Veteran suicides: Families haunted

I don't know if I cry more for the dead after suicide or for the families left behind to wonder what they could have done to save the life before it was too late. I understand a sense of hopelessness so deep that one more day of pain seems to be more about letting in more pain than it offers a day of hope. I understand what it's like to lose someone after suicide and ask the thousand unanswerable questions wondering what else could have been done.

My husband's nephew, another Vietnam vet with PTSD, committed suicide. He knew what I did, what I knew, but he didn't want to listen any more than he wanted to talk except for a few tidbits of what happened. He blamed himself for two of his friends being blown up and then he blamed himself for everything else that came after. It all became evil to him. To this day, I still wonder what buzz word I could have used to get him forgive himself for what he thought was his fault. None of it was but he believed it so deeply, he needed to begin there and then figure out that it really wasn't his fault at all. I just didn't get the chance.

His whole family wondered what could have been done and they were angry he decided to do it instead of open up to them. Then again, they didn't know what to say or how to understand him, but they did the best they could with what they knew at the time. That's what we all need to find some comfort in. If we loved them, tried our best with what we knew based on that love, then we should find some comfort in that. We should not let that be the end of it. From that point onward, we need to learn everything we can and become devoted to making sure there will be one life saved for the one we lost, one family restored for the family we saw shattered and one more family finding they are not alone the way we thought we were.

The following is about two families left behind after suicide and it is a picture of the families across this country of the 18 families of veterans we lose to suicide everyday.

Veteran suicides: Families haunted
Depression follows tragedy

By Karen Nugent TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF


LEOMINSTER — Kevin P. Lucey made no bones about telling a group of clergy about his loss of faith.

“God and I have not been on good terms for six years. He turned his back on my son, and I will never forgive him for that,” Mr. Lucey told the group gathered recently at the Leominster Veterans Center for a workshop on helping war veterans and their families re-adjust to daily life.

Mr. Lucey’s son, Jeff Lucey, a Marine reservist who served in the first Iraq invasion in 2003, hanged himself in the family’s basement a year after he returned to his Belchertown home. He was 23. The tragedy occurred after his family tried for months to get Jeff, a popular class clown in his high school days, treatment for what seemed an obvious case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“People other than us should have cared,” an angry Mr. Lucey told the group. “I’m faulting the VA (Northampton VA Medical Center), I’m faulting the church, and I’m faulting God.”

Another parent took a different route.

The Rev. Cynthia Crosson-Harrington of Petersham finished seminary school, became a minister, and is a founder of the NEADS Canines for Combat Veterans program, which provides assistance dogs to veterans.

But all that followed a long period of depression after her son, James Tower, who served in Bosnia and in Iraq, died in 2003 at age 22 in what she now accepts as a suicidal gesture attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Veteran suicides Families haunted