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A family struggles with suicide

Megan Beza, with son Jacob, 5, leans on the wood box that holds her husband John's ashes. The box is carved with a picture of the sailboat they long talked about buying. John committed suicide in 2010.

Megan Beza, with son Jacob, 5, leans on the wood box that holds her husband John’s ashes. The box is carved with a picture of the sailboat they long talked about buying. John committed suicide in 2010.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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After it happened, Megan Beza was consumed with figuring out why. Did her husband’s struggle with painkillers play a role? His months of fruitless job-hunting? But with suicide, there are rarely tidy answers. What is known is that southern Nevada’s unusually high suicide rate spiked with the recession, and Megan thinks that must explain, at least in part, what happened the morning of Oct. 25, 2010.

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza, right, talks about her late husband with Maggie Saunders at Adams’s Place, which hosts a grief support group in Las Vegas. Five of the 11 women who attended the group lost family members to suicide, including Beza.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza, second from left, listens during a grief support group in Las Vegas. She has struggled to explain to her son what happened. “Daddy went to heaven,” she told Jacob. “His brain was sick.”  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza touches her son Jacob’s cheek after he said, “I miss you, Daddy” during his bedtime prayers, while holding on to the family cat.   (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza at home with her son. She said she had no reason to think her husband might harm himself. From what she knew, he’d never suffered from depression, and there was no history of suicide in his family.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza talks with Jacob under the watchful eye of their dog Alley in the kitchen of their Henderson, Nev., home.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza brushes her son’s hair.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Widow, son struggle with suicide

Beza wears a pendant with some of her husband’s ashes. When thoughts creep into her head of his last morning, she tries to think of something else. Their wedding day. Their son’s birth.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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