The strength to survive Conference offers support to Mainers coping with suicide

Her 14-year marriage had been in trouble on and off, but the day Elizabeth Daub bundled up her two young daughters and sought respite at a friend’s house, she wasn’t thinking the end was so near.

“I just wanted to get away overnight,” she said in an interview at her Hampden home earlier this week. “I didn’t go far, because I knew I’d probably be going back. We had a life together, and I wanted our marriage to work.”

But sometimes, we lose our options. Before Daub could see or even speak to her physician husband again, he took his own life at his home in Lincoln. A neighbor dropped by and found him the next morning unconscious in an armchair, but assumed he was asleep. In the afternoon, when he hadn’t showed up at the medical offices in Lincoln where he practiced, concerned co-workers went to investigate. They found 37-year-old Eric Daub near death from a deliberate overdose of phenobarbital tablets mixed with alcohol. He died shortly afterward at Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln.

Her husband’s suicide came as a total shock, Elizabeth Daub said Tuesday. That the man she had loved and shared her life with for 16 years carried within him that capability is something she is only beginning to comprehend. Psychologically, spiritually and emotionally stunned, Daub is struggling to carry on with her own life and to provide the support her children need to cope with the enormous loss.

This Saturday marks the sixth annual National Survivors of Suicide Day, organized by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. At the Senator Inn in Augusta on Friday, the Maine chapter of the AFSP will hold a daylong program for people whose loved ones have committed suicide and the professionals who help them cope with their profound losses. Presentations and discussions led by national experts will be followed by survivor support sessions in the afternoon.

On Saturday in Bangor, local AFSP members and supporters will host a shorter conference telecast from New York City. The free event, which will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Bangor Savings Bank Learning Center on Maine Avenue, will feature panel discussions on suicide prevention, bereavement and long-term survival, followed by refreshments and time for socializing.

According to the AFSP, one person in the United States commits suicide every 18 minutes. Suicide is the 13th-leading cause of death worldwide, the 11th in the United States, and the third among U.S. residents ages 10-24. In Maine, the Bureau of Health estimates there are 150 to 200 suicides each year. Suicide of those 14 to 24 years old accounts for more than a third of these deaths.

The impact of a suicide on survivors is profound, and for many it is lifelong. Grief, anger, guilt and remorse may never resolve. Additionally, the suicide of a spouse or parent often scuttles life plans and forces surviving family members into a financial and logistical crisis.

Elizabeth Daub, a California native without local family connections, knows she must help her daughters process their tremendous loss. But her own emotions are so frayed, she said, it’s all she can do some days just to get out of bed.

Now, eight months after Eric Daub’s death, the shattered family has moved from a comfortable lakeside property in Lincoln to a fixer-upper house on a back road in Hampden. The girls are enrolled in school and making new friends. Elizabeth Daub knows she too should reach out and cultivate social contacts, but often the effort to be normal is just too exhausting.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m walking in hell,” Daub said. “Everything has changed. I can function, but who do I trust?” Right now, she said, the only people she can really feel comfortable with are fellow survivors, which is one reason she’s helping to organize Saturday’s event in Bangor.

Susie Benoit, board chair of AFSP-Maine, said Wednesday that the fear of social stigma and shame can lead to isolation just when a survivor most needs support and understanding. Many survivors find the only place they can discuss the devastating event that has transformed their lives is in a group of other survivors, she said.

Sometimes the details of a suicide are so graphic that only other survivors can tolerate hearing them, according to Benoit. And it may seem that only other survivors can understand, without judging, the overwhelming feelings of guilt and remorse at having failed to recognize warning signs or not having taken effective steps to prevent the suicide.

Bangor grief counselor Julie Frost-Pettingill, who is helping to coordinate Saturday’s telecast event, said suicide survivors often feel pressure to “just pull yourself together and get on with it.” Too often, she said, the only way they can function is through self-medicating with alcohol or other substances. Bereavement groups offer an important opportunity to see that individual coping strategies vary and that the timeframe for processing grief cannot be predicted.

Frost-Pettingill helps facilitate a monthly meeting for survivors of suicide, called Safe Place. The group meets the first Wednesday of each month at the Brookings-Smith Family Center at 163 Center St. in Bangor.

“In a group setting, you can see other families that are somehow coping,” she said. “So you know that this must be survivable.”

Another support group for grieving children and their families, Pathfinders, is offered through Hospice of Eastern Maine. For information on the Pathfinders program call 973-8269.

Information on Friday’s AFSP-Maine daylong conference in Augusta is available by calling the organization’s Falmouth office at 632-1050. AFSP also has a Web site at www.afsp-maine.org. To learn about the Bangor telecast event on Saturday, call Julie Frost-Pettingill at 990-5849 or e-mail Elizabeth Daub at dazedhorse@earthlink.net.