The Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1-800-273-8255

Our ongoing conversation about suicide continues in this Part III episode as we continue to build on the conversations of Part I in Episode 9 and Part II in Episode 13. Of course as we taped this episode in late September 2020, we are still the uncertainty and isolation of the #COVID19 pandemic. As a suicide survivor and advocate Marshall shares stories of other survivor families who have so many questions and so few answers in the immediate aftermath. Don’t miss this very candid conversation about everything from what to include in the obituary to dealing with feelings of personal responsibility.  

The only thing missing from our conversation is you. Are you a suicide survivor?  We welcome your comments, suggestions and would love to hear your story.  Send an email to hopethrugrief@gmail.com and please share our show with anyone you know that is struggling with loss and grief. You can find us on the internet to continue the conversation!

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Website: http://hopethrugrief.com.

Subscribe & Share: https://hope-thru-grief.captivate.fm/listen

Jordan Smelski Foundation: http://www.jordansmelskifoundation.org

Tune in for new episodes every Thursday morning wherever you listen to podcasts!

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski, co-hosts of Hope Thru Grief are not medical, or mental health professionals, therefore we cannot and will not give any medical, or mental health advice. If you, or anyone you know needs medical or mental health treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately. The Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1-800-273-8255

Thank you

Marshall Adler

Steve Smelski

Hello everyone.

And welcome to today's episode of Hope Thru Grief.

I'm Steve Smelski.

I'm here with my good friend and cohost Marshall Adler.

Hello everybody, hope you're doing well today.

And for today's episode, we decided to go back and record part

three of our episodes on a suicide.

In part one, which was episode number 9, we talked about the statistics and the

compelling numbers and how much it's been increasing in the recent past and how

much more of an issue suicide is becoming.

In our part two episode, um, episode number 13, we got into more

specifics on whether it's possible to have known or to have stopped it.

We went into a lot of details, went into a few of the different stories.

And for today's episode, since Marshall knows quite a bit more about suicide.

I'm going to ask and pose a few questions to him and let him go ahead and give

us his response back on some of these and this time we kind of wanted to

focus more around the issues of some of the other suicide survivor families

and what some of them are doing, what they've experienced, um, kind of give

a different flavor or a different story from what we've concentrated on before.

So with that Marshall, I think for the first topic, we'll start out with, I

know I mentioned that my dad is a suicide survivor because my grandfather that

I was named after committed suicide.

And that was before he and my mom met and he wouldn't talk to me about it.

And I think I told the story where his grave was at a different

location in the cemetery.

The question that I wanted to ask is through all the hundreds of people

that you've spoken with in the last two years, suicide has that stigma of

being an embarrassment, or I should have known, or we should be able to stop it.

Do people try and hide the fact of what the death was caused by how

many are open and up front with it?

Steve that's an excellent question.

And you know, you are correct that I literally have talked to hundreds

of suicide survivors, people that have lost a loved one to suicide.

Obviously we've been through Grief Share.

We've gone through suicide survivors, support groups.

I had a previous podcast on, I saw Matt's suicide.

I've talked to many friends, acquaintances, professional

colleagues who had issues with suicide or concerns about suicide.

So for, for better, for worse, probably for the rest of my life,

I'm going to be the suicide guy.

When there's a question that somebody has and they know me, they're

probably going to reach out to me.

So I talked to hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of people.

And let me just backtrack for a second.

I know when we had Matt's funeral, we talked to our Rabbi before the service,

and we told him that we think Matt would have want us to be advocates

for suicide survivors, the rest of our lives, and to do so, we had to be

totally transparent and upfront about the issues of suicide and suicide survivors.

So the rabbi could not have been better and applauded us for being so open and was

incredibly helpful throughout the service.

and obviously with grieving after.

So my personal philosophy and the philosophy of our family has always

been transparency, honesty and that is the way to, I think, get the grieving

process in a position where you're helping yourself, you're helping others.

But, every person is different, but to tell you some stories and all these

stories are actual people that I've dealt with throughout the two plus

years of talking to suicide survivors.

I know there was one family that decided to list the obituary of their loved ones

who died by suicide as a cardiac arrest.

Really?

It was a heart heart situation.

And when I talked to this family member years later, it

actually was a point of humor.

What I was told is that, well, if you do die by suicide, guess

what your heart's going to stop.

So it is a cardiac a cardiac event and they were sort of humorous about

it, but obviously the point that they were making was that they had, I

think, progressed from the shock not knowing what to do to realizing if we

had to do it over, we'd probably be more transparent and more honest with

what the picture we should have said.

And I will tell you, I, I do I always have, just because I'm a news hound.

I like reading newspapers.

I've always read obituaries and I have gotten to the point where

I can read between the lines.

Sometimes you'll see some family being very open and we'll just say it.

Somebody had a mental health battle that they lost the battle and died

by suicide, but they won the war because they had a wonderful life.

And then they'll have donations made to the suicide prevention hotline or

the American Foundation for Prevention of Suicide or NAMI, the National

Alliance of Mental Illness, different charitable organizations that deal

with mental health and suicide.

And I applaud those people for doing that.

Others people, you can see that they're saying it, but they're not saying it.

I will tell you in Matt's obituary and in Matt's eulogy that I

wrote both of them, obviously I didn't mention the word suicide.

It was not pertinent to the issue so although I'm saying

we were very transparent.

I totally would defer and respect the actions of the family

members they feel is appropriate.

And we told everybody Matt died by suicide, but the eulogy and the

obituary there wasn't a point of it.

It wasn't how he died per se.

It's how he lived

It's how we lived and we weren't hiding anything.

We were because we were telling everybody what, what it was.

And obviously our life has been based on that.

So when I say that I can read a obituaries and sort of read between the lines.

I think the people that honor their loved ones without saying

the word, I commend them.

And I hope that they will take that as a starting point to be very open about it.

I think that the societal understanding of suicide has gotten much better over time.

Like I've said many, many times that nobody chooses

suicide, suicide chooses them.

And there is cutting edge medical research that shows that they've done brain scans

of people with suicidal ideation and they see anatomical differences versus

the brain scans of people that do not have suicidal ideation, which shows

obviously that this is a brain disease.

And, you know, I mentioned before that, Senator John McCain, Senator

Ted Kennedy, both dive in Glioblastoma brain tumors that are brain diseases

that can be found on the MRI.

And my belief is that medical science will reach a point that they will say

this finding on an MRI for a suicide, whatever that artifact is ,is no

different than finding a glioblastoma brain tumor or other indicative,

you know, you can see, uh, doing what I do as a worker's comp lawyer.

I deal with a lot of medical issues and there's cases that I've had, where they've

had brain scans and some of my clients they have what's called white matter.

White matter can be traumatically induced, but it could also be something like MS.

It could be something like ALS it can be,

I've read some articles on...

right.

And you can actually see them in the scan.

Right, right.

It is something that they can see anatomical changes in the brain that's

going to cause a fatal brain disease.

And I think medical science will get that point with suicide, which I think

will change how society views suicide.

So instead of hiding it, they realized it was a brain disorder

that took somebody's life.

And that's why I think being upfront transparent about it is

the best place for our family.

The best testimony that we can give and best tribute we can give to

Matt because he spent his whole life helping people when he was here.

And because he's not here, we have to continue the work to do that.

And by hiding it by not being upfront, you're not helping.

I don't think you're helping society, but I don't think

you're helping yourself either.

I think.....

that brings me to a second question,

ok

Because early on you talked about maybe you don't put it

in the obituary, but you're upfront.

Do you think hiding the fact or not wanting to admit that it was a

suicide would affect you and delay you progressing through the grief process?

I think it would affect me adversely because I've talked to

many suicides survivors where they've told me that their loved one, absolutely

positively a hundred percent, no certainty died by suicide, but all their members of

their family will not acknowledge that.

They will say the person was murdered.

It wasn't a suicide, it was a murder.

And the people that I've talked to would say that's not correct, it

wasn't a murder, it was a suicide.

And the reason they're saying murder, it's like their own thought process

needs to rationalize the loss in a way that's just not truthful.

And I think it's almost like putting a bandaid on a raging infection.

You can say, well, I'm doing something here.

I got a bandaid on this raging infection, your doing something it's not helping.

If you've got a raging infection, you better culture that see where

the bacteria is and get a antibiotic specific for that infection to treat it.

Otherwise that could kill you.

A bandaid is not going to help that.

So I think with people doing things that they think might be helpful to them

in the short term or helpful to them trying to figure out why this happened.

I do think it's almost like a bandaid on a raging infection

because the underlying issues that affect the family are not going to

be resolved by calling it a murder.

You know, you could call a giraffe a elephant.

It's not an elephant.

It's a giraffe.

You can call it something different than it is, but it is what it is.

Do you think that borders on denial?

It could be denial.

It could be just a defense mechanism that maybe they don't even believe, but it's a

story that they will feel they can put out there to be a face that they can live with

when they have to see people in society.

You know, we all wear many hats and many faces and some of

the faces are true and honest.

If some of the faces are a facade,

it's kind of like not accepting.

I know some people think you have to accept responsibility because you didn't

see it, or you couldn't prevent it.

But by saying somebody who was murdered was like, Oh, there was

no way we could've known or helped,

which isn't true because...

exactely

He could say, why didn't I tell them to lock their door?

Why didn't I tell them, do you really want to hang out with that person?

Maybe they're not the best person to be with.

Did you really need to go out and, you know get that job that puts you

in a situation that was dangerous.

These are all things that still could pop up, even if it wasn't death by

suicide, so that he doesn't even answer the question that you think

they're trying to get answered by making it socially more palatable

for them to explain what happened.

That makes sense.

It's not an easy thing to talk about, especially when you think

you're being judged when you're, when you're talking or discussing it.

I've read a couple of things about some people that, um, and this kind of

gets back to the whole question of, we don't know who it's going to affect,

but people that have actually worked for the suicide prevention hotline

have helped hundreds or thousands of people during their time there.

And then actually committed suicide.

Yes.

I talked to a family that their loved one was the person answering the phone

on the suicide prevention hotline to help people comtemplating suicide.

And that person died by suicide.

So it's almost like a cancer researcher, contracting cancer.

They may know all about it.

They may know well, we've got to do to treat it what you can do to prevent it.

It doesn't mean they won't get cancer.

Like we, you know, growing up in Buffalo, you've heard me say this

many times we went to, um, Buffalo Bills games with my father and my

father's friends for years and years.

And one of my parent's good friends was a cancer researcher and he Roswell Power

Memorial Institute is one of the top cancer research institutes in the country

in Buffalo and back in the sixties.

I think it was 1964 when the surgeon general came out and

said, smoking is bad for you.

And that's when they started saying, Hey, don't smoke and cause

cancer, lung disease, heart disease, hypertension, all these things.

So he was the guy on a cutting edge research.

Every time we went to a Buffalo Bill's game.

We'd pick him up and drive together.

And we had to open up all the windows in the car.

Why?

Cause he was, he would smoke a pack of cigarettes on the way to the game.

He was the guy telling people don't smoke.

He knew it was really bad.

He knew it would take your risk factors for cancer through

the roof, but he smoked.

So, what I'm saying is I think with the medical technology that I hope we'll

find the diagnostic tools to diagnose the brain disease cancer, and then find either

therapeutics to treat it or a cure for it.

That will absolutely change society's view of it saying, yeah,

this is no different than any other type of anatomical brain disease.

You know, I know that there's a lot of, um, football players now that have

CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

They can only find those post-mortem if somebody dies and there was a very

famous football player, ironically, who was from San Diego, named Junior Seau,

he was from San Diego, played with the Chargers, huge hero in San Diego where

Matt died, and he died by suicide.

And after his death, my understanding was they sort of

figured out it probably was CTE.

So I think for people listening to this that have had a loss of a suicide in

their family, friends, acquaintances, hopefully you will realize that you

were chosen now to be an advocate for your loved one for your friend, for

whoever took lost their lives in the suicide battle because they can't do it.

And you have to, because you don't know, the next one is people listening to

this podcast now will be saying always in that horrible isn't that terrible?

I'm so glad that that hasn't touched me.

I wish I could give you a guarantee and give you the secret sauce

or secret handshake to make sure that will never happen to you,

but I'll give you a news flash.

It doesn't exist.

I've had people come up to me who never knew Matt and they

just were crying in my arms.

And I knew they weren't crying about Matt.

They never knew Matt.

They were crying about somebody in their life that they were concerned could be a

potential person who will die by suicide.

And you don't know.

No, we don't know.

I had another story that I had read some information on it.

Didn't have all the details, but one member of the family had attempted

suicide and the family tried to protect them by engaging the Baker Act and

having them, I think it's 72 hours.

They take them in and in the meantime, another family member actually

ended up committing suicide while they're trying to save the other one,

I unfortunately have had firsthand experience with a

family that dealt with that situation.

Where one of the parents had attempted suicide and survived and had to

obviously receive psychiatric care.

And one of the other family members came into take control of the situation.

Cause obviously you're in such shock.

If somebody is going to attempt and survive because you're so fearful

that they're going to take their life.

And this person was take charge type of person was able to do the necessary

things in a very tight timeline to get the appropriate medical care, to deal

with a suicide attempt when the family was dealing with that situation the person

that had taken control to make sure that everything was done properly attempted,

and unfortunately took their life, which shows you how you never see it coming.

I've I've let me say this of all the people that I've talked

to, which again are hundreds of people that have lost loved ones.

The suicides.

If they're willing to talk to me and I feel they want to keep on talking.

I always ask the same question and I've universally gotten the same answer.

And the question that I asked is, did you see this coming?

And I've had people that lost loved ones to suicide, where their loved ones had

attempted multiple times and obviously not succeeded because they were still alive.

And in spite of that history, they still didn't see it because they

would be told by their loved ones.

I'm so thankful that I didn't succeed and taking my life.

I've got such an appreciation of every single day now.

I love the support.

I love all the outreach.

I love smelling the flowers.

I love seeing the blue sky.

I want to see the sun rise.

I want to go see the ocean.

I will never get that place again.

And then they take their life.

So everything that they were saying where this looked like a situation that

would never occur did in fact occur.

And then other times it's completely out of the blue.

I've had people where you just could not see any type of warning

signs, any type of issues.

Yeah.

Any type of red flags and completely blindsided.

So, you know, I've said this a million times that for all suicide

survivors, you have to realize that if he could have stopped it, you would

have you didn't because you can't.

And that is just something that I think is a difficult thing for people to

realize, because we all want to think, well, we're Americans, we're exceptional.

We can do anything we want.

That might sound good in a, in a, in a TV commercial, but in reality, uh, you know,

I just, I saw today that the Air Force is having a huge spike in suicides this year.

Veterans die by suicide in about one an hour.

That's every single day, every single week, every single month, this podcast,

this episode will be about an hour.

So the statistical odds are, as we're doing this podcast, there's a

veteran taking their life by suicide.

So all the power of the United States, government of the veterans administration

of the finest medical care system in the world, it ain't working.

And so to think that a family or any person could change that it's

just not objectively correct.

It doesn't mean you try, you don't try, but you gotta realize this is

like a Glioblastoma brain tumor.

Where you're saying, well, my luck is a Glioblastoma brain tumor.

We're just going to say, we're not going to fall victim to this and we're going

to beat it and we're going to do this.

That's all great.

It's all wonderful.

But the odds are, it's going to be fatal.

So your answer jumped out ahead at one of the other ones that I

had, it was impossible to stop a suicide.

And I had a second part to that.

Can you talk them out of it?

I know there've been some people that actually been talking with

them while they were contemplating.

I've also, let me say this.

The suicide prevention hotline is absolutely a resource that everybody

in the country and everybody in the world should have access to,

obviously I've lost my son by suicide.

So I'm going to be very conscious of it.

I think everybody should have that number on a speed dial on your phone

or on their refrigerator, because you never know when you're gonna need it.

And that to me is a resource that can save lives because again,

every suicide is different.

And you might have different dynamics, different things.

So you never, ever, ever want to ignore the opportunity to try to

help some body by getting them to a resource that's available.

But I've also talked to many suicide survivors who were unfortunately

present when their loved one was gonna take their life by suicide.

And I know of one story where the loved one was trying to tell this

person, you do not have to do this.

You don't understand, you don't have to do this.

And the person that took their life responded that you don't

understand, I do have to do this.

And which to me would, would show that whatever the brain disease process that

causes suicide to happen and overtaken this person, if that person called

the Suicide Prevention Hotline would that made any difference, because it

wasn't a loved one versus somebody else.

I can't speculate on that, but this was a loved one that was talking

to this person right there and they could not prevent it from happening.

So, what would it be?

The odds of a total stranger on a phone line preventing it?

You tell me,

I know everybody thinks that if I've been there, maybe

I could have done something maybe that that'll help them understand

that even a few were, you probably couldn't have changed anything

and it might've been, it might've been for that time period.

It could have happened that way.

But the question is what about the next day?

A week later, a month later, if in fact it's a brain disease and the brain disease

process, continuing that one episode doesn't mean that it's the last episode.

Well, you can't be on suicide watch for your whole life, right?

You just, nobody can be there that much to,

unless you want to live in a bell jar.

Well, we're kind of living in that jar right now.

Nobody likes it.

Its, suicide rates are going up in that bell jar.

That's all right.

So that's not even safe.

Um, I've read something about parents say they hadn't heard from their son

or their daughter in quite a while.

And they go to check on them and they actually go into their room they find

him, and then they've actually found recordings on video of what happened.

I don't even know how to process that as a, as a parent.

What do you actually say to them?

I knew a family, a very wonderful family that they lost

a child to suicide and they were concerned because there was no contact.

And they went to the apartment where their child lived and they saw the

wrappings of the outer wrapping of a rope.

And as soon as one of the parents saw this, she just turned to her

husband and said, I know he's gone.

And they were able to get the security video where they saw

their child for the last time, literally right before he passed.

And I remember talking to this person and I asked, you know,

how devastating was that?

And what they told me was that he was just tired.

The fight of again, if in fact this is a brain disease, That is going

to be progressive and relentless day after day after day after day.

And these people that have that brain disease have to go out into society, act

like functioning, productive human beings on the outside when they are fighting

this demon brain disease on the inside.

It has to be exhausting.

And what this family member told me about the loss of her child is that

when she saw that video, which was the last moments that her son was on this

planet, you just said he was tired.

And in some ways I think that.

Gave her solace that she knew this was a progressive brain disease, just

like a Glioblastoma brain tumor that was going to be fatal and there was

nothing that medical science or the family could have done to stop it.

I've heard that word several times, tired.

Yes.

As a description of he's just tired, a daily

struggle, a daily grind.

I also saw something where a family lost their loved one to suicide and

ended up being at the hospital that their loved one was actually born in.

Yes.

That that may not be too unique.

I know.

We actually took Jordan into the same hospital that he was born

in and he was misdiagnosed there.

He didn't, he didn't die there, but that's kind of a, kind of

a weird situation isn't it?

It was as if the loss of loved one by suicide.

Isn't tragic enough the fact that the person decided to end their life

where it began is one of the pieces of the puzzle that will probably

never be able to be answered by the family because was it a good thing?

Because the person said this is just the circle of life.

And I just want to close the circle my time on this planet

is over and I'm fine with it.

Or were they trying to make some other statement?

I don't know that, you know, I've said before that anybody lose a

loved one to suicide .is Like having a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle

thrown on your dining room table.

If the rest of the rest of your life, you're going to

try to put the piece together.

And I feel like we put in, we put together about a hundred of those files

and pieces with Matt' passing, which means there's 900 pieces left that we

haven't been able to figure out yet.

How many will we be able to figure out over the course of

my lifetime is to be determined.

So how do you figure that one out?

Why did that person decide to take that action when they were in the

process of passing by suicide?

It's one of those questions that may never be answered.

And yes, that would be a issue for the family in their journey of grief.

No two ways about it.

Yes.

Marshall, I can see that.

So Marshall, as we wrap up this part three episode of

suicide, it's, it's easy to see.

It's a very complicated loss.

There's a lot of surrounding issues, not only for the person who commits suicide,

but the family that's left behind, um, society has a view of it, or how

has had a view of suicide in the past.

It makes it very difficult for those who are survivors to deal

with a lot of different things as they work through their grief.

Did you kind of give us your thoughts on, on what we've talked about today and

just do a wrap up for today's episode.

Thank you,

Steve.

I, I just think that the whole issue of suicide is so complex and

so, um, multifaceted that for me, I take it two pronged approach.

You know, I'm a lawyer, I've doing what I do as a workers' compensation lawyer.

I deal with medical issues all the time that I have to figure

out what happened from a case and what the medical evidence is.

So with suicide survivors and prevention I'm constantly looking

at the medical aspect of medical technology, cutting edge diagnostic

therapeutics and prevent prevention.

But also I know medical science does not have all the answers.

There are suicidal biologists that make their professional careers

dealing with suicide prevention.

I thank God for those people, but they obviously have not been able to prevent

it because suicide rates are going up.

So talking to people that have their own personal opinions concerning the

loss of their loved one to me is a another important factor to be studied.

And for me, it's another important factor on my journey to try to do as

much as I can to help suicide survivors.

And to help suicide prevention.

So other people will not have to endure the loss that our family has.

So I hope Steve, at this episode today has given our listeners some insight

into my family's journey in general and my journey in particular, again, I've

talked to hundreds of suicide survivors and hopefully I'll live long enough to

come up with some type of answer that could help society prevent this, or treat

this in a way that we don't have now.

So again, I want to thank all the listeners today for listening to

our episode, Steve, I want to thank you for being a great cohost and

be willing to discuss this issue.

Cause you know, it's very important to me.

So again, I want to thank our listeners for listening so much,

and we hope that today's episode was informative and helpful.

And we'll talk to you next time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Marshall, for, for all of your insight on suicide

and for all of the information that you've gathered from all of those that

you've spoken to, I know that's not easy to talk to other survivors, they all

are looking for answers and it's hard when you're trying to find your own.

We hope everybody enjoyed today's episode, part three on suicide.

And please, if you've got any questions for us, please send them

in through the website, HopeThru Grief.com and we'll try and get your

questions up and provide answers in the next couple of upcoming shows.

Thank you for listening and everyone have a great week.

Thank you for joining us on Hope Thru Grief with your cohots

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski.

We hope our episode today was helpful and informative.

Since we are not medical or mental health professionals.

We cannot and will not provide any medical, psychological,

or mental health advice.

Therefore, if you or anyone, you know, requires medical or mental health

treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.