Helping others get through the pain

VALPARAISO | Britta Neinast said, looking back, there were red flags her father was in trouble.

Just a couple of weeks before ending a long career in construction and after going through the painful loss of his mother, 61-year-old Ronnie White lost interest in his love of hunting, began speaking unintelligibly and would walk into a room and look right past anyone there, she said.

"It was like he was in another world," Neinast said.

On Dec. 7, 2005, he placed a chair in the front yard of his home in Palm Beach County, Fla., and returned to it the following Saturday to kill himself with a shotgun.

Neinast, who had moved to Valparaiso just six months earlier, said she was shocked by the news, but not totally surprised.

Her daughter, who was 9 at the time, at first refused to believe her grandfather took his own life. It was two years before she accepted the fact.

Neinast, who now works as a counselor, in addition to facilitating support groups and helping provide suicide education in local schools, said the grief surrounding suicide is unique because of the self-inflicted nature of the death.

"We can understand an accident happens or a heart attack happens," Neinast said.

As a result, suicide often is ignored. Neinast hopes sharing her story will encourage others to talk about the pain they have gone through, which she said is helpful for healing.

It also is vital to bring this issue out into the light and discuss it in hopes of educating others about the warning signs before it is too late.

"I'm not the type of person who doesn't talk about the elephant in the room," Neinast said.

Neinast is looking into facilitating this process by developing local teams trained to reach out to families and other loved ones immediately following a suicide. If a quick connection can be made, it can save years in the healing process.

"What I do in processing this is the work I do," Neinast said.

 

Mom helping others after son's suicide

ST. JOHN | Nancy Rodgers said the last time she spoke with her eldest son, Johnny Laskowski, was the evening of July 10, 2006, when he agreed to help remove wallpaper at a Schererville home she was planning to sell.

When she arrived at that house the following day to check on his progress, she was unable to open the garage door with the remote control in her vehicle.

Rodgers entered the house and made her way to the garage, where she found a vehicle with the dash lights on.

"That's where I found my son," she said.

The 21-year-old was slumped over in the vehicle, dead after intentionally letting it run and filling the garage with exhaust.

Rodgers said the discovery came as a surprise, even though her son's mental state had been declining for a couple of years and he had been hospitalized 20 times during that period for depression.

"Having suicidal thoughts and actually taking action on suicidal thoughts are two different things," she said.

Rodgers said she was hospitalized herself after attempting to take her own life at the age of 21. The experience taught her she wanted to live.

"I think I was more afraid to live than actually wanting to die," she said. "I just wanted to stop the hurt."

The pain of her son's death still lives on for Rodgers, who said she is not sure she could stand losing another child.

She said she has found the strength to go on by focusing on the needs of her three surviving children and by reaching out to help others who have been hurt by a suicide.

A couple of years after her son's death, she organized the first Out of Darkness suicide awareness walk in Munster, which kicks off its third year at 9 a.m. Sept. 25 at Centennial Park on Calumet Avenue.

"I feel that's one day that I can try to have set aside to come together with lots of other people who understand what I go through," she said. "Unless it is something that has touched your life, you really don't have an understanding of it."

Woman talks about brother's suicide

HAMMOND | Karen Lawrence said her older brother, Ken Stratton, suffered through many tough times in his life, including bouts of severe depression, alcohol abuse, hospitalization and homelessness.

Yet with the help of medication, counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous and the unending support of family, Stratton always seemed to bounce back.

Lawrence said that is why she was so surprised when, during the morning hours of Oct. 7, 2006, she received a call that her brother had killed himself. Stratton, 44, took his life the day before outside his parents' home in Hot Springs Village, Ark.

"I never thought he would ever do something like that," she said. "You just think he's going to bounce back."

Stratton had waited until his parents went out for the evening before making dinner for himself around 5 p.m., Lawrence said. After eating and cleaning up, he went to the garage, gathered a rope and stepladder, walked over to a tree near the road and hanged himself.

Unaware of any support groups at the time, Lawrence said she got through the first year by reading all she could about suicide, joining online discussions and relying on her faith.

"I threw myself into my life," she said. "I'm going to live."

At the same time, she bounced between feelings of anger toward her brother and guilt in a cycle that continues today, only not as strong.

"I should have had that sisterly feeling something was wrong," Lawrence said.

She eventually joined The Wounded Healers Grief Support Group in Highland and formed her own monthly Healing Circle group in Hammond.

"You bring up the subject (of suicide) and families and friends get very uncomfortable," she said of the importance of the groups.

Her advice to others who have lost a loved one to suicide is not to try to cope alone and not let others tell you how or how long to grieve.

"There's more help out there than you realize," she said.