There are questions that come with losing someone to suicide that you can’t simply answer and move on from. They have a way of following you into the quiet moments, the long drives, the middle of the night, and sometimes even into prayer. You can know that there may never be a complete answer and still find yourself asking anyway.

Why didn’t they tell me? Why didn’t I see it? Was there something I missed? Was there something I could have said differently? Could I have done something? Could one conversation have changed everything? Those questions can become incredibly heavy when you are already carrying the weight of grief.

I’ve learned that grief after suicide is not just missing someone. It is trying to make sense of something that often doesn’t make sense. There is a part of you that wants to understand what was happening inside the person you loved, because understanding feels like it might somehow make the loss easier to carry. But sometimes there simply aren’t answers that will satisfy a grieving heart.

As a mom, I think that part can be especially hard. We spend so much of our lives trying to protect our children. We teach them, guide them, worry about them, watch for changes and try to be there when they need us. So when something happens that we couldn’t prevent, it can feel like we failed at the very thing we were supposed to do.

But I have had to remind myself of something I’ve said throughout this series: you cannot judge what you knew then by what you know now. Hindsight gives us information we didn’t have in the moment. It makes ordinary conversations seem significant and small details seem like clues. It makes us believe we should have known something we didn’t know.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn. We should learn the warning signs. We should become more willing to ask uncomfortable questions. We should pay attention when someone tells us they aren’t okay. We should teach our children that they can come to us with the things that scare them, embarrass them or hurt them.

But learning from loss is different from punishing yourself for it.

I still have questions. I suspect I always will. And maybe part of healing is learning that I can carry those questions without allowing them to consume every good thing that remains. I can miss someone and still laugh. I can love them and still be angry. I can wish I had known more and still recognize that I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.

If you are carrying questions after suicide loss, I hope you give yourself permission to not have all the answers. You are allowed to grieve the person you lost without solving the mystery of everything that happened. You are allowed to love them without understanding every part of their pain.

And if you are the person struggling right now, please remember this: you do not have to carry your pain silently because you are afraid of the questions that might come later. Tell someone. Let someone sit with you in the middle of it. You don’t have to have the words figured out first.

Sometimes the most important question isn’t “Why?”

Sometimes it is simply, “Are you okay?”

And sometimes asking that question can be the beginning of saving a life.

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or call 911 in an emergency.

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