Widows of Suicide Victims

First, thanks to everyone who responded to my last entry. Your comments were very interesting and I agree that losing someone, whether they were a poor partner or not, is painful and can make life difficult. Last weekend I was contemplating what I would discuss in this week's blog and then this past Tuesday I received a call that one of my clients had committed suicide and made his wife a widow. I could not bring myself to write about this earlier in the week as I was still processing what had happened.
Widowhood is difficult enough to deal with and in this case, the widow was saddled with dealing with her husband's suicide and all of the many questions that go along with that. When my client's wife called she was asking why he did not just run away. She stated that she did not see this coming. She cried about having her last memory of him being the image of him hanging from a rope. He left her with financial burdens and worst of all he left her with emotional burdens. She is grieving his loss but she will and is already dealing with the anger of his suicide. She is left to survive his death and question his reasons. She will surely at some point experience more anger that he left her to deal with all the problems they were sharing before his suicide. As a mental health professional I can analyze his reasons for his suicide but for his widow, she may only see this as a selfish choice of her partner. When I talked to my mom about this, yes I am a momma's boy, she stated "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." I thought about her comment and sadly my client has created some permanent problems for his spouse. I wrote this blog in hopes that I would receive some feedback about how my classmates think that suicide would change the issues of becoming a widow. I feel that it only makes the process of widowhood more painful. I feel that my client's wife is now not only dealing with becoming a widow but she has to now also deal with questioning why this happened and what she could have done to change the outcome. I have been counseling now for two years and this is my first client to commit suicide. The processing of this has been challenging for me and I can only imagine what his wife is going through.