An Open Letter to A Friend Whose Friend Has Just Taken Her Own Dear Life

Dear J

I'm sorry your friend has just committed suicide. I know you had just talked to her a few months back and I know you blame yourself for not talking her out of her suicidal tendencies. I cannot claim to understand your sorrow, since it has never happened to me, though a loss, a death is something that plucks the same string in all of us, playing the same rueful tune, rippling to the very core of our souls, so let me try a few words.

The first time you told me, I referred you to an article where a father struggled with the death of his son. Let me repeat a particular sentence, as it has stubbornly repeated itself in my mind: 

It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.

I know you are sick of people telling you to get over it, so I'm not going to tell you to. But you must. However long it will take, you must. And do not lash at those people. If they bothered to tell you, they care for you. Listen, J, as I have told you before, it takes a strong character like yours to be able to wear one's heart on one's sleeve, but an exposed heart gets cut more. Victor Frankl said that the sun needs to endure burning to give out light. You have a big, healthy heart, J, that's why you are bothered about this in the first place.

Channelling your grief into something else might work. I see that you have started running again after recovering from your injury. I swim, or write silly letters like this. The obliterated place is literally 'against the letter', so I would use words to construct the obliterated back. Remember the ankle injury that cripples you, forcing you to wear ankle guard like a clumsy Robocop? It has healed, hasn't it? The big gash in your heart will someday close, too, and you will be able to run again, be it on the field-track or the life-track.

I believe in a proper closure. That's why we have funerals, to mark the closing of a life. We have New Year's Eve celebration, to mark the closing of the year. I don't know what is your version of closure, but I hope you will find it. Attend her funeral, talk to her parents, write her a letter, write her family a letter, let go of a helium balloon to the vast sky, take a night walk in remembrance of her; do what you can do. Mark it as a closure to a chapter in your life -- a bitter chapter indeed -- and start a new chapter. Take your time, but do not dwell so long -- grief is like quagmire, the longer you stay, the longer you will get stuck.

Remember your big heart, J, the one with gashing wound and has to endure nuclear fusion to shine?
Glow for all to see.

Yours