by Bruce Ray

As dark as life gets when you lose someone to suicide, you can truly experience hope. You may have serious doubts today, and wonder how you can possibly go on, but you will survive. Your life will never be the same—that is true. Fellow survivor Albert Hsu wrote,

Those of us who have experienced the suicide of a loved one are like the survivors of the Titanic. Our lives are irrevocably divided into “before” and “after.” It is something that we will never forget, a tragedy that will affect us for the rest of our lives. (1)

Grieving strives for what we often call “closure.” Closure is hard define, but it involves bringing an experience to a final conclusion. Closure requires a resolution of issues that will allow us to leave behind the past in order to go forward into the future, and it requires an acceptance of reality. Survivors of suicide loss rarely find acceptable closure. Some people think closure means being able to go back to a “normal” life with normal routines and patterns, but in truth “normal” has changed and life will never be the same again.

What was “normal” was shattered by the


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