A Better Place

Due to the content of this article and to protect the identities of those involved, the author has requested to remain anonymous.

When a friend of mine committed suicide in my junior year of high school, the headmaster sent out a mysterious email about a surprise “all-school assembly” later in the day. The rumors flew as we all gathered together later in the day, happy that the assembly was taking up our class time. The headmaster shocked the school by announcing the suicide of the student and promptly ending the assembly, dismissing all of the grades to different rooms to process and grieve; the juniors went to the school library. The entire grade, about 120 students, sat in silence, with the occasional sob, sniffle, or murmur of conversation piercing the air. For many of us, it was the rock-bottom of our high school experience. We could only imagine how much worse it must have been for this student who took his own life.

They offered us free therapists that would come into school each day for the next several weeks, and gave us the rest of the day off; later, they announced exams were canceled for the semester. Otherwise, they handled the situation tactlessly, cramming everyone by grade into a room for an hour after telling them about the death of a well-known peer. The entire school was numb for days afterwards. This is becoming an all-too-familiar story in many schools around the world; some communities can experience multiple suicides a year now, and perhaps we can count ourselves among the lucky ones without a domino effect of suicides. Rumors of what his home life had been like spread like wildfire, accusing his parents or school officials of abuse and neglect. But through all of this, our community was able to come together to grieve. It was during one of these gatherings that I heard my teacher say, “He’s in a better place.”

This was a Catholic high school I went to, and of course everyone would like to think their lost loved ones are going to heaven. However, the images of Judas Iscariot—one of the most well-known examples of suicide in the Bible—suffering in the ninth circle of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy popped into my head, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we could truly say he was in a better place with any certainty. Of course, we judge not, lest we be judged, so none among us can claim with a confident judgment that another’s sin will lead them to hell. The Catholic Church has no official canon of damnation, only an official recognition of salvation among the Canon of Saints. As such, grappling with suicide and what it means about that person’s life experiences is a true endeavor.

Facing suicide in a Catholic community is, spiritually, enormously complex. The old adage “love the sinner, hate the sin” is controversial at times, but I find it to be true to an extent here. It is out of love for the suffering that we hate what causes them pain, and we hate what steals them away from us. Those that take their own lives suffer, often in silence, to the point of taking God’s great gift of life. Although the technical view of the Catholic Church is that taking one’s own life treats our lives as no longer belonging to God, which I don’t argue with, I think the more important understanding is that a person who kills themselves treats themselves so badly it becomes essentially irredeemable—and yet we still feel such intense compassion for them. Self-harm, while no different from harming others by certain spiritual understanding, brings especially heartbreaking circumstances to grieve.

I pray with all my heart and soul that he is in a better place now, but it still hurts me every time I remind myself that I can’t say so for certain. Only God knows how exactly everything will play out, but maybe the only thing we can do is help those in life regardless of how we perceive their struggles or their sins; in doing so, we take care of what is theirs and what is God’s. The greatest battle is one in which we all fight, and we must fight it together.