Rebecca was 20 when her dad died. It wasn’t an auto accident. It wasn’t cancer. It was suicide.

According to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, via an article in Digital Journal, researchers estimate between 7,000 and 12,000 children lose a parent to suicide.

Kris Grawitch, a Program Coordinator at Heartlinks Grief Center at Family Hospice in Belleville, IL, says anyone grieving a death by suicide tends to have more guilt, less social support. “Those ‘should haves’ and ‘if onlys’ get pretty big and we see them from a very young age.”

Rebecca certainly understands these feelings. The St. Louisan has grappled with them herself.

“I felt that I should’ve made a better effort with (my dad) in our relationship; that I should’ve opened up to him more and then maybe he would’ve opened up to me more; that if I had been able to work past our issues, that I might have been able to be there more for him,” she said. “Basically, I put the responsibility on myself that I should have been able to save him,” she says. ”Only after many years and lots of therapy have I been able to let a little of this guilt go, but I still have to remind myself that I am not responsible for my dad’s choices.  But my dad did not have to go it alone; all he had to do was reach out— to me, to anyone— for help.  I wish he would have done so.”

When a child (at any age) loses a parent they often also feel a great deal of anger at the person who’s died.

“In suicides the struggle is always that the anger is directed at the dead loved one. So, you end up feeling conflicted because you miss them so much AND you’ve got so much anger toward. Again, societal judgments about this somehow being a choice get stirred up in the survivors and it’s hard to cope with those feelings,” says Grawitch.

Rebecca can relate and adds, “I also struggled, and continue to do so, because I do not know exactly what happened the night he killed himself.  I was so angry with him for being so impulsive.  I was so angry with him for leaving me behind with all the unanswered questions. It felt like a personal attack on me.” 

The same report in the recent Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry points out that if a parent commits suicide, the risk increases that the child will also commit suicide.

According to Grawitch, younger children who lose a parent to suicide are also at increased risk of developing separation anxiety, having poor grades, participating in at-risk behaviors, and developing depression.

Rebecca was diagnosed with depression a couple of months before her dad died. Although he was proactive about consulting a doctor and beginning therapy, she held off in telling her dad.

“My parents had divorced when I was 13, and my dad and I had always had a difficult relationship.  Although we saw each other often, I never really opened up to him about my life.  Looking back, I realize that he and I essentially did the same thing— we were both trying to protect each other from the realities of our lives.  Neither of us opened up to one another about how we were really doing.  And, in our case, that isolation had disastrous results.”

None of it is easy. “However, kids who lose a parent still have to grow up and hit all the developmental milestones, only without the guidance and love of this most sacred person in our culture…and they do it while watching their friends have that parent next to them. It’s just tough all the way around,” Grawitch notes.

Even now that Rebecca is an adult and years have passed, she admits that she still struggles.

“Although the pain isn’t as palpable anymore on a daily basis, there are constant reminders of what I have lost.  I still have questions.  I still have deeply unresolved issues.  I’ve come to realize that I always will, which is unsettling but nonetheless my reality now.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Wednesday.