Death has a profound effect on people. I know because, like most people, I have experienced many reactions that people can have when someone dies.
I remember 1987 very well. A few months after mentioning that no one closely related to me had died, my brother was killed that October. I recall I was “tricked” to go to my parents’ home, and when I arrived, I saw many vehicles on the roadside. I thought my father had died. After all, he was 77 years old and was not always at the peak of health.
When they said it was my brother, I could only recall my head striking the vehicle’s roof. I heard myself like someone wailing in the distance, and, in that moment, it really felt as if there were two separate beings dealing with the shock and horror of a sibling dead in his thirty-fourth year of life. The trauma of his murder has become more manageable over the years.
I have suffered many losses since then. Parents, oldest brother, cousin-loves, brothers-in-law, friends, and buddies. At each juncture, my mortality is challenged; I experience deep anxieties and become very focused on my time on Earth. Would I have made a difference? Will I be able to complete the work I have set out to do?
Maybe it is the finality of death that prompts this existential crisis. Lack of readiness for death is a very common phenomenon. Even if people live to old age or have been ailing for long periods, death is still traumatic. That loss is unbearable and immeasurably complex for most of us.
Death’s permanence and irreversibility create a hollow feeling that nothing fills. Usually, time and life distractions lessen the grief, and in extreme cases, counselling and therapy help people cope with the complications.
And death makes us uncomfortable, too. The language of death exposes that discomfiture. When we were growing up, we referred to dead people as “the deceased;” if we were to call their name, we said, “deceased John” and you were reprimanded by older people to be careful to “show respect.”
Then we decided that “passed” or “passed away” was the appropriate way to announce death. While used for centuries, according to the Internet, it became more widely used “to avoid the bluntness of death” around the 1970s.
Quora.com had a suggestion that made sense, which is, in cultural contexts, it is used to suggest “passing on to heaven (religious) or to soften the (emotional) blow for the bereaved.”
“Departed,” “no longer with us,” “called/gone home,” “soul has moved on,” and, more pertly, “kicked the bucket” all emerge where we can simply and respectfully say “she/he died.”
Nowadays, there is a maddening fad that says a person was “unalive.” I rest this down here. I’m not touching it.
On another level of discourse, violent deaths—homicides, accidental deaths, and suicides—present even greater difficulty. These are sudden and unexpected, and trauma associated with them is referred to as sudden or violent bereavement.
A 2021 qualitative study says, “Trauma resulting from violent death, suicide, and accidental death...is a distinct psychological experience that combines intense grief with symptoms of trauma. This type of loss breaks assumptions about safety, predictability, and justice, often leading to profoundly challenging, long-term, and complicated, often never-fully-resolved, emotional struggles” (Nakajima et al, 2012).
“Violent death is not only sudden and unexpected” but also results in “significant impact on the mental health of bereaved persons.”
Elsewhere, research has concluded that “Individuals bereaved by violent death have a higher risk of developing psychopathology” (Bolasell et al, 2021).
Death is both normal and intrusive, stirring up grief, sadness, anger, shock, disbelief, guilt, stigma and shame, the latter three especially associated with suicide. Death by suicide seems to create the most confusion though, with the stigmatised responses of societies providing even greater trauma, prompting shame and isolation among survivors.
Suicide is a leading cause of death globally. It is a significant public health issue. But the underlying risk factors, severe stressors, and mental health conditions are misunderstood, often resulting in inappropriate, insensitive, or unsensible responses.
Reported suicides impact people outside of the family or friend circle. More confusing is that the death of complete strangers can have any or all the grief effects on us as that of those we know.
Then there is always the search for the “why.” Some reactions to recently reported incidents reminded me how disturbing exclamations can be with unawareness.
When businessman Wayne Yip Choy died by suicide, there was a sombre outpouring of sympathies and beautiful tributes for someone who served our society. But the “why” was exasperatingly prominent in the comments that referenced his wealth, such as “Leave me with my government job” and “If I had his kinda money I woulda never...” or “money don’t buy happiness.”
“Suicide should never be the answer,” toppled my composure. No “softening of the blow” when it is death by suicide, I observed.
Someone wrote, “Something’s off,” in response to the report of the suicidal death of 32-year-old Anna Lalla, a self-employed hairdresser from Cunupia.
“She is too young, pretty and progressive to just take her own life.”
