Even less nice...

I went to a suicide yesterday. I'll do a blog about "sudden deaths" in general another time, but I always find suicides specifically really sad.

It doesn't help that I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to dealing with bodies. It doesn't matter that I've come across so many since I joined the Police. I'm still waiting for it to get easier (as I've been promised on so many occasions). But suicides are especially sad.

Very briefly, and without too much detail, this lad had hung himself using electrical flex. His friends hadn't seen or heard from him for over ten days and they had called us. When we got there, I lifted up the letter box and was fairly certain, even as I called his name out, that he was in there and that he had died.

We forced an entry to his flat and found him there. And so we went through our procedures (again, I'll go into them another time). Looking around the flat, I got a taste of the desperation he must have felt in the days and weeks leading up to his death. His flat was dirty and untidy, as if he'd long since stopped caring about himself. His suicide note mentioned an apology to his daughter and I wondered what was going through his mind as he wrote it. There was very little in the flat to suggest much interraction with other people, and I wondered if he just felt desperately lonely. That, perhaps, if for whatever reason he hadn't felt so alone then he'd still be here now.

I also wondered how the child's mother was going to explain to her that her dad was dead. And how the rest of his family would feel; would they be angry with him or feel guilty at themselves. Apparently I'm not very good as staying emotionally detached sometimes...

He was a heavy heroin user and had become depressed about the way he saw his life spiralling out of his control. This is actually the third suicide of a heroin user that I've had direct involvement with and each of them had chosen the same method to kill themselves. I've also attended suicides from overdoses, shotgun blasts, jumping from high buildings and one guy who even doused his car in petrol and set fire to it with him inside.

No matter how they did it and for whatever reason, each of them shared a deep, black desperation; a feeling that no matter what they tried they were always going to feel their pain, be it grief, physical pain, shame, guilt or desperation. And each person decided that there was no way to make things better, to be happy again. So, they decided to stop their pain for good.

A lot of people describe suicides as a selfish act, one where the people left behind are left to deal with the grief and guilt etc. And to an extent I agree. Our squad, some years ago, dealt with an incident where a male threw himself in front of a train. And I swear, that will haunt the driver of the train for the rest of his life.

But maybe committing suicide also takes some courage as well. Physical courage if nothing else. Taking that one final step over the edge of the roof or placing a shotgun in your mouth and slowly pressing the trigger.....

To be honest, the truth is that everybody involved adversely affected to some extent. I just hope that fate and my radio give me a nice break before the next one I have to deal with.