Suicide, this powerful act of leaving our world, is no stranger to me. It has been the means by which people have left my life in the context of my work and on occasions in the ‘non work’ places of my life. Just this week, a young man I worked with a few years ago appeared on my screen as part of an intelligence search I and colleagues were conducting. The report contained the observations of how the ambulance personnel had found him on being called to his address. To use John Donohue’s words, I once again was faced with “the sudden wall of dark” and since have found myself remembering. So for Nick and all those that know about suicide here are John’s words of blessing in full ….
As you huddle around the torn silence
Each by this lonely deed exiled
To a solitary confinement of soul,
May some small glow from what has been lost
Return like the kindness of candlelight.
As your eyes strain to sift
This sudden wall of dark
And no one can say why
In such a forsaken, secret way,
This death was sent for …
May one of the lovely hours
Of memory return
Like a field of ease
Among these gravelled days.
May the Angel of Wisdom
Enter the ruin of absence
And guide your minds
To receive this bitter chalice
So that you may not damage yourselves
By attending only at the hungry altar
Of regret and anger and guilt.
May you be given some inkling
That there could be something else at work
And that what to you now seems
Dark, destructive and forlorn
Might be a destiny that looks different
From inside the eternal script.
May vision be granted to you
To see this with the eyes of providence.
May your loss become a sanctuary
Where new presence will dwell
To refine and enrich
The rest of your life
With courage and compassion
And may your lost loved one
Enter into the beauty of eternal tranquillity,
In that place where there is no more sorrow
Or separation or mourning or tears.
