“It’s A Wonderful
Life: A Suicide Survivor’s Perspective”
One of my all-time favorite films is Frank Capra’s Christmas
classic, It’s A Wonderful Life. I don’t remember when I began to watch this
film, but viewing it is a Christmas tradition in our family. Recently I’ve been meditating on why I like
the film so much, why its story resonates with me on such a deeply emotional
level. Over the past several years I’ve
begun to work through the pain of my father’s suicide when I was 15 years old
and I’ve discovered some connections with the film which I had not noticed
previously.
Like most suicide survivors, I’ve struggled with feelings of
abandonment, guilt, anger, regret, and shame.
I’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out what my father may have
been thinking the day he killed himself.
I’ve asked myself how I could have intervened if I’d been more aware of
the possibility of his suicide. What
clues did I miss? What would have been
different if our family had reached out to him in some different way when we
knew he was in turmoil? These are the
common questions suicide survivors ask themselves at varying levels of
intensity. The simple and painful fact
is that we almost never have any answers to these questions and have to come to
some type of “negotiated peace” with leaving them open-ended.
It’s a Wonderful Life
presents an “alternative ending” to the normal arch of a suicidal
situation. We watch George Baily descend
into despair as he experiences a financial catastrophe. This experience adds misery to his already
crushed dreams of someday getting out of the little town in which he has grown
up, Bedford Falls. Suicide becomes an
answer to the immediate crisis because his only real financial asset is his
life insurance policy. But George
doesn’t follow through with the suicide because God intervenes by sending an
angel (Clarence) who shows George what the world would be like if he had not
been born, that through his network of
relationships he really had “a wonderful life.”
George regains the desire to live and the story has a happy, triumphant
ending.
One reaction I have to the film as a suicide survivor is how
much I wish there had been an angel sent to intervene in my Dad’s life. In one sense Clarence represents what suicide
survivors often tell themselves is reality:
“if someone had been there to talk our loved one out of his suicide, if
someone could have gotten through and shown him/her the value of life, the
suicide would not have been committed.”
Of course, we don’t know that to be true, we only surmise it. And it adds to our pain and grief. Would an angel have made a difference in my
Dad’s situation? I don’t know. And I never will. Still, I find joy in seeing George pulled back
from the brink, in rooting for Clarence to “get his wings” by saving George.
The film also provides the
reason George plans to kill himself.
It is so his family can get the insurance money. In a sense, his suicide is seen as altruistic
rather than selfish. Looked at more
deeply, though, the picture is more complicated. When did George’s descent into a suicidal
mindset really begin? The film shows us
a series of “losses” George experiences in terms of his personal dreams for a
career outside of Bedford Falls. He is
constantly called on to “park” his aspirations so he can meet responsibilities
foisted upon him. George is “stuck” in this
small town which feels suffocating to him.
The one bright spot is his marriage and family. However, George loses all perspective when
the financial crisis occurs. He goes
home to his family as they prepare for Christmas and lashes out at his wife and
children. Mary, his wife, asks him to
leave them alone. So George does. He stops at a bar, gets in a fight, and heads
for the bridge off of which he plans to jump to his death.
Suicide survivors want to find the “key” reason why our
loved ones took their lives. Part of
healing is to give up that search. The
picture is much more complicated than we can fathom and we will most likely
never know. On one level George Bailey’s
reason seems to be very straightforward, but I don’t believe it is. His decision to commit suicide is more like a
volcano which has finally erupted, fed by many years of pent up disappointment
and frustration.
If It’s a Wonderful
Life had ended like the stories of so many of us and our loved ones, George
would have succeeded in killing himself.
The insurance money would probably not have been collected because the
company would have had a “suicide” exclusion.
Mary and the children would have spent many years struggling from the
trauma of George’s suicide, blaming themselves and others for not seeing
George’s struggles more clearly, for not intervening earlier, for sending him
away when his behavior was over the line.
No angel, no intervention, no answers.
Just a gaping hole. As Clarence
says to George in the film, “Each man's life
touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole,
doesn't he? “
Yes, he does, Clarence. Any survivor of suicide will tell you that.
Still, I find comfort in the
film. I know it is a positive spin on
what is almost always a negative outcome. But for two hours I get to see a
story come out right. I get to see
redemption. Restoration. A family re-united. Trauma averted. As George would say, “what do you know about
that!!!!”
