The Day I Finally Accepted My Husband’s Suicide

I’m not talking about when I saw him seconds after it happened and it was pretty obvious that he was no longer with us.

I’m not talking about when the police officer came up to me in the moments after and said “He’s gone.”

I’m not talking about the excruciating walk out of the funeral home, when I knew they would be taking him off to the crematorium shortly thereafter.

I’m not even talking about bringing his ashes home, with his name, and some kind of tacky serial number that was most likely associated with his place in line as far as cremations went, attached to it, like a bag of organic coffee with a harvest date.

I am talking about the major epiphany that just plopped into by brain one day, where I fully and unequivocally understood that he truly, from the depths of his soul, felt that he had NO OTHER CHOICE but to end his life.

They call this stage “Acceptance” in the Grief Journey, and it’s kind of a misleading term.

In our minds, we think “I can NEVER accept this! I know he did it but I will never be okay with it!”

It was a huge weight lifted, though, when I realized that I don’t have to be okay with it to understand it. And I don’t even have to know what his thoughts actually were, when he picked up the gun that day. I just had to realize that he made the decision that made the most sense to him in that moment. He had spent years and years trying to be the man he thought…