The grief comes first, and it is heavy enough on its own. But a death by suicide rarely arrives alone. It brings a second question with it, sometimes from inside your own head and sometimes from the church: Did God turn away from them at the end, and has he turned away from you, since you could not stop it?
Before anyone answers, two things should be said plainly. The shame many families feel after a suicide is not a small side effect of grief. For some, it is the heaviest part, because it cuts them off from the people who should be carrying them. And no answer, however true, should be offered as a way to hurry anyone’s mourning along.
With those things named, here is what can honestly be said. Read carefully, Scripture gives no reason to believe God withdraws his love from someone because they were sick, and no reason for the people left behind to carry their loss in shame. That answer does not make the grief smaller. It changes what the grief is allowed to be: honest instead of hidden, and carried in company instead of alone.