[Texasbelle]

I think if you have never experienced first hand a loved one experiencing mental illness and walked down the road with them and then the subsequent loss of that person to suicide then it is very hard to really make an adequate judgement on suicide.

On September 22, 2006 I lost my mom to suicide. I was raised by a Christian mother, a strong woman, who taught me everything. She raised me to be a strong person, think for myself, taught me life skills, how to be a good mother, etc. I never, ever once in all of my 39 years ever considered my mother to be a weak person or a coward. She never walked away from anything. However, there was a point and I will now never know what it was when everything changed. She changed and for why we will never know. I can only guess. Maybe it was the surgery she had four months prior to the suicide that she couldn't seem to recover from, maybe it was some unknown effect of anesthesia on her brain that sent her into a depression,or what? I will never know. I do know this: Her family fought like hell to help her. My mom fought like hell to save herself, but when a person becomes that sick physically and mentally there is just this place in them that you and they can not reach. I never thought it would be possible that I would ever have to say these words. I never thought I would have to experience it with my mom. I can think of others I might have, but not my strong mom. You just never, ever know what curveball you are going to get thrown and you never know why it gets thrown.

I will give you all these few warnings when discussing suicide or encountering it within your family : 1)Don't judge these people and call them cowards. They are not. They are sick and need help. 2) Don't think that doctors are going to help. There are very few truly compassionate doctors out there who will truly care about you and your family like their own. My mom in the two weeks before her suicide told 4 doctors she intended to commit suicide. By law, those four doctors should have committed her to the hospital, none of them did. I begged one of them to do so, she refused to do it because she just "didn't see the need". 3)Be dogmatic when trying to get help for your family member. They truly do get to a point where they are incapable of helping themselves and thinking for themselves. 4)Don't leave them alone once they threaten even for a moment, because it only takes that moment.

Now I say all of this and tell you my story because it is hard to see that people think suicide was the easy way out and my mom might have chosen it because she just didn't want to help herself. She wanted to help herself and she would have had she been capable. Her family could have helped her more had the physicians that we took her to done their job. You can not possibly know the devastation of suicide and mental illness until you have truly walked down that road.