“Did he commit suicide because he was gay?” The family friend at my uncle’s funeral shocks me with this question.

“I don’t know why he did it,” I say, stumbling over my words. “I don’t think he was gay.”

The family friend won’t let up. He goes on to give his opinion about suicide– in particular, my beloved uncle’s suicide– and I can hardly bear it. This conversation at my uncle’s funeral offends me all the way around. My other beloved uncle is gay and he’s grieving over the loss of his brother, too. How can this man stand here and tell me all about suicide and gay people?

And he won’t be the first or the last armchair expert to make this whole thing worse.

Suicide is gut-wrenching, and it certainly doesn’t need people making two cents out of something so senseless.

Can we just go here… that suicide doesn’t make sense to most of us… especially when so many people are fighting so desperately to live. People with cancer. People injured in car accidents. People at war fighting fiercely to survive. How does a person choose death over life? And in the process, throw all the people they love into a dark and desperate grief?

Because desperately you search for how you could have stopped that suicide. What you could have said… what you could have done… that would have saved your loved one.

Since my uncle’s death twenty-something years ago, I’ve been on the scene in the wake of several suicides. The raw grief is overwhelming. Physically healthy people, especially young people, aren’t suppose to die. And when they take their own lives, they also take something precious from their loved ones.

The ability to make things right.

Because you can’t ever make things right.

Death is a done deal.

There’s nothing more you can say to the person you’ve lost.

Because, when it comes to suicide, there’s so much you wish you’d said when they were alive.

It’s still clear and sharp for me. I am twenty-three years old, sitting on the freshly mowed grass beside the body of my uncle. He is covered with a blanket awaiting the morgue’s taxi. It is so like my uncle to have mowed his lawn before killing himself.

Just hours earlier, probably after mowing his lawn, my uncle comes to my house to give me his record collection. We talk all afternoon, the whole time he holds my one-year-old daughter on his lap. My uncle laughs. He cuddles Cami while sharing his favorite memories with me. He even talks about Jesus. I look at the records he’s brought. Pick out my favorite one. Point to a song I loved when I was a child, El Paso by Marty Robbins.

I don’t notice as my uncle leaves, he takes the Marty Robbins record from its album cover and carries it back home with him. In his living room, he puts the record on his stereo. Turns up the volume so he can hear El Paso in the garage where he has work to do. Before the work, he writes a note. Short and sweet and to the point. “I’ve made my peace with Jesus,” is the last line before he signs Love, Danny.

My Uncle then hangs himself in the garage and the work he’s done devastates our family.

The Marty Robbins’ record plays on in his living room, over and over repeating this song, El Paso. 

My Grandma Helen finds my uncle in the garage. It’s been less than thirty minutes since his death. Must be her mother’s instinct that brought her here so quickly. She calls me and her first words are, “He’s done it.” Normally I’m a crier, but not a tear comes in the face of this shocking announcement. Not a single tear until I wake the next morning having slept the shock away. Now I cannot stop crying.

Years later while writing about my uncle’s suicide, my three-year-old son tells me Mercy is in the house. G2 says this several times to help me understand. All of a sudden it resonates in my heart: Mercy is in the house. It feels like God is saying this about suicide: Mercy is in the house. 

The Mercy G2 means is actually our little rat terrier, Mercy, the dog that replaced Bell, the rat terrier puppy Scott ran over in our driveway.

And since that day, this is how I deal with suicide, Mercy is in the house.

In the wake of Robin Williams’ death, there’s a lot of talk about suicide. Don’t be an armchair expert in these conversations. Don’t try to figure suicide out. Don’t let your curiosity lead to dumb questions or worse, stupid opinions.

Be merciful.

Merciful as God is merciful.

Be kind, tender, and compassionate sharing in the suffering of those who suffer. Because a family experiencing suicide suffers tremendously, and they don’t need people making things worse.