No Time to Say Goodbye Quotes

“Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic–equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Every family member reacts to the suicide of a loved one in his or her own individual manner: from anger to admiration, from identification to denial. Dr. Edward Dunne likens the suicide of his brother, Tim, to a meteorite that crashed into his family, sending each member into different and separate orbits of mourning. “Suicide destroys the original fabric of the family, forcing a reintegration of the survivors,” he says. “The pace at which individual family members are ready and able to do this will vary, necessitating individual interventions.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Most of us adapt; eventually learning to navigate on ground we no longer trust to be steady. We gradually come to accept that our questions will not be answered. We try not to torture ourselves for having failed to predict the coming catastrophe and preventing our loved ones from taking their lives.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“For me, being a survivor has made me a reluctant participant/observer in my own inner struggle between wanting that to be the most important fact of my life and wanting it to be the least important.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“The roller coaster of emotions following a suicide causes intense feelings of isolation and a breaking apart from all that once seemed familiar.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Survivors instinctively comprehend that in order to move on, we must not allow the disbelief, anger, and sorrow that follows suicide to define our lives. We must accept our loved one’s deaths as self-inflicted and intentional; we have to struggle against becoming bitter and hard; we cannot permit our own feelings of despair to paralyze and eventually harm us.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Survivors not only must try to understand the reasons why our loved ones answered no to Camus’s fundamental question of philosophy, we must also struggle to accept the fact that their decision to commit suicide will forever transform our lives.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Eventually, I stopped trying to find the answer to why Kim had died. Now I no longer debate the whys in my head, the could-haves, the should-haves, the what-ifs. With suicide, the search for understanding is totally encompassing—there’s no room for anything else. You have to give up the search in order to go forward. Ten years later, the question of why my daughter killed herself is more nostalgic than anything; it’s no longer even rhetorical, just reminiscent of what seems like another lifetime. I try to remember that old pain but I can’t imagine it anymore. The loss is the loss, whatever I do.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“In order to reach my destination, safely and intact, I knew I had to absolve my husband and myself for what each of us had done—or what each of us had failed to do.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Because of the traumatic nature of suicide, certain dates such as anniversaries, holidays, and birthdays take on greater significance for the survivor, observe Karen Dunne-Maxim, Edward Dunne, and Marilyn Hauser in Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Suicide Survivor. “We have seen many families who dread the approach of these occasions as unwanted reminders of their pain. It is our belief that holidays and birthdays should be observed recognizing the loss but using new family rituals which promote both celebration and healing.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Unfortunately, the newspaper fails to comprehend what survivors have come to accept: The torturous ambiguity that suicide leaves as its legacy allows no room for definitive closure or “appropriate” mourning. The challenge of surviving is to mourn without understanding; with pain and grief, yes, but with the awareness that we will never know why we have been left by those we have loved.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Suicide notes are written by approximately 25 percent of people who kill themselves, according to John McIntosh in Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Survivors. Yet, like Mary, many survivors find these last messages from their loved ones to be more confusing than comforting. Because the notes are often composed during states of extreme agitation, their incoherent references and cryptic allusions usually bring about more uncertainty than resolution.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“sense of responsibility because of the well-documented connection between the ready availability of firearms and suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people living in a household where a firearm is kept are nearly five times more likely to die by suicide than people who live in gun-free homes. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that the rate of suicide by firearms among adolescents and young people has more than doubled over the past twenty-five years, and warns: “Owners of firearms should weigh their reasons for keeping a gun in the home against the possibility that it might someday be used in a suicide.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, ‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king— And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Corey, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“each and every person in that group. I pray that they’re all well.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Coming to terms with the suicide of a loved one is confusing enough for an adult; for children, the loss is complicated by parents or others trying to explain the dual concepts of death, then death by choice.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“During any crisis, it is often difficult to admit that we need outside guidance to assist us in working out our problems. For many survivors, this reluctance to seek help is often intensified by the belief that conventional support systems failed in preventing the suicide of a family member.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“When someone says to me that my husband must have been very brave to take his own life, I get furious. The real heroes of this drama are those of us who are trying to put our lives back together, piece by piece. We are the ones who have to face straightening up the mess and making sense of the insanity. We cry, we laugh, we hang on to each other for dear life, but we do survive, thank God.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Comparison is the best medicine. There is such an air of mystery surrounding suicide. People are looking for closure and answers, wanting to know what has really happened. This is especially difficult with suicide because we can’t ask the people who killed themselves why they did it. The one common denominator among the people who come to the meetings is pain. With some, recovery is slower and the bitterness deeper; others are able to compartmentalize their feelings.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“inevitable defeat but in recognizing that our spirit of survival remains both resilient and intact.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“For many parents, guilt over their children’s suicide is compounded by the real or perceived prejudgment that they are responsible for the actions of their children.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“As we struggle to put our lives back together, survivors must deal not only with the chaos that suicide leaves behind but also with the uncertainty of its future effects. Even as we begin to understand that our loved ones killed themselves in a desperate attempt to end their pain, we often feel that their anguish has not been extinguished but simply passed on to us.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“I once heard a psychiatrist say that suicide is the only way that someone dies by choice. I disagree with him. Suicide is a perception of choice.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one out of four people who attempt suicide has a family member who also tried to commit suicide. Current research suggests that suicide tends to run in families, possibly as a result of such genetic factors as depression, or because the family member serves as a role model.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“We are also afraid. We are told about a possible “suicide gene” that can be passed down from generation to generation. We are informed that after our exposure to a loved one’s suicide, we are more psychologically receptive to consider it as a viable option for ourselves. Survivors learn that our chances of killing ourselves are now significantly greater, with rates estimated at up to 400 percent higher than those of the general public.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“As we begin to put our lives together, survivors gradually find that the acute rawness of our pain is replaced by a dull ache of regret for the uncompleted lives of the people we have lost. In our moving on, we discover that we still have the capacity to laugh and love, even to be concerned about the ordinary worries of the everyday world.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“her. I still find it surprising that Marci had enough determination”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“As suicide survivors begin the long, arduous process of navigating the labyrinth of our loss, we face the risk of confronting a reality that is often covert and always ambiguous.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“I’m also convinced that even if he was aware of the devastating consequences his act would have on the rest of us, he still would have gone through with it. Suicide is very selfish. With the force of one bullet, Paul blew away all the history we shared together. Suddenly, I was alone with my parents, the sole guardian of my childhood memories.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One

“Suicide is an anguished response to loss: the loss of faith, of a loved one, of health, of mental powers, of money, of the ability to fight. As we survivors separate ourselves from the hopelessness and desperation that propelled our loved ones to end their lives, we start to mourn their deaths, not their suicides, and begin to heal from the very real pain deep within us.”
― Carla Fine, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving The Suicide Of A Loved One