What my neighbour’s suicide taught me about grief

Processing the death of someone you hardly knew

This article talks about suicide, which you may find distressing. If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of self harm or distress, please seek help. In Australia Lifeline provides 24/7 crisis support 13 11 14

It was around 2am on a Monday morning when I was woken by what I thought was a low flying helicopter. The kind of vibrational sound that feels a bit exciting until you imagine someone jumping the backyard fence like an episode of True Detective.

As my senses came to, I realised it was more like a low lying rumble with a rattle. There was a strong smell of exhaust fumes in the air.

By now my husband was awake and we were both out of bed. I could see light shining through the back fence from our neighbour’s carport. It’d been built just a couple of years earlier to house his 1970s Corvette. Or Cadillac? I’m not sure exactly what make and model of classic car starting with C it was. But I was sure of the sound of that engine. And it was very unusual to be hearing it at that time of night. They weren’t the sort of neighbours that made any noise after 9pm.

The fence was rattling fiercely like it was about to explode. Also weird given the carport was far from air tight.

The look on my husband’s face told me he was thinking the same thing I was. There was only one plausible explanation and it wasn’t good.

The kids were only little and not sleeping through the night, so we couldn’t both go over to see what was going on. I stayed in the house, straining to hear an update. Minutes that felt like hours of waiting and thinking the worst.

Soon the very worst of my thoughts was confirmed. I heard my husband on the phone to emergency services. I heard him jump the fence and call out. The engine turned off.

Brief silence, then sirens and flashing lights. A hum of the firefighters blowing out the exhaust fumes to make the area safe. Not long after, the paramedics announced our neighbour was dead. Then came the police to collect our statements.

What did we know about the deceased?

Aside from offering a whole lot of expletives, neither of us really had much to say. We’d been neighbours for around 12 years, but we hadn’t had much to do with him or his family beyond the occasional chit chat. We didn’t even know his last name until the police told us during my husband’s ‘first to find’ statement. And now here we were, in the early hours of a Monday morning trying to help the police piece together the final moments of his life.

I didn’t even see his body, but I was deeply disturbed by this whole experience. In the weeks that followed I felt a bit like my body was stuck in fright or flight response. The sound of a V8 car engine idling or the smell of petrol sent my heart rate through the roof. My mind was total mush. A pretty understandable response to a traumatic experience I suppose.

And of course, there were other feelings too. Strong emotions which felt a lot like grief. I felt so angry about the idea that our family could’ve been at risk from the exhaust fumes that wafted through our bedroom window. Equally, I felt guilty about the fact that when he was making preparations the evening before I just felt resentful that his banging around in the carport was interrupting whatever we were watching on TV. And I felt so incredibly sad that he thought doing this and leaving his wife and young son to find him was a good idea. How bad could his situation have been for things to end up like this? I was thinking about him constantly.

But how could I be even close grieving for someone when I didn’t even know his last name?

It’s interesting to think about the different ways in which we know people. While I couldn’t really call this guy anything more than an acquaintance, in other ways we’ve shared really intimate moments. His death is obviously a pretty major moment, but even before that. When you’re neighbours living in close proximity to one another you’re privy to all sorts of snapshots of their lives. Private conversations and other sounds not usually uttered in public. Arguments. Loving family moments. It’s almost like keeping the relationship with your neighbours superficial is a tactic for maintaining some level of respectful distance. So while he definitely wasn’t a loved one, he wasn’t exactly a loose acquaintance in the same way as a barista at the local café.

The closest thing I can liken it to is when I’ve experienced the death of a patient, which happened on the regular when I was working in voluntary assisted dying. In those circumstances, I’d have a one off encounter with a patient and their support person, but it was a pretty intimate moment. Typically the consultation would occur in their home, so you really got a sense of them as a person- far from my experience of talking with people in a hospital ward. But I was also there to do a job, and maintaining boundaries and not getting emotional was an important part of that.

It wasn’t until I’d moved on to another role that the emotional magnitude of the work really hit me. I went to a memorial service and I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. I mean, it was a completely involuntary emotional release that showed up as a longlasting stream of tears. And I felt embarrassed about it. I felt like it was inappropriate- I didn’t have any entitlement to grieve. Grief is something that’s meant for friends and loved ones. That’s what society tells us. Isn’t it?

As it so happens, this sense of inner conflict about whether or not you’re entitled to feel grief is actually pretty common. It’s even got a name: disenfranchised grief.

We have set ideas in our heads of what grief looks like in society. Who’s allowed to do it, how they should behave, how long it goes on for, you know the deal. But there’s also a whole heap of stuff that falls outside of that which is considered ‘normal’.

In these cases there’s a risk that the individual will be disenfranchised in their grief and repress their emotional response, either as a self-imposed act or in response to others putting pressure on them to conform to the norms. The problem with this is that it can result in things like shame or other mental health concerns with long-lasting and far reaching impact.

All sorts of experiences can fall under the banner of disenfranchised grief, but there are a few major types. Some people feel disenfranchised because they are grieving over something other than a human death. This could be a relationship breakdown, the loss of a pet, or the loss of a loved one’s personality caused by illness or injury, addiction or even something like joining a cult. Others may feel like their grief isn’t the type that should be talked about in public, like the loss experienced from abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth, or causes of death that carry a stigma like suicide. Some people may be excluded from, or consider themselves outside of the grieving process. This could be because they’re considered incapable of understanding death, such as children and the cognitively impaired, people like prisoners who may be considered unworthy of grief and people for whom the relationship isn’t seen as significant or valid, such as an estranged relationship or a loose acquaintance like a neighbour or co-worker. And finally, some people may experience disenfranchised grief because they are made to feel that they’re not grieving ‘properly’ as their emotional responses or period of grief falls outside that which is considered socially acceptable.

As healthcare professionals, understanding and recognising the other less traditional types of grief not only benefits our patients but also our colleagues and, perhaps most importantly, ourselves. It might sound trite, but we really can’t care for others without caring for ourselves. This takes conscious effort. It also takes connecting with others. Its through empathic communication with others, be it social contacts, peers, professionals or even writing stuff on the internet and sending it out into the void, that we gradually make sense of our emotions and make meaning of our loss. And, hopefully, we also gradually make progress into building a world where people feel more connected and less alone in their suffering.

Photo by Sebastiano Piazzi on Unsplash