Suicide causes so much devastation in the living – so many overwhelming feelings, so many should-have-done’s and could-have-been’s, so many questions.
Amid such heartbreak, many survivors also agonize about why their loved one did not leave a suicide note. Melinda McDonald, a blogger who lost her husband to suicide, wrote about this agony in a deeply moving blog post:
I have struggled off and on with the fact that my husband did not leave me a suicide note. I am once again struggling with this. I have been for weeks now. Through talking to other suicide widows, I know that the suicide note doesn’t always bring comfort. It often times places blame, doesn’t make any sense, or just flat out, doesn’t bring ENOUGH love and affection to such a horrible situation. But there are times like now, that I wish I could pull out the note, and read it. Maybe to be reminded of what a dire state my husband was in. That death was his only option. Or just to see “I love you” one more time.
The Uncommonness of Suicide Notes
Thanks to movies and TV shows, many people believe that suicide notes are common, and that such notes provide answers to tormenting questions. The real world is quite different. Only 15 to 38% of people who die by suicide leave a note, according to results of 5 studies published in the last 10 or so years.
For survivors of the other 62% to 85% of suicides, the expectation of finding a note can lead to more pain. Another blogger who lost her partner to suicide wrote in a blog post (which is no longer online):
“I searched for a suicide note, not recently but back when I thought there might have been a note left for me. In the days he was missing, and intermittently after he was found, I vigorously ransacked Mottsu’s belongings. I turned everything inside out and upside down, looking for a last communication. No note was ever uncovered. I did worry I might have overlooked a final message of…. of what? The phenomena of a suicide note is perplexing. It is almost the expected protocol that someone who leaves unexpectedly, and without explanation, should leave behind a helpful note.”
What Suicide Notes Do and Do Not Say
It is natural to yearn for a suicide note in the absence of one. You may wish you had a window into your loved one’s mind in his or her final hours, perhaps even minutes, of life.
In the first blog post that I quoted above, the writer Melinda McDonald did ultimately remember a note that her husband had written her – not before his suicide, but before his first suicide attempt. Rediscovering this note brought her great solace.
But many times, a note leaves people aching for more. This is because suicide notes seldom contain dramatic answers to painful questions.
The most common theme in suicide notes, according to one study, is instructions. These instructions concern financial affairs, funeral arrangements, people to be notified about the death, and even trivial matters like cancelling the newspaper subscription.
The mundane instructions found in suicide notes prompted a psychologist, Roy Baumeister, Ph.D to state in an interview:
“Instead of explaining why they are in a suicidal state, most [notes] relate to feeding the dog and taking care of the plants.”
When notes do go beyond mere instructions, the most common emotional themes include depression, guilt, shame, hurt, and anger, according to another study.
It can be hard to make sense of the depression and other painful emotions that the suicidal person endured, let alone understand how those emotions could demolish all desire for survival. For this reason, suicide notes that describe the person’s emotional state may become the proverbial riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a puzzle: whatever answers that suicide notes provide may lead to yet more questions.
Only rarely, if ever, can words on paper make the illogic of suicide logical.
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© Copyright 2014 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. Photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
Maybe the reason we want a note . . . is because the sadness and the grief makes us wonder if we asked enough questions (or listened) before the event happened. I struggled with that myself following my father’s death. Now, in the past few years, I started a note that lasted several months, thinking that as I would re-read it, it would change my mind. It didn’t, but I destroyed it. Who would care — nobody. So, now — the plans are being considered again — and there will be no note. If anybody cared, they would have already asked. But.
Hi Chrissy,
I`m asking. Are you ok ? Don`t give up.
Hi Chrissy,
I hope you are ok. I/people do care about you.
Hang in there, Chrissy. You are not alone. I know it can be very painful to l lose someone you love so much. I understand completely. Just remember, Chrissy, you did nothing wrong. Release your fears, worries it will all work out. Forgiveness is the key. Let go and let God heal you from this pain and grief. Give yourself more time to heal and put up boundaries until you are ready. Let go of the old ways of thinking. Your father wants what is best for you. He is in a better place now. He is watching over you. Just remember, God is always with you. Keep the faith, and don’t lose hope. Take care of yourself, and Don’t give up! God will heal you and keep you safe. Chrissy, I pray that God will wipe every tear from your eyes and comfort you so that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain in Jesus’s name. Amen.
I recently found a family member and then a week later going through an odd box of papers that was in their room I found a note listing the 3 of their family members and what they wanted each to have of their belongings. And simply signed Sorry.. and their name. Do people normally hide the note where they know it will be found.. so it’s not out in the open to be seen by strangers? No date so I wonder if it was an old note scribbled in despair and forgotten about.. or was it current and the why to what happened. No cause of death yet so I guess we wait.
My 44 year old sister took her life on September 28, 2020. I wish she would have left a note, even if it was to say feed the dog. There are so many questions, so many thoughts. I miss my big sister. To those struggling, please I beg you, get help. I have had depression since 1998, I know what sad means when a depressed person says they are sad. If you find yourself getting close to the point of taking your life, seek help. I did at 17 years old, I wish my sister would have at 44.
Andrea,
I’m sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing here; I’m certain your words will help some people out there.
I wonder if you’ve looked over the site for other resources that might be helpful to you. Here are a few:
Resources for Survivors of Suicide Loss
“If Only”: Self-Blame After a Loved One’s Suicide
Coping with the Suicide of a Loved One
Suffering from hellish and often permanent withdrawal symptoms from psych medications. Every single night when I lay on bed I only think of death. Psychiatry is a vile and disgusting industry, and in every possible sense the anti-thesis of any form of Christianity. Every psychiatrist and doctor who’ve knowingly put their patients under these sick medications deserve nothing more but a public shaming and an outright execution. These creatures are demons in human form, who are conducting “legal eugenics”.
I agree for the most part. Started weaning off Lexapro last November along with a couple of other meds and I’m STILL not right. These meds create dependency and a really negative relationship dynamic between doctor and patient. The doctor has absolutely all the power at that point because if you don’t see them you don’t get your drugs… and boy, do some of those doctors like to flex. I’ll never be the person I was pre-depression. Some of that is the effects of the depression but a lot is the effects of the meds.
That said, if the alternative is death then you do whatever you have to do to make it past the next couple of months. I do think doctors are really negligent about following up, and keep people on these meds for a lifetime and at a higher dose than needed, when the idea should be, “Let’s get this persons life back on track and get them off the meds ASAP.”
That’s why this idea of ‘reaching out for help’ with depression upsets me. People have entirely the wrong idea about what that does for you and grossly overestimate what psychiatrists can and will do for you. A fairly high percent of suicides were seeing professional help at the time of their death – I’ve read it’s something like 40%.
Why would most suicidal people leave a note explaining anything when our culture nearly universally tells them whatever reasons they have for the act are objectively wrong, that nothing justifies their decision? I imagine if I were suicidal and had been reading and hearing from EVERYONE that suicide is always wrong, always cowardly, always indicative of reasoning incompetence, I also wouldn’t leave a note. At that point, I’d just want to do what I could to assure my resources were distributed as I’d like.
You can’t on the one hand vilify a community for their beliefs and worldview then on the other hand wonder why they aren’t sharing their motivations with you.
this is very true, my thanks
For a person already in the bottoms of self-worth, guilt, and depression, to then heap upon them the additional obligation of responsibility for the grief and heartache of relatives and acquaintances after the act, is neither solace nor remedy. Doing so holds the person hostage to life. Simply remember their memory and know they are free of the onerous burden of living. To ask Why is frankly none of their damn business.
I agree, because it usually involves a tragic event they could not handle. It simply means they were sweet fragile souls who could not take the cruelty this society throws at us.
Perfect. Well written.
I suffer from severe, long-term depression that has lasted around 7 years now. I’ve survived a long time, but I can’t keep this up forever and I’ve given the idea of a note a lot of thought for when my time does come.
But there’s nothing I can say. Seriously, what do I say? If people don’t understand me when I’m alive, how am I going to make them understand my point of view in a note? If I tell someone I love them in a note, they’ll feel terrible because they didn’t stop me, and they’ll wonder why they weren’t enough for me to stick around. If I describe my feelings or my situation, odds are it will be misinterpreted, and besides that, my feelings as written when I’m actively suicidal willl be extremely bitter and angry and they won’t help anyone.
Write a note? I’ll probably make a special effort to NOT write one.
My son’s funeral was the day after you posted this. No, he did not leave a note. No, he would not have made anything better for me or his other relatives if he had left a message. There is a huge hole in our hearts and in the universe because he is gone. The same thing will happen if you decide to die this way. You are meant to be here. Think of what it will be like if the person who loves you the most discovers your body. I discovered the body of my son. The image will be forever seared in my mind and my pain will never end. Is that what you want for your loved ones? You may not know it, but you mean something to somebody. The next time you think about killing yourself, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255
I’m sorry to hear about your son. Understand anything wrong thing I might inadvertently say is not an attempt to trivialize what happened to you or what you’re going through.
I’m well aware of the effect my death would have. That’s the only reason why I’m still here – I don’t want to traumatize my own son, who is still very young.
People who are depressed tend to ruminate on things like this – over the past few years I have probably become more well-read on depression and suicide than just about anyone who isn’t a mental health professional and quite possibly more than some of those. It’s not that I don’t know what will happen. I know it’s bad for the survivors and it will be even worse for me if I screw it up. It’s not an embrace of that, but a rejection of what my life is. It is like bailing out of a plane that is on fire.
In terms of myself, I’m 49, rarely leave my basement except to interact with my son, and other than online friends hardly ever talk to anyone who doesn’t live with me. Over the past 7 years I’ve become moderately agoraphobic and have lost my capacity to even make it though a day where I’m not expected to do much without some kind of medication or drug (until 43 I never took meds or drugs). I haven’t had a decent full time job since 2009 and haven’t had ANY job since 2015. I sleep until 11 AM and if left to my own devices I would sleep a lot longer than that. Not because I’m lazy, but because I have no interest in getting up. But it’s not just laying in, mind, because it’s physical as well as mental. I actually AM that tired. Exhausted.
I am not an unusual case and there are people worse than me out there. At least I’m somewhat functional. There are lots of people who can barely get out of bed, where getting up, eating 3 meals, taking a shower and doing some laundry would be a great day.
A lot of depressed people are realists. We know how we appear. We know what our lives are like. And take my case as one out of many… no words are going to be able to take someone in my position and make their lives better again. I’m screwed. I know that. And being middle-aged, I know things are only going to get worse.
And I’ve taken meds of course. And they work. They stop you from doing anything drastic. But they don’t make you happy and more importantly they don’t get rid of whatever was making you depressed in the first place, whether that was PTSD or life circumstances or whatever.
I’ve gone though two phases that were really bad – one in 2015 and one a couple of years ago. I think the 2015 ordeal broke something to be honest because I haven’t been anything like the same since. I have a belief that once you’ve hit a certain low, that it changes you permanently. You don’t come all the way back.
What I’m trying to say with all this rambling is that it’s all very complicated and understanding/fixing depression is very, very difficult. It’s hard for ME to understand and harder yet to put it across to someone who hasn’t experienced it at that level. There’s no one conversation someone can have which would resolve those issues. Even professionals struggle to cure depression – the cure rate is not good among people with long term depression. Resolving it is like changing the course of a river.
I sent my last reply inadvertently and can’t delete it, so sorry if it reads messed up and ends in the middle of a sentence. It certainly won’t look proofread.
Anyway, I just want to add that I don’t think I ended up in this spot because someone failed me, or that they didn’t create the right environment or didn’t say the right thing, or that some stupid event years ago impacted me and they need to apologize.
These thoughts are nothing about other people and what they did and didn’t do. When I get bad, my thoughts are entirely within myself, I can’t hear anyone outside. With the really self-absorbed nature of depression, there’s a limit to what other people can do no matter how much love they have or how good they are.
I’ve never been in your position, but I hope you’re able to understand how I’m viewing the people in my life and the tunnel vision I have on my own inner world as a depressed person. And if you do understand that, you’ll be able to step back and not be hard on yourself or the people around you at a time like this.
Stacey, feel free to delete both posts if they are stupid or triggering. I’m not sure I’ve expressed myself properly.
Paul,
Thanks for sharing your experiences here. You describe very well your pain. I’m sorry your life has so much suffering.
I think suicide loss survivors have much to learn from people who themselves are suicidal. You’ve given a gift here by letting others see the inner workings of your own mind — and how their loved one who died by suicide might have similarly been trapped in the tunnel vision you describe, through no fault of the survivors.
I apologize for my delay in approving your comment. It was buried under many other emails.
Thanks again for sharing. I’d like to wish you hope and healing, but I know such words would seem hollow after what you’ve written here. But still, that’s what I wish.