymore”, admits Ana.
Through the support of people who have faced similar situations, these women learned to embrace the idea that they are not responsible for the death of their loved one. They learned to forgive themselves and stop carrying a burden that never belonged to them.
The pain caused by the death of a loved one by suicide is a devastating and traumatic experience that often leaves a cluster of incomprehensible emotions. “The environment must be able to validate their emotions, whatever they are, and accompany these people in their pain. Sometimes, with the simple presence, a hug or a gesture”, explains the coordinator of the group.
Anna Lara assures that it has been proven that attending a group works, although it is not always the way for all people. In addition to turning to the association, the three protagonists tried to go to psychological therapy, but only one of them could afford it.
“They told me at the health center that they were putting me on a waiting list and that they would get in touch with me, but they never got around to doing it,” explains Miriam, who has three daughters and found it unfeasible to pay for a psychologist. Ana, on the other hand, was treated by a specialist in the public sector, but she was told that she had no training in bereavement due to suicide and she was put in touch with the DSAS. For her part, Mònica was able to afford a psychologist, although it was very difficult for her to connect with someone. “It is very sad that, if you are not lucky enough to be able to pay it, you hold on, and that the burden must fall on the associations”.
Three years after the loss of their loved ones, they recognize that they are no longer the same. The loss to suicide has also taught them to better manage anxiety and to be able to live with it.
But it has also helped them to be more self-indulgent and to be more dependent on themselves. And, above all, they have managed to remember their relatives for how they lived and not for how they died. “I like to talk about him and that he is present in the conversations”, confesses Ana about her older brother.
And despite the fact that, in one way or another, they will always be present, Monica’s physical absence of her father weighs on her every time she receives good news and she cannot call him and tell him. “It was very difficult for me to understand this and to fight with the pain of remembering that he is no longer there.” And he adds: “I’ve learned to manage it so it doesn’t hurt me like it did before, but I’ll never get over it.”
