John Luttig & Lynne Rosen
It used to be when I would give speeches for victims’ rights organizations or homicide survivor groups, I would begin with this observation:
While all deaths are tragic, there is one type of death that is more tragic than all the others, and that is murder. In virtually all other deaths in our society, the individual is surrounded by a support system of some sort, whether it is family and friends, doctors and nurses, police, fire or EMT personnel, or selected others. Only in murder cases is the individual alone, bereft of friends, hope or comfort, terrified and often in pain.
After one such presentation in southern Virginia, a woman came up to me and stated she was moved by what I had said, but there was another type of death that fulfilled the same grim criteria.
And that was suicide.
She told me that her son had committed suicide the year before, and had suffered all of the same aloneness and pain as murder victims. Moreover, she and her husband experienced the same sense of loss, emptiness and destruction of future possibilities as homicide victim survivors feel.
I couldn’t disagree.
This all came back to me upon hearing that 48-year-old life coach and motivational speaker John Littig and his 46-year-old psychotherapist wife Lynne Rosen had committed suicide by inhaling helium in their Brooklyn apartment. They were found holding hands on the sofa and each had left a suicide note.
In Littig’s note was the phrase,”I can’t take it anymore, my wife is in too much pain.”
This is particularly poignant since this couple in the self-help business also had a call-in radio show called “The Pursuit of Happiness” that promoted “personal development, growth and creativity.”
Their consulting company, according to the website, was “designed to help foster and encourage your inner strengths,” and “put you confidently on the path to designing the life you’ve always wanted to live.”
No particular insights here, only a vicarious sadness, and no clues as to what sort of pain Ms. Rosen was in that led these two clearly caring people to mutually forsake all of the hope and possibility they preached for others. The details will probably emerge in the days to come.
But regardless of what they are, let us acknowledge that no matter how people seem on the outside, we never know what challenges or demons they face inside. We do not excuse the demons in those who feel a need to take the lives of others. But we ought to feel great compassion and empathy for those who feel a need to take their own.
Because they are also victims.
As one who suffered with suicidal ideation in my 20’s but was diagnosed with recurring mono, I understand the depths of despair. I was able to deal with it after diagnosis and then researched both the illness and depression.
Suicide resulting from depressive guilt is a Western phenomenon according to Dr. Nathan Kline in his book, “From Sad to Glad’. He listed depressive guilt as a universal symptom until he practiced in Malaysia. He found no cases of suicide due to depression. Indeed at a village, there may be two men who didn’t go to work in the fields that day: one with the flu, the other muttering to himself.
He surmised that cultural factors are important such as, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, an impossible task for someone lost in depression.
As for suicide from unremitting pain, it was the treatment of choice for those with the horrific back pain that never quit. I experienced that electric pain 10 years ago off and on for three days. I screamed (I drove myself to the ER with the tip of my big toe smashed and split in 3 places, so I’ve experienced pain). I was able to end it by moving, but if that didn’t work, I would do whatever it took to end it.
A good friend from my childhood lives on pain meds due to back surgery that wasn’t successful. In 10 years, he has only be able to talk to me once.
Really, like serial killer Israel Keyes who deprived the families of so many from justice. Maybe we should feel empathy for serial killer Maury Travis, who claimed to have killed at least 17 women and then never divulged the true number or where the remaining victims were?
I think those who take there own life are saying to God “I am my own master not you, if I die than God has mastered my life. If I kill myself I am the master.”
Even if they do not then the show a certain selfishness that does not lend itself to pity, your ideology seems closer to false compassion. In other words pity the murderer and not the murdered, the rapist and not the raped. Pity not the girl who was given heroine but pity the rich boy because he came from a fine family..
Suicide is just a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I think.
Dave Reichert for Senate!