Nandini Murali, author of Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss, talks about the death of her husband by suicide, her tumultuous and transformational phase and her attempt to build informed conversations on suicide. We speak to her about her experience and the book. In the second part of the interview she speaks about her healing process.
Your book Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss is said to be ‘one of the most emotionally courageous books to come out in recent times’. What were your driving points when you started writing?
My driving points in writing the book were manifold. I have always expressed myself through writing. It comes very naturally to me. When this tragedy happened, I was swamped by the complete absence of conversations, supportive informed conversations on suicide and suicide loss. One of my main inspirations has been Carla Fine, an American journalist-author and a suicide prevention activist. Like me Carla too lost her husband, Dr Harry Reiss, to suicide. I didn’t know her full background before. I just came across her book ‘No time to Say Goodbye’ and ordered it.
In the immediate aftermath of my bereavement, I felt completely isolated. There were very few people understood me. Even I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. That is when I started reading extensively on suicide loss, suicide grief and suicide bereavement. I agree with the researchers and people with some experience of suicide loss who unanimously say that suicide bereavement is profoundly isolating, mysterious and confusing. So when I read Carla’s book, I was immensely inspired and impressed by the way she turned a tragedy into something so meaningful.
I was looking for a similar book in the Indian context closer home, and I was flummoxed to find that nobody had written anything about it. Nobody had even spoken about it from the perspective of a survivor of suicide loss, from a person with a lived experience of suicide. I have always been a great believer in the power of people with lived experiences to tell their story because there is so much of wisdom and insight which a lived experience confers on you; it is not just cognitive. In the Indian context we refer to it is as anubhava. From the perspective of a lived experience of suicide loss, nobody in India had written about it. So I just felt that I needed to tell my story. Because there was so much of stigma, shame, secrecy and silence around this very important issue. I just felt someone needed to tell this story, someone needed to speak up.
For me, writing the book was reclaiming my power to tell my narrative, my story on my own terms, because a suicide death is subject to so much of gossip, speculation, survivor blaming and survivor shaming. I was stunned by the way people hijacked narratives of loss. So rather than letting people usurp my right, I decided that I am going to tell my story on my terms. For me writing the book was an act of transgression, it was an act of complete defiance. It was standing up for my rights as someone impacted by suicide loss, because suicide grief is so disenfranchised. Society assumes that we have no right to grieve That is completely taken away from us. So I wanted to reclaim that right. I also wanted to heal and transform. Thus writing the book served so many of these purposes. And it was truly transformative, truly healing. Overall, I loved working on the book.
In the book, you have touched on many past memories with your husband. What has been the biggest challenge in putting together your thoughts for the book?
Actually writing the book was a sheer joy, as I mentioned earlier. It was my uncle who sowed the seeds of the book in me. In the first year, I couldn’t write because so much was happening. I used to be swamped by grief. This is the story of trauma and loss. In the first year I just read extensively on the subject, and I would like to believe that I am self-styled suicidologist. I started writing in the second year immediately after the first anniversary.
The biggest challenge for me was structuring the narrative. I didn’t want it to read like a journal. I found it very difficult to structure the narrative because enormity of the trauma robs of you of narrative coherence. I remember in my earlier drafts, the paragraphs would be stand alone; the transitions were missing. It was my uncle who helped me structure the book and shape the chapters. Structuring the narrative was very difficult, because that was the aftermath of the trauma. My psyche had sustained multiple fractures, I was haemorrhaging non-stop.
The other challenge I felt was deciding that the book is not a tell-all. You know there are certain aspects of my life, and my husband’s life, I choose not to talk about. That is our right to privacy. This is not a voyeuristic story. There is a fine distinction I make when a book goes into the public domain what needs to be told. So those were very conscious decisions I made before writing the book.
What does it mean to be a ‘survivor of suicide loss’, especially in a small town like Madurai where you live where the stigma around suicide could be more formidable?
I think across the world if there is one great leveller it is suicide and suicide loss. There is considerable stigma, secrecy, silence which every survivor of suicide loss, whichever part of the world they are in, goes through. That seems to be a constant. In a small town like Madurai, I don’t think being in a tier one or tier two town makes any difference. I find that in rural places in the country there is far less stigma, people seem more accepting and supportive. Yes, there is this overwhelming sense of ignorance and complete lack of knowledge when it is about suicide and the multiple causes of suicide and how to support survivors of suicide loss. But I think that would be constant in all parts of India. I don’t find any difference between the bigger cities and smaller towns.
I had decided that I would be an empowered survivor of suicide loss. I didn’t want to play the victim card, nor was I going to be cowed down by the tragedy. Or, let other people hijack my narrative. I think this emboldened stance insulated me from the gossip and the speculation.
Your book abounds in real-life chronicles of survivors of suicide loss. Is there a commonality shared by them in grieving?
Yes… a commonality shared by all of us is that we were very confused, puzzled, and extremely traumatised when our loved one decided to end their live. And, no matter how much we saw it coming, when it actually happened, the impact was devastating. Our lives were blown into smithereens. If you were to measure the earthquake on a Richter scale, I bet our grief would not be measurable. Our former lives were completely gone.
For all of us, it was before and after the suicide. There is this enormous sense of shame, stigma. There is a lot of gossip and speculation and isolation. There is plenty of intrusive questions, probing and constant interrogation. I think for all of us even the bereavement, the mourning is very challenging because when people came to condole us, most of them came really to find out what happened. The morbid curiosity was very, very high. And we tend to be hyper responsible. We survivors of suicide loss, find ourselves championing our loved ones: You know they were so good, they were this, they were that, but we don’t know why it happened. We would also champion ourselves and repeatedly say… ‘We did our best’.
Sometimes there was this huge need to camouflage the cause of death. It was so tempting to invent socially acceptable reasons. We were swamped by a cocktail of toxic emotions, anger, sadness, guilt and deep sense of embarrassment. Most of us felt guilty …what could I have done to prevent this. That is why suicide death has been described as a death like no other. I think the American Psychiatry Association rates suicide bereavement on par with the concentration camp experience. I think that is a very accurate description of what we go through.
Also, all of us are incredibly resilient. All of us rebuild our lives brick by brick, step by step. We may be fractured, fragmented into a million pieces but somehow we still manage to find wholeness. We also take on the role of Sherlock Holmes constantly thinking and questioning…Why did our loved one do this? Why? Needless to say, it has been a very convoluted, roller coaster journey. Some of us have been able to use trauma for transformation.
In the book you have mentioned that grieving is a solitary journey. What then would be the role of an organisation like suicide bereavement support group?
Grieving is a solitary journey. Yes of course. Suicide bereavement support groups online and offline have a huge role to play because no matter how much friends and family are supportive they can never really understand the depth of our despair. In a suicide bereavement support group, you meet so many other people with lived experience of suicide loss and some of them have healed and transformed through the tragedy. When other people talk about their losses and how they dealt with it, it sort of normalises the experience. There is great validation and endorsement, that’s what we are seeking.
Support groups are not places where we receive counselling or psychotherapy. They are places for frank, candid conversation about suicide loss. The thing about suicide support group is a zero judgement zone. And that I think is an antidote to the stigma, shame, secrecy and silence. I think it is through the telling and retelling of our stories we truly heal. There is a great sense of solidarity and oneness when all members have a shared experience. And each suicide loss is very different. Losing a spouse to suicide is different from losing a child to suicide or a parent to suicide. And suicide support group is such a safe supportive group where candid conversations are shared.
How does grieving process in suicide bereavement become more burdensome as compared to a natural demise?
I wouldn’t call it natural and unnatural because that’s again a value judgment and stigmatising! In addition to the grieving process, who has been bereaved by a non-suicidal death, we have a very complicated process of suicide bereavement. One is that it is disenfranchised grief. It is as if those of us who have been bereaved by suicide, have no right to grief.
One of the reasons I wrote this book was to reclaim, to enfranchise the disenfranchised grief. Who is society to take away our right to grieve? Most of us who have been bereaved by suicide have been very responsible partners, caring spouses, extremely loving parents, fond siblings…and such death is beyond conventional perceptions that view it as crime or sin. The grief is so disenfranchised, it is so messy, very few people understand what this is all about. Actually we ourselves feel so confused, completely puzzled. It is so complex and complicated, bewildering and challenging. The taboo around suicide makes it very difficult for us to talk openly about our loss, openly acknowledge the cause of death, request social support, and publicly moan our loved one.
One of things we find is that when people die a non-suicidal death, there is so much of compassion, empathy and support, by those who come to offer their condolences. But here, as I said, those who come for a condolence visit, they are more interested in acting judge and jury, determined to probe and get to the bottom of the issue to ferret the truth. We want our grief to be validated, we want our grieving process to be normalised.
There are also other kinds of struggles we face. It is so difficult for us to retain happy memories of our loved ones. Even if we have happy memories, somehow the manner of death, casts a shadow on our happy memories. So this joyful nostalgia is not something most of us have access to. We are very vulnerable to mental health conditions like stress, depression and anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder. So we need this kind of unconditional love, support, spaces within the family, outside the family to create that safety net to get our lives back on track. So there is this complete insensitivity surrounding survivors of suicide loss.
Continued in Part 2 of the interview where she talks of the healing process
(Dr. Nandini Murali is a suicide prevention and mental health activist. Her lived experience of suicide loss inspired her to establish SPEAK, an initiative of MS Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, Madurai, and SPEAK2us (9375493754), a mental health helpline for people in psychological distress.)
