Widows of Suicide Share Pain and Recovery : Relationships: A group in Santa Ana offers support to women dealing with feelings of grief, guilt and rejection.

The day it happened, Elena was in bed with a cold. William, her husband of 42 years, brought her aspirin, stroked her hair and asked if she was up for pizza. They planned to watch the Clippers on TV, and pizza always went with basketball. It was one of the small rituals that marked their life together.

William never made it beyond the driveway. Instead, he sat in his truck, rolled up the windows, took out a German Luger he had had since the war and shot himself in the head. Elena was startled by the noise and went outside. Smoke from the discharge filled the truck’s cabin, and she wondered if it was on fire. After the police arrived, Elena was finally told that William had committed suicide.

“I was stunned; everything that I had counted on was no longer there,” the 70-year-old Fountain Valley woman recalls, asking that her full name not be used. “I had absolutely no idea he was feeling that way, none at all.”

She began crying during the conversation, the memories from more than a year ago cracking her concentration. “We were going to have pizza. I was going to go downstairs and make a salad. Just weeks before he had called cities that we planned on stopping at. We were taking a driving trip to Montana . . . it was going to be a lovely trip. “

The feelings of guilt and loss were too much. Doubting she could go on alone, Elena turned for help to a support group, the nondenominational Widows of Suicide Group offered in Santa Ana by the Catholic Charities of Orange County. Elena met other women, some young but most of them near her age, and found a bit of the understanding and relief that can come from shared experience.

“Oh yes, it’s done a world of good for me,” she says. “You know they are going through a living hell, just like you. Their pain, knowing they feel like you, eases your pain.

“I’ve become the closest friends with one woman. We went out on New Year’s and just stayed together, talking until 5 in the morning. I look to her and others to give me a reason, any reason, maybe a fair reason for what happened. The group helps with that.”

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Shvonne Stricklen, a theologian and therapist with an expertise in death and bereavement counseling, started the program last summer after her studies into suicide indicated that woman can face overwhelming problems after losing a spouse--not necessarily different than a man’s, but possibly more pervasive.

Wives are likely to slip into a deep, lasting depression after a husband’s suicide, in part because the act wasn’t predictable. Guilt arises when one thinks about what could have been done to prevent it. Then the loneliness sets in. Then the doubts over how well they really knew their husbands, men who took their lives without considering how their spouses would fare.

“Along with the blame and guilt, there’s a feeling of rejection; it’s this extreme feeling of rejection, even though it may not have been intended that way,” Stricklen explains. “The wives feel they were something less than they should have been, could have been.

“Some women feel that the husbands didn’t feel they were worthy enough to share their saddest, most personal emotions.”

If confronted by this, Stricklen’s counsel is basic and affirming: Seek the help of those who have also gone through it or are intimately aware of the dynamics. Try to understand what happened without condemning yourself. And don’t misinterpret a desperate act as a heartless one.

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The reality, Stricklen says, is that most men who commit suicide don’t involve their wives simply because they don’t want to burden them. In their minds, they’re acting in a courageous way, removing the ache of their own lives without bringing the same day-to-day grief to their wives.

“It’s true that they leave their spouses with all these questions, but I’m sure it’s almost always an extremely brave act,” she explains. “They honestly tried to spare them, but instead leave them with something horrible.”

Stricklen, who is considering writing a book on her experiences, said more men commit suicide than women, a fact confirmed by the coroner’s office for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Figures for 1992 (the most recent numbers available) show that twice as many men turn to suicide, with 182 of the 260 cases that year being male.

Although she’s not aware of any definitive studies to support it, Stricklen says her interactions with widows indicate that few of them were aware that their mates were contemplating suicide.

Elena’s husband may have been upset over chronic, untreatable back pain, but she never had any hints that he was preparing to take his life. Besides planning an evening of pizza and basketball, William, 74, had spent that bright November afternoon removing a tree stump and amusing the neighbors with his jokes.

“He was in a lot of pain, and he would get down because of that,” she remembers, “but he was always making everybody laugh; he was just that kind of man . . . and why would he spend all day cutting at that stump knowing what he was going to do?”

It’s impossible to determine if William’s act was impulsive or long in coming. Beatrice, a 61-year-old Huntington Beach widow who requested anonymity, also says there weren’t any signs that Jimmy, her husband of 21 years, was on the verge of suicide.

Beatrice said he called in sick from his job as a real estate agent, swallowed a handful of the tranquilizers and painkillers that kept the constant ache from his colon cancer bearable and locked himself in the bathroom. When Beatrice returned late from her shift as an administrative assistant, her husband was curled up under the sink, near death. He never came out of the coma, dying two days later.

“Jimmy talked every now and then about how his life wasn’t good anymore, and I think he mentioned to me that it might be better to be out of his distress,” she says, “but he never told me about this, and he never asked me for help. He took it all on his own.”

Beatrice, like Elena, misses her husband, but there’s a lingering wave of resentment that he left her alone, which Stricklen says is typical. There’s also shame that comes from many things--the women are worried about their husband’s reputation being ruined and concerned that their friends and families will feel they were unsupportive, distant wives.

“If I couldn’t help him, I have this fear that they don’t think I cared enough,” says Beatrice, who doesn’t belong to a support group but visits a psychiatrist weekly to discuss her feelings. “I feel like I betrayed him, and us, in some way, and I can’t shake it.”

This way of thinking has led many of the widows in Stricklen’s group to hide the truth from good friends and casual acquaintances. Some, she notes, have even deceived sons and daughters, attributing the husband’s death to an accident or natural causes.

“One woman in our group has been lying about it for 14 years; she just can’t face it,” Elena says. “I felt the only way I could deal with it was to tell everybody. The honesty has set me free, even though it has been sad and frightening at times.”

Most of the women in Widows of Suicides are older, the contemporaries of Elena and Beatrice, which Stricklen says makes sense to her because, she says, most male suicides are older men who have endured physical disabilities or ongoing depression. However, sheriff’s statistics show that men between 30 and 50 make up the largest segment of suicides in Orange County.

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Katharine, who also asked to be unidentified, lost a husband after six years. Jan, a 34-year-old Laguna Beach artist, ended his life by taking pills. His body was found in the mountains near Big Bear Lake a few days after he told Katharine, 25, that he was going on a weekend camping trip by himself.

“He was in good shape, very careful about his diet,” Katharine recalls. “He was prone to mood swings, and I knew he was unhappy much of the time. I thought it was because he was temperamental. I tended to ignore any danger signals.

“When he left, it wasn’t that unusual. I mean, he went off alone every now and then. He left his dog behind, though, and that should have meant something to me.”

As with older widows, Katharine felt debilitating guilt that even had her considering suicide. That was two years ago, though. Now Katharine is in the early stages of a good relationship--trying, as she puts it, to be “more careful about everything, to appreciate everything.”

As for the elderly widows in Stricklen’s group, the challenge to find balance is not always so easy. Youth, she says, makes recovery easier, simply because there are more options. Also, after being with one man for decades, finding someone new may be close to impossible.

“I love friendship and companionship,” sighs Elena, “but it’s more with another woman than a man. I just can’t see falling in love again; I just don’t believe it can happen twice in my lifetime.

“After 42 years, I still got excited when he walked into a room. William, he was my whole world.”

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Catholic Charities of Orange County’s Widows of Suicides Group meets at 7:30 p.m. the second Wednesday of each month at 1506 Brookhollow Drive, Suite 112, Santa Ana. Participants need not be Catholic to attend. Free. (714) 662-7500 (Monday-Thursday).

Suicide, by Gender

In Orange County, more than twice as many men commit suicide than women. And nearly 40% of all victims take their lives between age 30 and 50.

Age Male Female Total 18 4 0 4 19 2 0 2 20-29 25 7 32 30-39 42 14 56 40-49 38 15 53 50-59 17 16 33 60-69 22 11 33 70-79 21 5 26 80-89 10 8 18 90-99 1 2 3 Total 182 78 260

Source: Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Coroner’s Report