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A Family History Tragedy

A Family History Tragedy

It is my turn at Vision & Verb and today I am sharing a tragic event from my family history.

Vision and Verb

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8 Comments CherryPie on Oct 31st 2013

8 Responses to “A Family History Tragedy”

  1. London Caller says:
    October 31, 2013 at 9:44 am

    That’s too terrifying!

  2. Steve Hayes says:
    October 31, 2013 at 3:40 pm

    A sad story. My maternal great great grandfather committed suicide, but he hanged himself, and didn’t take his wife with him. I haven’t discovered why he did it , though.

    • CherryPie says:
      October 31, 2013 at 11:11 pm

      It is a sad story, I don’t take at face value the reason for why he took those actions.

      My personal thought on the cause of his actions is that he was suffering from what we now know as ‘Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome’ (PTSD).

  3. james higham says:
    November 1, 2013 at 2:59 am

    PTSD can take many forms and people do strange things. I’ve seen it myself.

  4. Amfortas says:
    November 1, 2013 at 9:51 am

    I was watching a program the other week in which mention of suicide was made. Some statistics for soldiers were discussed. It seems that (in America) the largest proportion of soldier suicides are military doctors.

    PTSD is not simply from tangible trauma but from (in the Drs case) the fantasy of shame. The view is that modern warfare gets injured soldiers to the medicos fast. They would have perished slowly, gruesomely on the field in previous times but now the medics are expected to save them. It is often just not possible. Even with modern surgical techniques and medicines, many die.

    A soldier with honour and Integrity does not want to let his comrades down. Reputations of men and Regiments are built on ‘never leave a man behind”.

    There is no shame, of course, in failing to save a man whose injuries defy repair. But shame is felt, just as guilt can be felt by an innocent man accused of something. It is deadly. In both instances. Falsely accused men are the largest proportion of civilian suicides.

    • CherryPie says:
      November 1, 2013 at 10:27 pm

      Thank you for your additional thoughts, they are most interesting. There is as you say no shame, but people are always so hard on themselves.

      When people are responsible for others lives and the results are not favourable because as you say the injuries defy repair I think that hardness on oneself would be more keenly felt.

      Thank you again for inspiring me to get around to writing this post :-)