Suicide of a Relative You've Never Met?

[aceofanxiety]

Hi Everyone,
I've always wanted to ask this and never knew where. I think this is an ok space.
Usually when people talk about surviving suicide they talk about a relative they knew well, like a parent or sibling. But my situation is different and weirder. My grandmother (mom's mom) committed suicide by pill overdose over 50 years ago when my mom was a teenager. That's over 20 years before I was born. My mom has always refused to process this, so the pain is raw for her even though she blocks it out. I've always felt a connection to my grandmother even though I never got to meet her. I feel the connection and the loss even though I didn't know the person.
Does anyone else have an experience like this?

[brownblob]

I had a cousin who lived in another state who I didn't know at all, who committed suicide in his early 20's. I was quite suicidal in my teens and early twenties, so I felt a connection to him. Just kind of an understanding maybe of what he felt.

[Tryin]

It's interesting how a suicide can cascade down generations, or ripple out like waves... it's not just a death, it's a trauma. (By "it's not just a death" I don't mean to discount the pain of losing someone and grieving for them. Rather, it's a different experience to lose someone to suicide -- for me it has been far more complicated -- than it is to lose someone to, say, cancer or old age.) My wife's maternal grandmother died by suicide about four years before she was born, and growing up her mother would only ever say that she died from an "illness". It wasn't until my wife was in her preteens I think, so about a decade and a half after her grandmother killed herself, that her mother finally revealed to her the truth. I have met people who show up at support groups who lost someone 15 or 20 years ago and are only now able to process it. Again... there's something haunting about suicide that I don't quite feel around the deaths of other loved ones. My beloved sister killed herself 18 months ago, after a horrific battle with depression. (I'm surprised there isn't a whole long string of conversations in the mentalpod forum under the topic "suicide"... I can only find a few devoted specifically to it, but I haven't deep searched yet, I'm new to the forum.) In answer to your question: yes, I too often feel a connection and a sense of loss when I hear of people I've never met who have died by suicide. I felt this even before I lost my sister, partly because I can relate to it. I have always been a depression geek (it's my video game or wine or sport obsession -- I have it, it runs in my father's family like some dark ancient curse, and I study it) for years. I would say... whenever you think about your grandmother's suicide... think also about what it might be stirring up deep down inside yourself. And it's okay to feel whatever it is you are feeling, even it's very dark and heavy. (If you're lucky, it's just curiosity and love). Let your grandmother be a teacher to you in some way -- ask her death what it's teaching you or trying to tell you.