A Yamaha guitar, its light wood grain adorned with a few stickers and a strip of duct tape, sits near a carved window seat in Gloria Hutchinson’s sunny Bangor home office. Propped behind its strings is a 2010 photo of her son David, playing the instrument.
It was his first real guitar, a testament to a lifelong love of music that started with childhood strumming of Beatles tunes on his first instrument — a plastic toy guitar.
Around the house are more snapshots of David and the whole Hutchinson family, showing smiles, arms around each other, and David’s mop of wavy brown hair.
The images bring comfort, Gloria says. They help her to remember her talented son who kept his emotions buried inside. Memories are all she has left of her only child, plus photos and a few mementos of his life.
In November 2012, David Hutchinson died by suicide in the woods near his family’s Bangor home. He was 48.
A world upside-down
“Once the tragic event happens, your world turns upside-down. … Sometimes, the person has been despondent and depressed before, but it’s never gone this far. For others, the shock is sudden and completely unexpected,” says Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., a California psychotherapist with 30 years’ experience in counseling. She lost a friend to suicide, who was being treated for cancer.
The Hutchinson family, which includes David’s two daughters, have grieved in different ways.
Just months after her son’s death, Gloria Hutchinson began writing a book, “ Damage Done: Suicide of an Only Son,” which was released in August. A writer, she says the process was therapeutic and helped her work through the complex emotions that come with both mourning a son and recovering from a loved one’s suicide.
“I feel like it saved me,” says Hutchinson. “If I didn’t write about David’s death, I would never be able to get through the process of grieving. … I needed to get it out.”
But for Dave, David’s father and Gloria’s husband, the recovery process has been more private. “Dave likes to process it on his own. [He] doesn’t want to be in any position where he has to talk about it,” Gloria Hutchinson said. Dave Hutchinson declined to be interviewed for this story.
While the book helped Gloria Hutchinson process her complex emotions, David Hutchinson’s daughters, Kiersten, 24, and Jessy, 22, haven’t read the book yet. They aren’t ready.
“I’ve got to do what I can do [to recover] but each one has to [recover in] their own way,” says Hutchinson.
Grieving a loss by suicide
For suicide survivors — those left behind when a loved one takes their own life — the process of grieving is complex and nuanced.
“You go into shock at first, and go through the necessary awfulness — identifying the body, dealing with the police and the coroner, making funeral arrangements, notifying people, comforting relatives, friends and children and the memorial itself — like a robot, mostly without feeling,” says Tessina.
From anger to guilt to depression, strong emotions follow. “You go through the stages of grief: shock, anger, seeking, depression and peace. It’s normal to feel guilt that you didn’t do enough, rage at the departed person, a need for prayer and comfort, bouts of being overwhelmed and thinking you can’t go on, and, finally, acceptance,” says Tessina. “These feelings will come jumbled up, they’ll recycle, and come in different order.”
Gloria Hutchinson recalls feeling these things. “There is this terrible burden of guilt, whether it’s misplaced or not,” she says. In her book, she also included a letter to her son where she expresses her anger over his death.
Grieving a suicide also can be a very lonely process. However, many suicide survivors say that opening up about it often leads to realizing others around you have dealt with similar deaths but haven’t spoken openly about it.
“They just can’t face it for themselves. Or they are thinking, ‘What will the neighbors think of it,’ and there is all this judgmentalism,” says Gloria Hutchinson. However, that moment of “me too,” can mean the world to the person struggling with their loved one’s death.
Some friends and neighbors may even not know what to say, as the Hutchinsons experienced, and just not say anything. That can be the hardest.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death for people over the age of 10 in the United States in 2012, the most recent year that statistics are available for. It’s more common to die by suicide than homicide, HIV or viral hepatitis. According to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Maine mirrors those statistics. It’s also the 10th leading cause of death in the Pine Tree State. Men are far more likely to take their own lives — four out of every five suicide deaths in Maine are committed by males.
Finding grace
While writing her book, Gloria Hutchinson spoke with many people — from spiritual advisors to those who attempted suicide but survived. One of them told her something that was strangely comforting. “She had no awareness of anyone else. All she knew was that she needed peace,” says Gloria Hutchinson. “They are not doing it to you. They are doing it for themselves. They cannot see another way out.”
Looking back, Gloria Hutchinson says that she can see warning signs she didn’t notice at the time — from her son’s internalizing of emotions to the haunting last song he wrote.
After his death, friends recorded that song, “Any Day Now,” though Gloria Hutchinson suspects her son would object since he didn’t feel like it was completed.
When Gloria Hutchinson first heard her son sing the song, she was captured by the upbeat tune. But after his death, she realized the lyrics were confessional. “No more dues, no more addiction / Sick of blues and self-inflicted haze / See the unseen stash of endless / Things I’m sure could mend my endless days / Mmmmm, with unclouded gaze.”
It was in his music that she says David revealed bits of his inner life.
“In his everyday life, he was introverted but as a musician, he had to put himself out there physically,” says Gloria Hutchinson. “I think that’s where the drinking started.”
He struggled with alcohol addiction, but couldn’t find resources that worked for him. “He kept thinking he could handle it on his own,” says Gloria Hutchinson. “He just thought he could solve his own problems and they were too big.”
It’s been about two years, and Gloria Hutchinson is still healing. She says she felt like she turned a corner with the release of her book a few months back. She wants to help others with it.
“I’m hoping that telling David’s story will help drag the stigma of suicide out of the closet,” says Gloria Hutchinson.
She’s also hoping that increased awareness will help others reach out to their loved ones who might be in a fragile mental state.
“It’s like poisonous voices are talking in their heads — help them to see they have a future,” she says. “I just hope that they read this and see David’s story as a cautionary tale.”
“Damage Done: Suicide of an Only Son,” is available on Amazon.com as both a paperback book and an e-book.
If you are concerned about yourself or someone else, call Maine’s free and confidential hotline at 1-888-568-1112.
Help for recovery
Licensed psychotherapist Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., shared the following tips for those recovering from a loved one’s death by suicide:
— If you feel inspired to do something hopeful (for example, setting up a memorial fund or praying, giving blood, writing letters), do it.
— If you feel discouraged, just feel it — it will pass, and it may indicate that you need a rest.
— If you feel like laughing, don’t worry about it — it’s a good way to manage tragedy. It often signifies the beginning of healing.
— If you feel angry, remember anger is the underside of love — it’s an expression of the value you attach to the life lost, and very appropriate. But it, too, will come and go and fade with time.
— If you are afraid, of course you are. We are all programmed to want to live, and being so heavily confronted with the fragility of life is terrifying. Humans are resilient, and the fear too will pass.
— If you feel hopeless, it is because you are realizing that life is not in your own control, and you couldn’t do anything to stop this. This is when faith and a belief in a higher purpose to life is very helpful. If you haven’t discovered a belief in higher purpose, then this would be a good
time to search. Talk to clergy, read philosophy, meditate, pray, even get your fortune told. All these methods of attempting to understand the ineffable are imperfect, but they all can help.
— If you need support for your own struggle with these issues, gather friends, family and neighbors around you. We never need each other more than at times like this. We need to feel a part of a larger, safer group. Although you may want solitude from time to time, to get your thoughts together, be careful not to get too isolated
— Getting through the grief process will take at least a year, perhaps several. The first year is the hardest, because you encounter special days, birthdays, holidays and anniversaries all around the calendar. Once you’ve survived each of these once, it gets a little easier.