All posts tagged: Suicide

Suicide: It’s a word that cuts

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It’s ironic that a successful suicide means death and an unsuccessful one means life. According to Stats Canada, and reported on Suicideinfo.ca, suicide has consistently been the 9th leading cause of death in Canada. Males commit suicide at a rate approximately three times that of females. READ: Suicide stats for Canada, provinces and territories Over ten people a day kill themselves in Canada, and the age at which this is done the most is during the fifties: READ: Suicide rate in Canada by age group in 2019 Those families and friends left behind usually feel guilty, and ashamed. Not just of the suicide, but shame because there is a strongly held belief that they could have done something. Hindsight tears apart their hearts, and the stigma of suicide can turn the cause of death into a dark secret. And when something is painful, and it is a secret, it turns into a monster of demonic power. There are no words of comfort that can reach into this darkness. No human words at least. Often we …

Canada: How to manufacture a COVID crisis

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It is said the first casualty of war is ‘the truth.’ Along that vein if governments and health bureaucrats want people to trust them and their concerns about the COVID pandemic, let’s start with being transparent about what is really happening. In the Canadian province of Ontario, the government has just announced that if any suicide victim tests positive for COVID, they will now be included as a COVID casualty. True North writes about an email they received from Public Health Ontario: If someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 commits suicide, the Ontario Ministry of Health will record their cause of death as COVID-19.As of Sunday, December 13, Public Health Ontario counted 140,181 cumulative cases of COVID-19, and 3,949 deaths.“As a result of how data is recorded by health units into public health information databases, the ministry is not able to accurately separate how many people died directly because of COVID versus those who died with a COVID infection,” Ontario Ministry of Health Senior Communications Advisor Anna Miller said to True North in an email.“A death …

Photo: Trey Ratcliff/Flickr/Creative Commons

The first prayer

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After I lost my first-born son, Graham, to suicide, I still had my sixteen year old, second born son to care for. I watched my adolescent boy reeling from his own grief as he sat on the couch in the basement for days on end. He had made up his brother’s bed and formed the blankets to look like he was still sleeping in it.  He could not accept that his brother was gone. My perspective on life had tilted dramatically.  I knew that I could no longer “take care of everything.”  I was no longer superwoman. All that I felt I could do was pray for my son. Behind our house there was a two-mile hike up to a huge coulee.  Once you reached the top you just had to sit down and admire the scenery below. Farmers crops and cows grazed at the base of this coulee. Hues of gold, green and geometric patterns stretched out over the wide open land before me. From the rock pile on top of the plateau, I …

God want to heal our brokeness. Photo: Howard Hall/Flickr/Creative Commons

Circle of Love

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It had been a year since I lost my son to suicide and I was invited to join a new women’s group at church. I wanted to stay home and not risk baring my heart to anyone. God knew I needed this group of women and gently pushed me out the door of my comfort zone. To be honest, I was angry with my son for choosing to leave us the way he did. I am a resilient person and found myself able to move forward in my life despite our loss.  My resiliency, though, left me unable to express myself and release my grief. There were five women in this group and each of us had our own pain and grief to deal with. Some of us were angry with God for the circumstances we were facing.  Others, like myself, were angry at our loved one for the choice they had made. We were all here to release the pain and guilt of poor choices made and we began to realize that we needed …

Photo: Justin K./Flickr/Creative Commons

It doesn’t have to be a life sentence

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I lost my eldest son Graham in 2004 to suicide. Six years later my grief took me to a five-day seminar to help deal with the emotional upheaval in my life due to his death. I had filled out their forms, answered questions, shared my story and the reasons why I wanted to attend the seminar. On the first day, we all received a name tag. One facilitator came up to me and gave me mine. I glanced at it as I took it from her hand. The words “life sentence” we’re neatly printed on it.  It caught me completely off guard.  It took a few days into the seminar to face the cold hard facts. As  judge, juror and prosecutor, I had sentenced myself to a life-time of guilt and shame  for the death of my son. Death from suicide carries a stigma with it and the grieving is more complex. I could not understand why my son took this drastic measure. He willingly left us. I did something wrong. My husband and I …

Another Divine appointment? Buffalo bus driver saves suicidal woman

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His co-workers call him “Big Country” because he is a “big man with a big heart.”  Darnell Barton is a bus driver in Buffalo, New York. On August 18, 2013, he was transporting a couple dozen teenagers from McKinley High School. While crossing a bridge on the Scajaquada Expressway, Darnell noticed a woman had climbed over the guard rail on the overpass and was standing on a small ledge leaning out over the highway below. Darnell, 37, knew the woman in her 20s was contemplating suicide. He immediately stopped his bus in the middle of traffic, opened his bus door and called out the woman: “Miss you all right? Ma’am are you ok? Are you ok?” You can watch the rescue recorded on the bus video camera at the end of the article.