Coworker committed suicide...

[acejka]

A person who was much higher up the chain than me committed suicide yesterday. On my birthday. Ugh I knew 24 was going to be a bad age/year.

He was one of the 5 founders of my place of work, and was much older...In his mid 70s.

He was a person who would stop and speak to you like he actually cared about your feelings or how your day was even though he ran the place.


I am so mad at him for caring only about himself and doing it, but something doesn't seem right about the situation. He masked his feelings very well, and granted I didn't know him very well, but he didn't seem suicidal.

At the same time all I can think about is how he felt, was he crying what made him finally pull the trigger, and most importantly how alone he was and must have felt.

It is really tearing me up inside. I am taking an estate planning class and it had already made me a little ocd/anxious about death.

I really feel like it could have been prevented and all I can focus on is how sad he must have felt and alone and at the same time I am so mad at him, but every time I let my mind idle it pops back to him sitting there alone in the dark and for some reason I feel like he agonized over it and cried and it took a long time for him to do it.

I guess at this point all I can do is keep his family in my prayers and hope they can heal and keep his memory alive. I just hope he is in a better place and is peaceful.



Sorry for the vent but I needed to get this off of my chest...

 

[disvaclub92]

My sympathy to you. Suicide is never easy to understand. One thing I try to think of when I hear this, is that somehow they are at peace with themself to do it although others are left to suffer.


Happy Birthday to you.

 

[Mackey Mouse]

Who knows why people do what they do? So sad that he felt his only choice was suicide and did not reach out for help. I wonder if maybe he was ill and no one knew it and he just did not want to deal with it.. who knows..

I am sorry that this happened.

 

[WDWLVR]

to you. It is very hard to understand. I've been there as 13 years ago I went into work and found out the President of our company had killed himself the night before. I was one of the last people at work to talk to him before he left and he seemed upbeat and was even talking about our next catalog to me. Why he did it we'll never know and it changed so many peoples lives. Those really close to him including his partner had it the worst but all of us at the company were later effected as the company was sold not 2 years later.

As much as it hurts I think you are looking at it in the right way. It is sad that you had to experience this at such a young age. Happy birthday!

 

[kimis]

Sorry! I am praying for his family and you as well as the others in his life who knew and loved him.

 

[mommyofboys]

Please don't think that he only cared about himself. Unfortunately when others are planning on committing suicide they are not thinking clearly. They do not think about what it will do to those that they leave behind. They are in a state of mind where they need to end their own pain. We went through this 8 years ago when my uncle (my mom's brother) hung himself. He was only in his 30's and just like you said - we never thought he would do this. My grandmother was out of town when this happened and I was leaving to go to Hawaii 2 days later and his birthday was about 6 days away. We were the same way - asking "why" - and that is an answer we will never know. They say that those who talk about committing suicide are the ones who are looking for help and have no intention on actually doing it. Death is never easy - take comfort in knowing that he is in a better place and pain free from whatever he was dealing with.

 

[SanFranciscan]

I had crisis intervention training by San Francisco Suicide Prevention while I was doing a study about PMS because some of the women whom I was interviewing had depression as a symptom of their disease and sometimes were at risk for suicide. What the suicide prevention center taught us was that when people do something life-threatening and then call an ambulance it is because there is a battle going on between the part of them that wants to live and the part of them that wants to die so they just set the forces in motion and then step back to see which side wins.

I wonder if that is what your co-worker was doing in his own way. Maybe he was pretending that everything was fine in hopes of making it become fine. Maybe you did make his final days better by allowing him to focus on your life instead of his own at such a difficult time in his life.

 

[drlee]

My heart breaks for his family and friends. I can tell you first hand you will never find the answers to the questions you have. My beautiful Mother took her life 15 years ago this month. Until my last conversation with her she seemed fine. A few days later my life completely fell apart. The only thing I can tell you is you will have a lot of emotions and questons where the act itself is concerned. I have to remember that my Mother was a wonderful person and at the end she handled her problems the only way she thought she could at the time. At this time we really haven't found anything wrong that was worth her dying for. The only advice I have is that you will have to find answers that you can live with and just go from there. God bless his family, friends and yourself.

I hope you still found some joy in your Birthday!!