Bruised and Wounded

Recent events have shown again how suicide touches all of us — often when we least expect it. But how to unpack the grief that follows such a painful, and often stigmatized, death? Ron Rolheiser can help. When someone is stricken with cancer, one of three things can happen: Doctors treat the disease and cure it; professionals can' t cure the disease but can control it so that the person suffering can live with the disease for the rest of his or her life; or the cancer can be of a kind that cannot be treated and all the medicine and treatments in the world are powerless – the person dies. Emotional depression leading to suicide can work the same way. Sometimes a person can be treated so that, in effect, they are cured; sometimes they can' t ever really be cured, but can be treated in a way that they can live with the disease for their whole life; and sometimes, just as with certain kinds of cancer, the disease is untreatable, unstoppable, and no intervention by anyone or anything can halt its advance – it eventually kills the person and there is nothing anyone can do. Thus, Ronald Rolheiser begins this small, powerful book. With chapters also on “ Removing the Taboo,” “ Despair as Weakness Rather than Sin,” “ Reclaiming the Memory of Our Loved One,” and “ The Pain of the Ones Left Behind,” Fr. Rolheiser offers hope and a new way of understanding death by suicide.