Letting go of the silence

COEUR d’ALENE — Carla Fine's life would never be the same after Dec. 16, 1989.

That's the day she found her husband, Harry, a successful doctor, dead in his medical office after he injected himself with a lethal dose of the anesthetic thiopental.

"As I looked at my husband’s body, lying on the examining table with the intravenous needle still attached to the crook of his arm, the world as I knew it changed," she said. "At that moment, I was transformed. I didn’t know it then, but I would never be the same person again. My sorrow and guilt would define me for years. My search for meaning in my husband’s too short and interrupted life would open up new aspects of my whole life and personality that I could never have imagined."

His suicide consumed her. The "what ifs" haunted her every thought.

“The suicide of someone you love is shattering,” she said. "You think that you have lost your mind, that you are crazy, that you won’t be able to live through the next hour, let alone the rest of your life. You’re convinced that you’re the only person that has ever felt this way, that no one in this world could ever experience such devastation and be able to survive. You are terrified and think you will feel this way forever.

"You are heartbroken, and your body physically aches from the pain. You have no idea what to do."

Fine, a best-selling author from New York City, shared her journey through suicide survival with a group of about 50 people in Kootenai Health on Friday afternoon during her presentation, "Letting Go of the Silence." She discussed the grim realities of surviving the suicide of a loved one, but she also shared ways to heal.

An important thing to do is not alienate and isolate yourself, she said. One month after her husband's death, she forced herself to go to a support group.

"I walked into a space filled with men and women who looked so normal. They looked like you. There was no way these people could have lost a husband or a daughter or a brother or a mother to suicide. Some were actually laughing, others were eating cookies," she said. "One by one we went around the circle saying who we had lost, how they had died and when it occurred. In that instant, I knew I wasn't crazy. What had happened was crazy, but I wasn't."

Fine wrote about her survivor experiences in her books, "No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One" and "Touched by Suicide: Hope and Healing After Loss." In her work, she has interacted with thousands of other survivors who have also lived through the tragedy of losing someone to suicide.

She offered a few practical tips to getting through the devastation — protect your own health as well as the health of your family members, seek out other survivors, surround yourself with people you feel comfortable with, get professional help if needed and accept that you have changed.

"Suicide is very dramatic," she said. "A person crosses a forbidden boundary and creates a mystery that can never be solved."

She said the first two years are blanketed in shock and mental fog, but the third year is when the fog seems to lift a bit, the fifth year proves your courage to survive and the seventh year is when the full transformation from "who we were to who we are now" takes place.

"After Harry killed himself, I was afraid I would never write again and certainly never marry again, but the road to recovery is filled with unexpected twists and turns," she said. "We all deserve happiness. I've accepted that I can go on living and still remember Harry and honor his memory. Embracing life is truly a tribute to our loved one's legacy and our need and desire not only to survive, but also to thrive."

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255