the people who talk about it do it. You feel confused, torn by conflicting
urges. You ache for Alonzo’s pain and want to help him, but you also feel
irritated at him for putting his life in your unqualified hands. Mostly, you’re
scared, afraid to speak lest the wrong thing push him closer to the edge.
Eventually you have to say something. Here are a few ideas:
TAKE ACTION, NOT RESPONSIBILITY. There is absolutely nothing you
can do to prevent a person who really wants to die from killing himself.At
best, you may be able to delay the inevitable, but in the end the decision
will be his, not yours.
Your actions should be directed at clearly communicating that you’re
dead set against suicide, decreasing the opportunities for harm, and get-
ting him professional help as quickly as possible. By his responses, you may
begin to draw some conclusions about the purpose and seriousness of the
threat, but your assessment should make little difference. The most help-
ful thing you can do is to treat even small hints about suicide formally and
seriously.The message you want to send, start to finish, is that thoughts
of suicide are nothing to play around with.
With divorce, a pistol, and beer in the picture, you should have no
problem taking Alonzo’s threat seriously. But what about Rachel’s? A few
years ago she went through a period of making suicide threats that were,
by all the standards a professional would apply, far less serious than Alonzo’s.
The phone rings a little after midnight. Again. You fumble for
it in the dark.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” Rachel sobs. “There’s just no
hope. This time I’m afraid I’m really going to do it. I’ve got the
pills in my hand.”If there is a dependent depressed person like Rachel in your life,
chances are you’ve heard statements like this before. Probably more than
once. You’re pretty sure she isn’t actually going to do anything to herself,
but that should not make a difference.
If a suicide threat is serious, you want to do whatever you can to stop
Rachel from harming herself. If the threat is less serious, you want to
stop her from threatening. The same approach is most likely to accom-
plish either goal.
194 ❧Explosions into Sadness