b'During the first couple of months after my sisters suicide, we talked about her incessantly. We reminisced about how she acted and looked. We had an insatiable desire to reconstruct the weeks before she died. We recounted the last conversations, moods, phone calls, photographs and meals, hoping that somehow our memories would explain the answer to why shed killed herself. That question still gnawed at our guts, creating a big, black, empty hole(Debbie). The incredible emotional pain of the loss of my son was ever present. Recurrent tears, heaviness in my chest, frequent sighing, and the inability to sleep became commonplace. Although the structure and routine of my office was somewhat comforting, I found it difficult to concentrate or focus on tasksat work or at home. It was as though my brain was rebelling against this experience. Or possibly this was my brains way of forcing me to be gentle with myself in my grief(Linda)Several of the books listed in the bibliography at the end of this guide also contain survivor stories, including No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One, in which author/survivor Carla Fine writes: Since [my husbands] suicide, I felt increasingly isolated from my friends and family. They had no idea what I was going through, all their well-intentioned advice and words of comfort seemed ignorant at best and tinged with cruelty at worst.I thought about the singular bond suicide survivors share with one another. Even though each of our situations is unique, we all experience similar stages in our grieving. When we meet someone else who has been there, it makes our personal chaos and isolated secrecy seem a little less frightening.16 Surviving a Suicide Loss'