When Suicide Strikes

 I wrote my first column about suicide in 2010.  As painful as the subject is, I try to address it at least once a year because so many families suffer from the aftermath of its tragic effects.  In many cases, the memory of the person who takes their life is virtually erased.  Unlike other loved ones who die, few mention their name. Friends don’t know what to say.  Comfort is often elusive.

 A reader sent one of my early columns to friends whose son had taken his own life.  They responded, “Thank you.  No one other than our closest relatives, and there are very few left; has mentioned our son’s suicide in conversation or written word since it happened.”   Sadly, the number of families experiencing loss of loved ones to suicide is growing.

 A recent study by the Pentagon reported that the leading cause of death among American servicemen is suicide.  Studying the causes of death among U.S. soldiers between 2014 and 2019, the study concluded that enlisted men were nine times more likely to die from suicide than from enemy fire. During that time period, 883 servicemen committed suicide.

 According to further interviews, the suicide rate among active-duty soldiers has continued to climb since 2019. To date, 55 servicemen have died due to suicide in 2024.   While the military is attempting to stem the suicide trends among service personnel, they note that suicide has been increasing in the general population as a whole, up 37% since 2000. The American Psychological Association reports that more than 20% of youth have contemplated suicide. 

 In his book, A Confession, Leo Tolstoy described his struggle to avoid suicide.  After he had written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and had skyrocketed to fame and fortune, he fell into deep depression.  Tolstoy wrote “All this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is considered complete good fortune. … in this situation I came to this – that I could not live, and, fearing death, had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my own life.”

 Having rejected all religion as a young man.  Tolstoy searched for an answer through the sciences, philosophy and world religions.  He wrote, “I was no longer in the position in which I had been in my youth, when all in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because, apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except destruction.” 

 “I remembered that I only lived at those times when I believed in God. As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only to forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died. … I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him.  I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. … To know God and to live is one and the same thing.  God is life.”

 Tolstoy became a devout follower of Jesus Christ.  His commitment to follow Jesus in all things led to his later writings that strongly influenced such men as Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  He remained committed in his faith until his death at age 82.